In the age of technology, data-driven marketing is a powerful tool for your small business. Much like knowing your customer base, accessing the right data can help drive customer engagement and help you advertise more effectively.
However, it can take time to ensure you’re using the correct data to influence your marketing strategy. With so much information on the internet, data collection can become overwhelming. So let’s take a look at data-driven marketing and discuss five hands-on tips for using the right data to improve your marketing strategies.
What Is Data-Driven Marketing?
Data-driven marketing is a marketing strategy that utilizes and analyzes customer data to advertise your small business and products better. As opposed to general marketing, which promotes a product or a service directly, data-driven marketing allows you to advertise to your customer base while providing advertisements laser-targeted to one niche or customer group.
Another aspect of data-driven marketing is that it intuits your customers’ wants, needs, and interests without requiring them to express them outright. While, say, a survey can tell you a portion of your customer’s interests, it is more accurate than knowing precisely what they may need or what target demographic they fall into. Data-driven marketing gives you an inside look at your customers’ lives and allows you to engineer marketing campaigns for accuracy and customer interest specifically.
1. Accurate Information Is Key
As expected, if your data collection is incomplete or inaccurate, your marketing strategy will be less effective. For example, suppose your business collects data like names and emails from your customers but needs to invest in finding other relevant information. In that case, you could miss out on an entire area of data-driven marketing. However, many customers are unlikely to provide this information directly.
Businesses can supplement the direct data provided by their customer base using data appending services. These programs allow businesses to ensure they have the most accurate information to target their customer base accurately. Companies that specialize in data management and collection can help bolster business, which can be a significant step in the right direction for using the correct data for marketing strategies.
2. Unique Data Offers Unique Advantages
One of the ways to find the right data for your business is to target unique and privileged data points. While many companies target email addresses and other data points, finding sources of data that are under-utilized but apply to your business can be a great boon for your marketing.
A good example here is location data. If you know your customers are located in a cold climate, for the sake of argument, you may funnel more marketing effort into warm clothing products. But on the other hand, you may learn to avoid investing in warmth-based products if your clients are primarily located in the desert or different arid climates.
3. Targeting Niches V.S. Blanket Marketing
While blanket marketing strategies can be helpful for your small business, you want to focus equal attention on targeting customer niches. While blanket marketing can increase brand awareness and cover a wide range of customers, targeting specialized areas of expertise or customer bases, also known as hyper-personalized marketing, can allow you to service lower-competition customers.
If you monopolize one group of customers, even if they are a smaller percentage of your total customer base, you’re likely to bring in more long-term customers than working in other high-competition niches. Thankfully, customer data can help point you in the right direction when choosing an advertising niche to target.
4. Integrate Data Collection and Customer Interactions
Data collection doesn’t need to monopolize your time. You can multitask without straining your resources by working data collection strategies into your customer interactions. Emailing customers’ receipts, for example, can help you gather information without running a separate campaign.
The same strategies apply to allowing previous customers to comment on your website or tying customer emails to service tickets. If you are clever about overlapping your services, you can passively collect information, benefiting your marketing team. Optimizing your energy is crucial for a small business, as you may need help to dedicate a whole team to managing customer data. By doubling up on interactions and data collection, you save time and money without neglecting a crucial part of data-driven marketing.
5. Analytics Tools Are Crucial to Using the Right Data
Even if you had all the data in the world, it would only be helpful after adequately analyzing the information. Depending on what your target result may be, different information can benefit your marketing strategy. For example, suppose you’re hoping to increase customer interactions over email campaigns. In that case, you’ll need to prioritize additional data than if you’re looking to target a previously unknown niche or customer base.
Finding the proper data analysis tools for your business can be a process. There are several ways to process data, and ensuring you’re utilizing all the programs needed to help sift through customer data can streamline your process. In general, ensuring you keep separate information on your customers can help you better sort your data and, in turn, help you better understand your customer base as a whole. In addition, some data sets communicate better when read as a whole rather than individual numbers, so be sure to balance collecting targeted data with building customer profiles, as both provide essential information.
If you’re interested in learning more strategies for small businesses, check out our other articles. Here at American SBDC, we connect small business owners with the tools they need for success. If you’re looking for an SBDC near you or new and exciting ways to promote your business, check out our services today.