Priyanka Sharma, Head - Marketing, CIGNEX Datamatics

Priyanka, a marketing professional with over eight years of experience in strategizing, designing, budgeting & executing marketing initiatives that revolutionize business scenario for enterprises.

With the digital and technology transformation uproar, the Marketing world today has evolved from the traditional 4P’s to an age when social networks, advocacy and engagement rules discussions. The digital landscape is changing and new consumer behavior calls for new rules to engage them. From the days of untargeted broadcasting focused on masses, the world has moved to the digital age which calls for widened reach but accurate targeting.

Today in order to achieve the desired results, it is imperative that both digital and data-driven strategies are well-knit into the marketing processes. With access to advanced tools, marketers can capture data at various stages in their marketing campaigns. By utilizing this data, they have the power to pinpoint specific audiences with targeted messaging.

In short, instead of guessing what people want; marketers need to know where to look. With this approach, the focus shifts towards engaging individuals rather than targeting audiences on different channels. The objective here is identifying the same users across devices & channels and guiding them down the path to purchase by delivering high-quality content instead of high volume communication.

Approaching the Data-driven Marketing Strategy
Like other successful business strategies, it is crucial to have a well-orchestrated data-driven approach that fuels the digital marketing plan & makes it a success.

Audience Retargeting: With customers having access to a plethora of options due to digitization, it is imperative that marketers are able to create a brand recall for their target audience. Here is where remarketing helps. It allows marketers to target their audience, who visited them once and then moved on to other pages and give them a gentle nudge and reminder of what they were looking at on the brand’s site. Retargeting is a critical component of the data driven strategy as by using the available data; marketers can customize their campaigns and leverage the technology to offer relevant offers to prospective customers.

Data-Driven Advertising: Marketing automation solutions presents users with extensive data insights. From this data individual contacts can be identified and selected, which can be then utilized to create hyper-targeted smart ads. These ads not only help in boosting retention but also carry the highest potential of converting prospects into customers and thereby enhance ROI. Another way to target potential customers based on data is via social media. The social media channels have first-hand information about the customers. Utilizing this will enable marketers to establish a two-way communication channel which would result in higher chances of conversion.

Optimizing Paid Search Campaigns: With ultraquick search engines and varied social media channels, in a short span of time customers are looking at multiple things. This data is of immense value and can be put to use by marketers to optimize their paid searches. Marketers can see the keywords the target audience is searching and create content optimized for search which drives valuable traffic to the website.

Data-Driven Email Marketing: Email marketing is an intrinsic part of most marketing strategies. With the right data, a high level of personalization can be achieved in the campaigns. Creating campaigns based on customer preferences will help marketers deliver the right message, at the right time to the right customer which in turn, will build long-lasting relationships with the brands.

“Today in order to achieve the desired results, it is imperative that both digital and datadriven strategies are well knit into the marketing processes”

Reaping Benefits with Data-Driven Marketing
If implemented successfully, a data-driven approach to marketing can yield surprising results and long term benefits for a brand.

Personalization: With Data-driven marketing, marketers can profile their customers and reach them with customized campaigns as per their needs. By conveying the right information to the prospects at the right time enhances the chance to convert them.

Clarity: The wealth of information received from the data allows marketers to collate actionable insights about the customers which in turn can be used for customized targeting. By structuring the data based on various attributes it becomes easier to reach the audience with the right messaging.

Multi-channel Content Optimization: Leads generated through any social media channel responds differently than the leads generated from Google Networks. Sifting through this lead data allows marketers to analyze what works best from them and then optimize the content for the right channel, be it – social media, emailers or blogs.

Higher Engagement: More personalized content is always appreciated by the audience and the results are reflected by an increase in the number of likes, shares and engagement on the content. A significant rise in user engagement leads to brand trust which in the long run leads to increased purchases and loyalty.

Customer Experience: Data sifted through various channels helps enhance the customer experience by making it consistent. When the same customers are targeted via various channels with the same messaging, they have the same experience and the chances of conversion increase manifold.

Speed up Closure: Customer analytics derived from data driven marketing helps marketers get information on the repeat visitors. These visitors can be targeted via various marketing channels which enhances the chances of early conversion or closure.

Final Thoughts: Embracing the Future of Data-driven Strategy in Digital Marketing
With complexities of consumer behavior increasing, predictive analytics & artificial intelligence are today in play and can share more actionable insights at each level of a consumer-brand interaction cycle. With this structured data, marketers will be able to run more successful campaigns which will cater to the progressive needs of customers by providing customized and personalized experience.