Data-driven marketing figures
With the market becoming more complex and customers demanding an increasingly personalized experience, data-driven marketing has proved to be the main path for companies to follow – especially in B2B. As we approach a new fiscal year, companies and their digital marketing experts are more focused than ever on using data-driven insights to better understand their customers and increase their overall competitive advantage. Below we list some statistics about the impact of data use on marketing strategies – check out: Companies that adopt data-driven marketing are more likely to have an advantage over the competition and increase profitability – being more specific, they are six times more likely to be profitable year on year – Forbes ; Data-driven marketing can generate an increase in revenue due to the personalized approaches it provides: those who exceeded their 2017 revenue targets used personalization techniques 83% of the time – Monetate ; This customization, in fact, is highly expected by today’s customers – but only 7% of companies say they can always offer experiences of this type in real-time, based on data, at physical and digital points of contact – CMO Council ; Many companies report internal technical difficulties to adopt data-driven marketing strategies: 42% suffer from the lack of integration between data collection applications, 20% do not have the necessary technology to collect customer data online and 15% do not have the technology to store these data such important data – Sitecore.Main advantages of applying data-driven marketing to your business
As you saw in the numbers presented in the previous topic, data-driven marketing can help your company be more profitable and provide more personalized experiences for your customers – but there are still many other benefits of betting on strategy. See the topics below.Marketing Channel Optimization
The optimization of your marketing channels is among the crucial steps involved in marketing data-driven. Big Data helps your company understand what your ideal customer profile likes, how it can be approached, and what factors influence conversions. Your organization can use this valuable information to optimize meaningful marketing channels to provide a better customer experience. Optimizing the website with updated and relevant content, according to data analysis, is the first step in optimizing data-driven marketing channels. Your official website is the most influential marketing channel and, therefore, should be updated regularly with content that speaks to the interests of your audience more effectively. The data not only helps to optimize your website but also helps to amplify the results of several other significant marketing channels, such as active social media platforms. Data and analysis from social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., help improve the strategy of conducting data-driven marketing and generate significantly more leads. The optimization of marketing channels in relation to new information is one of the most important strategy improvements involved in data-driven marketing.Custom targeting
Big data and innovative analytical tools help your company’s marketers to direct their leads through a more personalized experience. Getting closer to the public with this type of communication increases the chances of generating more conversions. Supported by a powerful database, your most personalized marketing strategy can influence a large number of potential customers. When a potential customer receives personalized messages, they are more likely to proceed to CTA, as communication is more proficient in terms of location, interests, and purchase history. Data-driven marketing has improved the personalized targeting of potential customers, as the data significantly helps to create an effective strategy, with complete market research and analysis, in addition to changes in consumer behavior.Enhanced customer experience
Customers like the information that is useful to them. Data-driven segmentation, with a personalized approach, provides customers with a relevant and detailed experience, which effectively increases their chances of conversion. Big Data helps your company to understand the evolving behaviors of each consumer profile by analyzing its history of purchases and emerging products/services. As a result, your marketing and sales teams can easily segment customers and improve their experience with your brand. When your company understands the potential of Big Data and analytics, it is able to optimize its marketing strategy and obtain better results. A business’s productivity depends on its sales – and data-driven marketing is the key tool for exploring new opportunities to substantially increase your business sales.Brand awareness and loyalty
The data helps your company to identify new challenges that have appeared in the market and that may be preventing your business from appearing among the best players. Creating brand awareness and establishing anchored loyalty with customers are the most important factors in keeping up with the global competition in today’s business world. Analyzing data and information will help improve marketing channels that carry out promotions, advertisements, improve customer engagement, and cover supplementary aspects of integrated marketing communications to drive sales. As a result, your organization creates a big buzz about your brand on these channels and establishes loyalty to the brand anchored with your valued customers, as well as with potential customers.Consistent strategy improvement
Progress is always the end goal of any marketing strategy. When this process is guided by data, it is possible to effectively integrate a continuous flow of significant improvements in the elements of its entire strategy to the execution of business activities. Analyzing all the information and consistently implementing the goals drives the strategy The digital transformation has revolutionized marketing in recent years. There are now several data analytics tools available online, which can improve the marketing strategy according to market movements. Adopting a data-driven marketing strategy will bring even more effective and results to your company – especially for those working in the B2B sector. Learn more about the following topic.The key to successful data-driven marketing for B2B companies
The enthusiasm for data-driven marketing is growing, but most companies are still at the beginning of the implementation phase. For example, no one argues about the importance of market intelligence as the basis for decision making in all organizations – but for many of them, this remains more of an aspiration than a reality. The eMarketer pointed out that over 90% of companies consider it important to have a “single customer view” but less than 10% put it into practice. Likewise, data-based decision making is not yet rooted in the culture of many organizations: about 61% of executives say their organizations act only “rarely” or “a little” data-driven. When preparing your next strategic business-to-business (B2B) plan, consider these key strategies for your company’s success in data-driven marketing.1) Act more on the basis of decision-making processes
Although marketing is trained to be customer-centric, its professionals can eventually see things from their own perspective. As a result, they can overlook the obvious – business decision-makers, like everyone else, focus on their own needs and, as a result, tend to think of solutions before brands. In contrast, you (and everyone around you) think about your business all day – giving you an inflated sense of how your brand is the best on the market. When your company increases its presence in the early stages of making a customer’s decision, it can deliver excellent solution-oriented content that creates a product category, instead of focusing only on your brand itself. Seems confused? See this data from a Google survey of B2B decision-makers:- 71% start their research with research on solutions, with no specific brand in mind;
- They do an average of 12 searches (and are halfway through the funnel) before interacting with a specific brand’s website.
2) Move from content marketing to market authority
The internet today concentrates more published content than ever before – and more information is added every day. Amid this volume, search engines looked for ways to determine what is actually relevant content – the current trend is to emphasize the quality of content over quantity. Many have come to believe that a white paper of depth and substance will have more impact than a handful of articles on the blog (but with keyword density), although the latter is sometimes easier to quantify attribution. Data, particularly in a competitive context, is crucial in the whole process of developing thought leadership, authority in the market, which impacts the market. The data guides the development of content (for example, understanding which content performs best for competitors) and performing KPI measurements in a competitive context (for example, page views, downloads, shares, conversion rates, etc.)3) Invest more in video content
Check the digital marketing trends of the last three or two years and see a constant: video content continues to be one of the big bets in the sector in terms of relevance and results. Even those low-quality videos, audio problems, with shallow content have turned into good baits to generate traffic to B2B sites – much of this thanks to changes to Facebook’s algorithm in its fight against YouTube. We are now reaching an inflection point in online engagement with video, both among consumers and among B2B decision-makers. Google found that 70% of B2B decision-makers watch video content throughout the purchase journey, 52% in the past two years, with almost half watching 30 minutes or more during the search process. Generational factors come into play in these numbers as well: Millennials are particularly more adept at the video, and they are occupying influential positions in the job market – and are more present in the departments of buying B2B a lot than many might expect.4) Pay more attention to LinkedIn
When you think of paid media on social media, the first impulse for everyone responsible for marketing is on Google and Facebook. But while he is unable to match the volume of users and visits, LinkedIn ‘s advertising revenue is steadily increasing. This is because of its affluent consumer base and the ease of accessing potential leads – especially for B2B. Your reach and engagement metrics are also increasing. Recent data shows that LinkedIn consistently attracts one billion visits per month; in the past two years, your unique visitors and pages per visit have increased by around 10%, while bounce rates have dropped. Your application provides several metrics, including downloads, daily active users, and usage time. When it comes to digital advertising, context is important – and the LinkedIn experience is very positive for B2B marketing. It reaches the right people (business decision-makers) in the right digital context (surrounded by highly relevant, high-quality content) while they are in the right mental context (in a “business-oriented” mood). It is no wonder that ads running on LinkedIn are outperforming those same ads when running on other platforms. With data-driven marketing statistics in hand, key benefits, and the details that ensure a successful strategy, it’s time for your company to apply it in practice. See in this last part some B2B implementation tips.Data-driven marketing: ideas for B2B actions that attract more sales
The B2B market is significantly more complex than B2C, so companies operating in this sector must overcome significant obstacles if they are to win and convert their customers. In the field of marketing, creativity is indeed an important weapon when it comes to devising actions that allow you to reach your audience. But your “cannon shots” will be much more accurate if, before shooting, your company defines exactly where to aim. This is where data-driven marketing can increase your impact and guarantee your success. Thanks to Big Data, marketing is no longer a set of actions developed based on trial and error to become an empirical strategy, which uses data management to:- Segment the audience that your company intends to work on that specific action or campaign;
- Define the messages and formats to be used;
- Choosing the right channel, which can have the greatest impact;
- Establish a budget that will be needed to achieve the desired results.
1) Segment your messages
Before randomly firing content, it is always important to segment your databases to target that material to the most interested audience possible in it. It may seem like an obvious observation, but many companies still think about volume – which can make the action less effective. Many platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn allow this. It is possible to filter by industry, size, geolocation, territorial coverage in the operation, gender or age of leads, positions, interests, and preferences, in addition to the relationship with your brand.2) Create a good content strategy
After targeting the audience, comes the targeting of the content to offer to your potential customers. Content marketing is one of the strategies that have greater acceptance as it provides added value to users, loyalty, and support at all stages of the conversion funnel. Carefully select the topics to be explored, the channels through which your company will transmit messages (corporate blog, social networks, or email marketing campaigns ) and the audience that each will reach.3) Anticipate customer needs
The next step is to focus on personalization. This goes well beyond using the ability to put the name, position, or company of each lead in the subject of each email marketing – although this strategy always brings positive results. The idea here is to categorize your buying habits so that you can then predict their behavior – and bring the most relevant content possible for that moment. The data allows the creation of a complete history, which will help to identify the most appropriate time to approach each user or group of users and which specific products or services to offer. It is as if your company has received a shopping list, drawn up automatically from your previous purchases and preferences, exactly when your refrigerator is empty. When we take this example to the B2B environment, it shows that good data analysis allows you to reach your customer with the right product at the perfect time to achieve your conversion.4) Optimize your SEM
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or the search engine is quite effective – according to a recent study. But for your company to obtain positive results, it is essential to segment the messages correctly and measure the results of your campaigns periodically, so it is possible to readjust them whenever the results are not as expected. To optimize your SEM campaigns, it is essential that your marketing team:- Target your audience well;
- Connect AdWords to Google Analytics;
- Don’t just focus on positive keywords, but also negative ones;
- Start campaigns with high bids to acquire good positions;
- If you have site links in your ads, always include a call to action.
