Wouldn’t it be nice to know if your marketing is resonating with customers? That’s where data comes in. In this guide, we’ll break down the power of data in marketing and offer actionable strategies to increase your market share. Plus, we’ll show how Higher Ranking can help you harness this data to help your business grow and thrive. Let’s dive in!

What is data-driven marketing?

 Data-driven marketing involves strategically using information collected from customers to better understand their needs and industry trends. Businesses can then use this information to create targeted campaigns that better resonate with audiences.

Key benefits to data-driven marketing

Personalised campaigns

When you know exactly who you’re speaking to – such as specific age or profession – you can address the interests of specific customer segments. This personalisation can help nurture deeper connections with your audience.

Don’t just take our word for it though. A survey conducted by McKinsey & Company found that 76% of consumers said receiving personalised communication was a key factor in prompting their consideration of a brand.

Efficient use of resources

 Data can also reveal more detail about your audience’s purchasing behaviours and preferences. For example, if most of your customers use a specific social media platform at a certain time, you can schedule your ads to appear or be promoted during that time. Again, this can help you effectively segment your marketing activities.

Supports continuous improvement

Data-driven marketing can continually refine your marketing strategies based on its previous performance. This ongoing evaluation can lead to better outcomes over time as you can adjust your campaigns to meet changing needs of your clients and customers. For example, if your data tells you more of your customers are interested in a specific product or service at exact times of the year, you can craft your marketing campaigns to align with this demand.

How to collect and review customers’ data

Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) tools

CRM tools help you manage customer data. For example, they can help you record customer interactions, preferences, and purchase history. But make sure you use a tool that fits your business needs – Mailchimp is a great entry point.

Many small businesses don’t have CRM tools in place and often rely upon manual spreadsheets and customer records. This is fine if you have the time and make the effort, but a CRM tool like Mailchimp can help automate tasks once up and running.

Website analytics

Analytics tools, like Google Analytics, will provide you with insights into how users interact with your website. You can track metrics like:

• page views
• bounce rates (percentage of users who leave your site after viewing one page), and
• user demographics.

The data you get from these metrics can help you formulate your messaging. For example, you can optimise your content on a certain set of pages – like product categories – that are most popular.

Social media insights

Social media has become a rich reserve of customer information for businesses. You can understand who is interacting with your content based off of shares, likes, comments, or direct messaging – and can get a clearer idea what content resonates best. These insights can then help inform your communication strategies and back-up your efforts to refine your content strategy based on what drives engagement.

Surveys and feedback forms

Perhaps unsurprisingly, asking your customers directly what they think or how they feel about your business is extremely handy. This gives them the chance to discuss what they like most about your business, or more importantly, what they dislike.

These responses can then inform upcoming marketing decisions. If customers dislike pop-up ads but are okay with videos, adjust your communication approach accordingly. We suggest you create simple surveys using tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms and share them with your customers via email or social media.

Sales data 

Last, but certainly not least, there’s sales data. You could call this data the traditional indicator of market performance – simply because for many years it has been the only indicator. Sales records can help you understand which products or services are most popular among your customers. Monthly, quarterly, or annually review sales reports to identify patterns in customer buying behaviour and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.

Organise your data

After you’ve collected data, you should then organise it effectively for analysis. As for how thorough or in-depth you analyse this data depends heavily upon your resourcing and budget. However, for most businesses, an effective data analysis process can be broken down into three, simple steps.

Step one: Centralise your data

Create a centralised database or dashboard where you can safely house and efficiently access your customer data. What you ultimately choose will again depend upon your scale and budget, but Salesforce is a great CRM database for most businesses.

Step two: Categorise your data

Organise your data into categories relevant to your business. These can include:

• demographics (seniority, size of organisation, industry, region, etc.)
• search intent
• preferences, or
• customer feedback.

Doing this can help you analyse specific aspects of your customer base. It can give you a clear idea of who exactly is interested in your business, why they’re interested, or what issue they want you to solve.

Step three: Check data quality

Every couple of months, we recommend you review the quality of your data and then ‘clean’ it. Why? High-quality data is essential for accurate analysis and decision-making. Make sure you watch out for data that’s been duplicated or is outdated. Using incorrect data can cause major problems for a business and make your data-driven marketing efforts pointless.

Next steps 

Much like how Rome wasn’t built in a day, data-based marketing isn’t effective overnight. Start small by focusing on one or two key data sources that are most relevant to your business goals and grow from there.

As you become more comfortable with data collection and analysis, gradually expand your efforts to include additional sources. But always remember the quality of your data is as important as the quantity.

How Higher Ranking can help

The friendly team at Higher Ranking can help you develop a B2B strategy backed by data-driven marketing and analytics. With your input, and our help, together we can increase your conversion rates and skyrocket your business’s potential. Book a chat today!