Data marketing is a discipline that is becoming more and more important in companies. It provides a better understanding of the real motivations of users, but also of their consumption patterns. The data analysis it offers improves marketing strategies and creates competitive advantages. To better understand the challenges of this process, we will review its main advantages and present useful strategic advice. Finally, we will see how Google and Adobe develop comprehensive data marketing solutions.
Contact us for your inbound marketing strategies
Summary
- What is data marketing?
- Data marketing: 4 significant benefits
- 3 points to adopt in your data marketing strategy
- 3 must-have data marketing tools
What is data marketing?
Data marketing is based on data collection to make better business decisions. Its areas of application are varied:
- the creation of typical customer profiles
- personalizing the customer experience
- optimizing marketing campaigns
This data analysis allows brands to benefit from sourced and verified information to improve their marketing strategies. Ultimately, companies accumulate competitive advantages and increase their competitive intelligence.
In addition, this data offers other benefits to so-called data-driven companies. It allows them to use digital platforms for more appropriate pricing and more effective multi-channel communication. (Camilleri, M.A., 2020)
Data marketing: 4 significant benefits
Now that we have outlined the basics of data marketing, let’s tackle its main benefits. There are 4 of them, and they all revolve around the users.
- Simplification of content marketing
- Better knowledge of the target audience
- Detection of adequate communication channels
- Development of the customer experience
It makes content marketing strategies easier
First, data marketing makes creating content easier with customer data input. This marketing type is effective because it can understand consumer behavior. It also provides an in-depth evaluation of the results of the various content strategies of brands and their competitors. Ultimately, it’s an ideal way to attract customers and strengthen the relationship between consumers and brands.
IntoTheMinds models your consumers’ behavior
A true provider of inbound marketing, data marketing helps capture the attention of brands’ marketing targets.
Data marketing helps you to know your public
Then, this marketing process is essential to understand the real needs of your public. Gathering information on their current situation (while respecting the GPDR laws in force) allows them to establish better communication strategies (here is a good example).
Then, the collected data helps to interpret the consumers’ online manifestations better. Therefore, this increased knowledge of users allows brands to embellish their return on investment (Johnson D. et al., 2019). And by the same token, it, therefore, justifies companies’ commitment to data marketing.
It helps to identify the best communication channels
Here, multi-channel communication is a key success factor, as it allows you to be present on all fronts. Indeed, using data marketing helps to identify the best possible communication channels. Moreover, it is the perfect opportunity to test different strategies depending on the channel. This increases the conversion rate because digital users are present on many online channels.
Since the advent of this type of marketing, some channels stand out for their ability to reach the target audience of brands. Here are some examples:
- blogs with regular publications
- impactful posts on various social networks
- email marketing
Its great ability to improve the user experience
Finally, the last notable benefit of data marketing revolves around the consumer. Indeed, basing marketing decisions on data allows us to improve the user experience. Let’s take a look at what this knowledge offers:
- Content personalization: each prospect/customer profile has a unique and differentiated communication strategy.
- Channel optimization: digital platforms are varied, and so is their user base. Brands can then adapt to these profiles and offer an experience that meets the codes of the platform in question.
- Customer satisfaction: increased interaction with the audience leads to higher conversion and customer loyalty, which inevitably impacts sales.
3 points to adopt in your data marketing strategy
Adopting a well-thought-out and efficient strategy is necessary to take advantage of all the positive aspects of data marketing. There are 3 key points: defining the data to be monitored, accumulating trust sources, and creating personas.
Determine which data to monitor
It is very important to plan the data collection. Certain strategic criteria are essential to any good data marketing strategy:
- relevance of the data
- prioritization of knowledge to be collected
- difficulty in acquiring consumer data
Thus, brands that want to improve their SEO and online awareness performance should look out for the following:
- their positioning on search engines
- Google searches related to the brand
- keywords related to their competitors
Benefit from our inbound marketing expertise
Multiplying data sources
Think like a journalist: don’t base your data on a single source. On the contrary, always seek to triangulate the information specific to data marketing. Therefore, remember that any valid source can only ensure an irrefutable database. This gives you a definite competitive advantage. On the other hand, this pushes more “traditional” companies to become more data-driven to benefit from this advantage (Hartmann, P.M. et al., 2016).
There are many possible types of data to collect. We divide them into two categories: primary and secondary data. Coupling these two types of information provides a clearer picture of consumer expectations. But in fact, what do these families of data include?
What is the primary data in marketing?
Primary data are data collected for the very first time. The research methods are diverse and varied. Examples are qualitative interviews, questionnaires, and web analysis tools.
What is the secondary data in marketing?
Secondary data is information that is already available. They can be obtained through:
- official data sources
- the most recent government publications
- academic articles
Create personas of typical customers
Finally, let’s ask ourselves the question of the impact of the Internet on marketing strategies. Once focused on socio-demographic data alone, they are now based on many more criteria. This leads to stronger coordination between sales and marketing teams for good transmission of information.
No one can truly understand today’s consumers without an in-depth analysis of the following:
- their behavior
- their interests
- and their purchasing motivations.
This way, companies can target user accounts corresponding to their marketing target and thus create ideal customer profiles!
3 essential data marketing tools
Finally, we present 3 digital tools with proven effectiveness. Learn how Ahrefs, Google Analytics, and Adobe deliver a great user experience.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs provides detailed information about website traffic. The following is the type of data that can be gathered from the platform:
The platform is essential to any SEO strategy. It helps identify industry trends and analyze user interest based on search data. At IntoTheMinds, a market research firm and marketing expert, we feed our blog with research data from Ahrefs.
Google Analytics
Analytics is a free tool developed by Google. It helps companies to understand the customer journey on their website better. This fundamental tool analyzes data and automatically generates informative reports and graphs. Here is the kind of information that can be found on Analytics:
- user origin
- most popular pages of the web domain
- traffic variation over time
- etc.
The data marketing of Adobe Experience Cloud
Finally, let’s conclude this article with the example of Adobe. In recent years, the company has equipped itself with many analytics tools to make its users’ lives easier:
- Analytics
- Audience Manager
- Experience Cloud
Let’s take the case of Experience Cloud. The platform offers novel features to centralize internal databases. This allows different teams within a company to communicate better, thanks to cloud-boosted collaboration storage tools.
