One of the main reasons why digital marketing has grown in popularity is because of the amount of data that can be collected and analyzed. Gone are the days when a marketing budget could be spent on campaigns which cannot be tracked, or ROI cannot be calculated.
Embrace Data
Today, we have all the necessary tools to measure every campaign in great detail and track every step in the customer’s journey. With the emergence of SaaS (software as a service), even small businesses have access to all the necessary tools for data-driven marketing. There is certainly no shortage of analytics, marketing automation, and CRM tools to fully embrace data-driven marketing. There isn’t a digital marketing channel which cannot be tracked in great detail. For example Website, Search, PPC, Email, Affiliate, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and so on.
Data Will Set You Free
Alan Mulally pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in business history (from $17 billion loss to profitability) by focusing on data – he repeated “Data will set you free” to executives and employees until it became a mantra at Ford.
It is easy to argue about opinions, but it’s difficult to argue about data, hence why data-driven decisions typically outperform decisions based on ‘gut feeling’ or ‘experience’. This applies to digital marketing as well. Every campaign and marketing effort will have data behind it, but you must have a process in place to track it all.
With that in mind, why are so many organizations not taking full advantage of the available data? Or, more importantly, not using data to understand and target their customers better? In our experience, it’s because many organizations don’t understand the field well enough. To have a real impact on your marketing ROI and your bottom line, a well thought out analytics strategy is a must. Checking Google Analytics once a week or focusing on vanity metrics will only result in inadequate insights.
“If you are having difficulties measuring your marketing ROI, you are not collecting and analyzing enough data.”
Summary
In today’s world customers expect personalized experiences, and without data personalized campaigns are impossible.
Great digital marketing requires 1) Know-how, 2) Creativity, 3) Experimentation, and 4) Data.
Finally, the cost is no longer an excuse, because all the tools you will ever need to implement data-driven marketing successfully are subscription based and reasonably priced, so if you are a looking for a competitive advantage, data-driven marketing can be your silver bullet.
