Since the old times when marketing came into existence, it’s 2 main objectives have always been: To identify the customer needs & To deliver product or service as per customer needs.

For this purpose the Traditional Marketing strategies were based on trial and error approach. Companies used to launch a number of strategies or campaigns to find out the most effective one. But with time, designing of marketing strategies has drastically changed. One such evolvement is the Data Driven Marketing. In comparison to the Traditional Marketing, Data Driven Marketing is more accurate, customer friendly and result oriented. This approach allows company to connect with right type of customer, at the right time offering right type of product or service.

Let’s see the benefits of Data Driven Marketing

1. Personalizing Customer Experience: With Data Driven Marketing you can customise your marketing campaign targeting the right type of customer at the right time providing right type of product. This approach helps in deeper understanding of prospective buyers, thus, converting leads into customers.

2. Clarity regarding customers: By using exact and reliable data obtained through data driven analysis, a company is in a better position to differentiate and group various target customers based on their needs.

3. Use of multiple channels: Communicating with customers beyond just email and giving a more personalized touch by approaching them across multiple channels of communication ensures customer satisfaction and loyalty as right product is delivered at the right time.

4. Better Product Evolution: Data Driven Marketing facilitates better development of company’s product by reducing the product failure rate to almost nil. When the needs of targeted customers are well understood, it becomes unchallenging to design or develop your product as per customers’ needs.

Challenges faced during Data Driven Marketing

There has been a fundamental shift in marketing from working off assumptions to data driven analysis. But for this evolution few challenges are to be faced like:

As Data Driven Marketing is of niche nature and requires a lot of data analysing techniques and tools to be applied, attracting right people to join the team becomes a challenge.

Data accuracy is another challenge to be faced. Data collected has to be accurate and relevant in order to make Data Driven Marketing successful. Various departments collect data from different sources and with different goals which can make them contradictory with one another.

A company must succeed at integration process in order to gather accurate data which is crucial for 360 degree customer view. Many companies face the challenge of accumulating data from social media sites and mobile devices.

Steps involved in creating Data Driven Marketing strategies:

1. Before starting to collect the data for analysis, it’s important to define the objectives or goals so that it becomes clear as to what type of data is to be obtained and what would be the source to get it from.

2. Once the goals or objectives are clearly set, collection of accurate data from reliable sources is to be done. The more accurate the data, the better would be the outcome.

3. Once you have the data, it must be organised on a data platform from where it can be conveniently used for designing marketing strategies.

4. The data organised on the data platform is than used by team formed internally or outsourced from consultant to extract valuable information and gain insights from the data. An efficient data platform makes this task easy to a great extent.

5. Once the data is being analysed, you’ll be in a position to select the channel for marketing which is best suitable for running your campaign. You may choose Email marketing, social media marketing or marketing through any other channel through which you reach the customer in best possible way.

6. After choosing the appropriate channel it’s time to launch the marketing campaign effectively.

7. It’s very important to measure the success of the marketing campaign run by the company. It is to be seen whether the campaign has been successful and fruitful in achieving the targeted goals for which it was run. The ROI is calculated and the progress is reported to crucial stakeholders. If any gap remains, it is considered while preparing for the next campaign.

Data Driven Marketing can be done by using varied tools like:

Automation, where all the accumulated data is automatically connected to the customer engagement platform to see the revenue uplift, if any, and how much.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) Marketing, where AI predicts customer response and behaviour, thus, facilitating better estimation of revenue and success ratio of the campaign.

Reports are generated on operational and strategic metrics which keeps you updated regarding the best suitable channels of marketing which yield most profits and enhances company growth.

Data Driven Marketing is definitely the future of any business undertaking. Along with being predictive and accurate, Data Driven Marketing enables a company to connect on a deeper level with it’s existing as well as prospective customers. The customer’s expectations of experiencing more personalized services can be best done with Data Driven Marketing.