There’s nothing better than a lovely bit of data.
Without it, we really don’t achieve anything. Marketing without data is like driving through a new country without a map.
You’ll get lost. You’ll get frustrated. You’ll waste your time.
“Only with established data can you establish success.”
– Albert Einstein, probably
Look, the point I’m trying to make is simple: you need data-driven marketing if you want to grow. Without marketing data, you’re wasting your time. This blog contains everything you need to know to power up your marketing efforts.
What is data-driven marketing?
At its core, it’s a simple concept: using real, evidence-based insights to make better marketing decisions. It’s not even that big of a stretch, because your existing marketing campaigns generate an astounding amount of data:
- Demographic data (age, gender)
- Psychographic data (interests, values)
- Behavioural data (website visits, linger time)
- Transactional data (sales, clicks)
- Campaign performance data, such as:
- Click-through rates (CTR)
- Conversion rates
- Customer acquisition costs (CAC)
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
When you know who your audience really are, what they care about and how they behave, you stop making noise for the sake of it, and you start having conversations that matter.
Most businesses have the data they need at their fingertips, but have no idea where to start. It’s enough to make your head spin. And, if you’re unsure how to use these reams of data, you’ll quickly get overwhelmed.
Why is data-driven marketing important to you?
Brands that use their data effectively outperform their competitors in almost every metric.
- Businesses that use data to personalise their marketing efforts see 5-8x the ROI on marketing spend, and can lift sales by “10% or more”.
- Data-driven marketing at scale can improve marketing efficiency by 10-20%.
- 87% of marketers consider data to be their organisation’s most underutilised asset.
I could keep going, but I think the point is made. Data gives you an edge over your competition like nothing else. Ignore it, and you’re ignoring one of your biggest assets.
This is what you need to do now:
8 best practices for data-driven marketing
1. Manage your data properly, treat it like an asset
Data-driven marketing is an iterative process. The biggest mistake businesses make is doing all the groundwork, setting their marketing live, then just hoping for the best.
You need to test, refine and evolve your approach. Your audience will change over time, and you definitely won’t get it spot on first time. This means your data processes need to be regularly adjusted; tweaked to ensure they’re delivering what you need them to.
Good data management means collecting information from every relevant source (website analytics, CRM, social media, advertising platforms) and transforming it into something that’s clean, reliable and actionable.
If you manage your data properly, you’ll:
- Know who your best customers really are
- Highlight new opportunities for conversion or retention
- Cut waste and cost
- Make optimising your campaigns faster
2. Know your audience
Before any data strategy can function, you need to know who you’re speaking to.
Start by blending quantitative data (CRM records, website analytics, purchase patterns) with qualitative insights (customer interviews, surveys, focus groups). This helps you spot not just what your customers are doing, but why.
Use that insight to build detailed buyer personas – living documents that evolve alongside your audience. Share these documents with the entire team, seek feedback, ask everyone, from top to bottom, and ensure they’re not forgotten.
HubSpot found that companies using detailed buyer personas generate 124% more leads and see higher engagement rates across their digital channels. Chances are you’ve got buyer personas already… when was the last time you looked at them?
3. Don’t ignore compliance
Legislation (GDPR, for example) has completely changed the way we access prospect data. If you mishandle it, you’ll both damage trust in your brand and could face legal repercussions.
It’s a little frustrating, yes, but it also poses an opportunity. Talk openly about your data privacy commitments and reassure your prospects that you take their data seriously. Be clear about what you collect, why you collect it and how it’s used. Honour anyone who opts out and, most importantly, treat privacy as part of your brand promise.
It’s a great chance to build trust with your prospects, and once they trust you, they’re far more likely to stick around.
4. Retarget intelligently
Have you ever searched for something once, then seen ads for that same thing over and over again for the next week?
That’s retargeting.
When done well, retargeting ads are really powerful. They keep your brand front and centre, and are only shown to people who are genuinely interested in what you’ve got to offer.
The trick is to not be too invasive with your ads. Provide some info, show them a review; give them a discount if you’re feeling particularly adventurous. Just, whatever you do, please keep them infrequent. Nobody wants to feel stalked.
5. Segment your audience, then talk to them
Remember my point about buyer personas? Yeah, this is why it’s important.
Not all customers are created equally. You need to talk to them in different ways, but doing so manually is a serious pain.
Segmentation lets you tailor your messaging to different audience groups based on their behaviour, demographics or purchase history. Maybe you have one group that buys regularly, one that browses but never checks out and one that’s just joined your mailing list. Each of those groups needs a different story.
Use your data to create audience “microsegments” and talk to them in their language. For example:
- A skincare brand could segment by skin concern rather than age group.
- A B2B software company could segment by company size and decision maker seniority.
- A manufacturer of access management systems will need to talk to installers in a different way to end users.
This one’s really important. McKinsey reckon that businesses that personalise their messages drive 40% more revenue on average. That’s pretty huge – you can’t ignore it.
6. Create a “single source of truth”
There is no reason for you to be super reliant on spreadsheets anymore.
There is no reason for you to not have a centralised database for client data.
You’ve got data coming in from your sales team, your support team, your product team, your marketing team. Where’s it all going? Word of mouth? God forbid, saved locally?
Every single bit of data should be added to your CRM of choice, mapped directly to your prospects/customers and be accessible to everyone who needs it. When every member of your team is working using the same data, your customer experience becomes seamless.
This is great for sales and marketing, sure, but it’s so good for retention.
7. Optimise your content using context
What’s that? We’re talking about understanding your customers again?
That’s right. It’s important.
Without data, content creation is guesswork. Your audience insights can show you what topics people care about, what questions they’re asking and which formats perform best.
Engagement rates, dwell time, bounce rates, keyword performance, scroll depth. You need to know it all. It should inform your content plan completely, ensuring that you’re not wasting time writing/recording content for no reason.
Use data to understand what customers want, then use your knowledge to deliver exactly that. Simple in concept, a little more complex in practice. Need some help with creating a tailored content strategy? Give us a bell.
8. Predict your prospects’ next moves
You need to be omniscient. Two steps ahead. Ready for anything.
Ideally.
In the real world, you should be using machine learning and AI tools to forecast customer needs before they’re expressed.
For example, Netflix uses predictive analytics to recommend what you’ll watch next. Amazon suggests products you didn’t know you needed. You can do the same on a smaller scale: predict churn, recommend add-ons or tailor offers based on browsing history and known behaviour.
HubSpot comes with some of the most powerful, business-ready AI tools that can help you get the ball rolling. If you already have HubSpot, are you using it properly?
Need help getting started?
It’s a lot, I get it. There’s so much to consider. It’s never a bad decision to reach out for a little help.
We do this, day in, day out. We’re a commercially focused digital marketing agency. Everything we do is backed by data and informed by evidence.
That’s how we deliver results like these.
But we’ll not promise you the moon on a stick. For now, let’s have a no-obligation chat about your digital marketing aspirations. We’ll let you know if we can help, and how we’ll do it. It’s as simple as that and takes about 30 minutes.
