“Data has become the fourth factor of production, after the classic land, labor, and capital.” Vincenzo Cosenza (digital strategist).
As we have specified in some of our previous articles, data collection and processing is a crucial phase in measuring and expanding the performance of any professional activity. Without data, discovering whether the adopted strategy is delivering the desired results would be virtually impossible, as everything would be based on improvisation, lacking foundation and tangibility. Data, as the etymology of the word suggests, is the starting point for forming judgments and solving problems. The amount of data available in the digital era is truly vast and highly valuable for those managing business strategy, particularly in the marketing world. Recently, there has been much talk about Data Driven Marketing, an approach that represents a formidable opportunity to capitalize on. Let’s explore what this definition really means and how Data Driven Marketing is essential for deeply understanding the market in which one operates and, consequently, offering clients an increasingly effective experience.
Data-driven marketing: what it is, characteristics, and features
The human brain is like an attic, a storage space for information. However, space is limited, which is why it should only be filled with what is necessary to express the best of oneself. And what about the rest of the memory? It certainly won’t be lost! Data Driven Marketing takes care of preserving it.
But what does this term mean?
Think about the data, the amount of data we receive and provide on the web through various business touchpoints every day! It’s hard to quantify and even harder to manage.
This is where data-driven marketing comes to the rescue, a marketing approach that uses the data left by customers to gain a comprehensive view of the customer, including their motivations, preferences, and behaviors. There’s no doubt that people have preferences that often guide their actions… and today these are increasingly decipherable on the web. The benefit for a company using this data in its marketing strategies is that it multiplies its chances of acquiring customers over the long term, as studying customers’ buying habits provides valuable insights that, step by step, lead to the achievement of business goals (sales and marketing departments will surely thank you!). In marketing, speaking to everyone means speaking to no one! Therefore, segmenting your target audience and investing in campaigns aimed at reaching and interacting with a more specific audience is the right path to take. And how can you practically make the profile of the person you want to target emerge more clearly, anticipating their needs? The magic word is empathy! A marketing campaign tailored to each customer’s tastes, habits, and interests is certainly more “emotional” and has a higher chance of building a long-term relationship with the customer. If we look at our daily reality and examine the behavior we all adopt when shopping online, we can easily understand that before making a purchase, there’s a phase of research and preliminary analysis that leads to multiple touchpoints. This is where striking while the iron is hot becomes the winning key because it’s in these moments that the customer is most likely to buy. Gone are the days when data offered to companies came from hard-to-find market studies or the most astute marketer’s deductions! Guessing today is the beginning of the end because it inevitably reduces business efficiency. Fortunately, today, thanks to data-driven marketing, companies establish real relationships with their customers at the right time, with the right offer, and in the right way from the very first contact. Everything takes shape, everything makes sense again in a world, that of digital marketing, where everything seemed to have lost its way because distant from the customer’s needs… but in reality, it is increasingly close to them.
The opportunities offered by Data Driven Marketing and its strategies.
Now let’s delve deeper by analyzing the opportunities that data-driven marketing offers, as well as its strategies.
We continue by saying that the power of data-driven marketing does not lie in a state-of-the-art magic wand, nor in the charm of its name, but rather in its very DNA, which is the combination of three elements: data, creativity, and the media through which it is distributed.
These three elements, combined together, also contribute in real-time to the creation of the most suitable message for a defined target within a specific timeframe. And the mechanism feeds itself, refines, and daily enriches the company’s database with information that allows for strategic decision-making.
Knowing the customer at one or more specific moments in their customer journey is never absolute data, therefore it is much more complex and potentially rich with opportunities, provided you can recognize and seize them.
Engagement, empathy, and building a deep relationship with the customer: it is through these keywords that a custom company offering is generated, capable of creating a unique and unrepeatable user experience, just as unique as the moment when the customer, enlightened by the choice of a specific product/service, decides to proceed with the purchase. Not by chance, the creation of highly personalized company-customer relationships is one of the advantages that data-driven marketing offers.
The result?
1. Two-way communication between the brand and the customer: the company listens and interacts with the audience through content and information exactly at the moment the user intends to receive it.
2. Higher conversions: leveraging the micro-moments experienced by the user on their journey, with conversion as the goal.
3. Optimal results: the work done on the data allows for marketing campaigns with better outcomes at a lower cost. This will greatly enhance the ability to maximize profits.
A data-driven company, therefore, is an entity driven by real, up-to-date numbers and information, capable of making strategic decisions based on data. This way of thinking and acting brings benefits to companies that choose to adopt this method with perseverance: personalized offers, audience engagement, and efficient resource utilization.
Data-driven marketing: the importance of the human factor
Throughout this article, special attention has been given to the importance of the so-called Big Data: useful information to profile the user, different channels to analyze and draw insights from. This cross-media strategy, in terms of results achieved, is unparalleled, but… “there’s more than just data.” Its name is the human factor. Numerous studies show that data-driven technologies alone are not enough: to achieve the desired results, the human touch is always and inevitably required. Thanks to the ultimate machine learning system, called the human brain, capable of bringing out creativity and unprecedented ingenuity, it has been noted that the performance of campaigns refined by people increases by an additional 15%! This is why having professionals within a company who are immersed in data daily is becoming increasingly essential for businesses entering the market today. For those who want to delve deeper into the world of Analytics, the true focus of technological innovation today, we recommend following us! The journey into the fascinating world of data has just begun!
