What are the most important steps of an actionable, data-driven marketing strategy?
1. Determine what drives your decision making
Before collecting data or undertaking any analysis, decide what the key driving factors for making decisions and what your KPIs are – revenue or income? Are you interested in creating an exceptional customer experience for your current customers, attracting new customers, or re-engaging with old ones?
2. Establish the data you need to collect
Divide your search criteria into quantitative (number of site visits, number of downloads, etc.) and qualitative (why it happened? – customized landing page, customer-specific offers, etc.). Decide if you want information on a person’s buying habits, what pages they like to visit, what they interact with most, etc., or personal info such as email, address, age, etc. Deciding on the right info makes decision making easier.
3. Collect the data
Determine how to get the information in the least intrusive manner possible to avoid irritating your customers. Will you use contact information forms on your website, surveys at certain touchpoints, or geographical information based on IP addresses? Does the number of visits to the “About Us” page influence buying habits? There are offline situations too. Do you have club membership forms? Do you carry out in-store surveys? Make sure you are collecting the right data to benefit you. Buying habits differ with seasons, trends, technology advances, and people’s moods. Don’t miss out on opportunities to learn about your customers.
4. Analyze the data and create buyer personas
Analyze your data from many angles to develop buyer personas – 360 degree views of your customers. Look at who they are, what they search for, what they buy, what interests them, what influences them, etc. The more accurate and individualized these personas are, the more accurate and individualized the content.
5. Target your “WOW” information
Now it is time to build your content around your personas, put the right information in front of the right people at the right time, “WOW” your customers with how well you know them, and delight them with fantastic “personal” offers. Show them new items and trends that they might have missed without you that match their persona. Throughout every channel stage of the buying process, provide an experience and keep your customer coming back for more.
6. Measure your marketing ROI
According to the Kentico Marketers’ Survey “What do digital marketers really want in 2015?”, online marketing’s effectiveness is not being measured enough with “only 17% doing it constantly”. Refer back to all your answers from Step 1. Do you have more customers? Are older customers returning? Have page visits or downloads increased? All these things can point towards a successful data-driven strategy helping improve the business’s value.
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