For forward-looking businesses, data analytics is extremely important. By leveraging data, marketers can understand their customers better. Yet, many marketers are not making the most out of this strategy.
Gartner estimates that only 29% of marketers are currently using advanced analytics modeling.
Why is that?
In a press release, Mike Froggatt, director at Gartner, said that marketers either didn’t know that they had data or didn’t know what they could with it.
Whatever the case, it’s a missed opportunity. A data-driven approach to marketing can help you save time, money, and effort.
If you still haven’t taken to data-driven marketing, it’s time to get started. In this article, let’s discuss what data-driven marketing is and how this approach can benefit you.
What is Data-Driven Content Marketing?
Data-driven content marketing is all about using customer data to optimize your content marketing strategy. This strategy seeks to analyze data to understand the needs and preferences of customers.
Based on data about past interactions and engagement, marketers can predict how customers are likely to engage with their brand. The insights that you can get from customer data can help you deliver a personalized experience for your customers.
What’s more, it can help you identify the right channels to communicate with your audience and reach out to them at the right times. In addition to this, user data can help you identify your target audience accurately and track your marketing efforts.
How Can Data-Driven Content Fuel Business Growth?
Now that you know what data-driven content marketing is, let’s take a closer look at how it can help your business grow.
Create Personalized Content
As a marketer, your goal shouldn’t be to impress everyone out there. After all, it’s impossible to please everybody at once. Instead, you should only aim to win over your target audience.
With customer data in your hand, you can figure out what your target audience really wants. Based on their preferences, you can understand what resonates with them. These can be extremely helpful insights for segmenting your audience.
Subsequently, you can create personalized content for each segment of your audience. This way, you can address their pain points and move them along the sales funnel.
Alternatively, you can also segment your audience based on the stage of their buying journey that they are in. The purpose here is to provide value to your audience by leveraging personalization.
For instance, you can take inspiration from Netflix.
Using customer data and ranking algorithms, they personalize the homepage for each of their users. Based on their interests and preferences, Netflix also provides recommendations to their users.
What’s more, they also feature diverse artwork to cater to diverse audiences that may be interested in different aspects of their content.
For example, take a look at the two different images they have designed for the movie, “Pulp Fiction.” One of them is targeted towards fans of Uma Thurman while the other one focuses on John Travolta.
Pro Tip: Use AI-powered software solutions like Cortex to get insights into the preferences of your audience. With Cortex, you can analyze which colors, hashtags, images, and other elements in your content can appeal to your target audience.
Provide Better Customer Experience
A data-driven content marketing strategy helps you get a 360-degree view of your customers. From their locations to what they are searching for online, you can check it all. By harnessing user data, you can go the extra mile for your customers.
If you want to improve your customer experiences, you need to leverage data. In fact, 42% of respondents in a study voted, “Data and analytics” as the top trend for the customer experience industry.
But how exactly can you boost customer experience with data?
As we already discussed, it allows you to leverage personalization. In addition to that, data enables you to figure out whether your efforts are paying off or not. If you are not getting desired results, you can analyze your data to figure out which areas you need to improve.
In case your customers are not happy with your product or service, you can also respond more quickly.
By leveraging software solutions for social media marketing, you can keep track of your brand mentions, reviews, and what customers have on their mind. In this way, you can reduce your response time and fix your issues proactively.
Pro Tip: To highlight positive sentiments about your brand, you can leverage tools for online reputation management. These tools can help you make sense of your data and identify your strengths and weaknesses.
Boost Customer Loyalty
Through insights that you gather from data, you reach out to your customers through the right channels at the right times. This, in turn, can help you fulfill customer needs and drive loyalty. Plus, data can be the driving force for your loyalty programs.
Not sure how?
Take a leaf from Sephora’s data-driven marketing strategy.
They leverage predictive analytics to keep track of customer purchases. Based on the purchase date, they calculate the estimated time for which a product is expected to last. Whenever the product is expected to run out, the company reaches out to the customers again.
For instance, if a customer’s eyeliner is expected to last for two months, Sephora will send them a reminder email around the same time. In the email, they offer special discounts and feature complementary products to encourage customers to make a purchase.
In this way, through upselling and cross-selling, Sephora inspires customers to stay loyal to their brand.
In addition to this, they also adopt an omnichannel approach to stay connected to their customers on multiple channels. This helps them provide an integrated experience to their customers.
Ready to Grow Your Business?
A data-driven content marketing strategy can propel your business forward. By gathering customer data, you can analyze their shopping behavior to get a better idea of their needs and preferences.
Armed with such data, you can develop relevant content that enhances your customers’ experiences. It also enables you to find out what’s holding you back from winning more customers. If done right, data-driven content marketing can also help you win your customers’ loyalty.
What are you waiting for?
It’s time to up your content marketing game by leveraging data.
marketing team -DepositPhotos