How To Use Data To Drive Your Marketing Decisions
When it comes to marketing, there are so many different directions that you could decide to go in. Of course, the decisions that you make will always be based on your own individual marketing needs.
Every business is different, so there would be no set blanket marketing strategy that can work for each. You have to be able to use your resources to create something that works for your business specifically. And this is where data can come in.
It’s easy to think that marketing works best when you be creative and have a lot of fun. While that may seem the case, it isn’t always accurate. Sometimes, the most effective marketing decisions are made off of the back of strong data. So if you’re looking for a marketing strategy or even a few ideas, that will be backed by solid results, you should learn to utilize various pieces of data in your decision making. Let’s talk about how that can work.
How To Use Data To Drive Your Marketing Decisions
Do Some Research
The first thing that you’re going to need to do is to do some research. If you want to be able to utilize data in your marketing decision making, then you have to be able to have some in the first place. Conducting marketing research can be quite easy. But before you start, make sure that you set out some clear aims. That way, you’ll be able to find the information that you need to help you create efficient campaigns.
Pull Up The Data You Have To Hand
Then you’re going to want to look at the data you have to hand too. You may feel as if you don’t have anything at the moment, but if you have a website, then you have data. So you need to log into your back end or Google Analytics and pull out the details you have stored there. You will be able to then look at the way your customers behave on site to help during the process.
Analyze What You’ve Got
Then you’re going to need to analyze what you have. Marketing data analysis can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. Sometimes, you can look at some information and make some clear assumptions. When you see popular products selling well or customers visiting certain pages, you know where your promotions should be aimed. However, you may also want to look into more detail at certain areas if you’re finding it hard to figure out what the information is telling you.
Dig For A Bit More
Then, you’re going to want to dig around for a little bit more. Sometimes, you’ll find that the data you have doesn’t give you a pull picture to make informed decisions. At this point, you may even want to pull in a market research specialist to give you some further insight.
Create New Ideas
Then, with the bulk of your data research done, you can then start to use it. The most important part of applying data to your marketing decisions is your customers. You need to base your decisions based on how your customers’ act and what they want, need, or like (based on the data you have). From here, you can create new ideas for campaigns and promotions that is a direct result of what the data is telling you.
Put The Data In Your Marketing
You could even think about putting some of the data you have into your reporting. Sometimes, it doesn’t even have to be marketing data itself, but other data you have managed to pull from your company. Whether you’ve got your gender pay reporting sorted or some stats on your green initiatives, you can use them in your marketing. In an infographic or brochure, you can get good PR on the data you have.
Get Feedback
Then, as you start to implement the data into your decisions and change your campaigns, you’re going to want to do so more market research and get feedback. Whey you make changes, you need to know they work. So you could try split testing and work off of the stats, send surveys, or even host a controlled focus group to get your answers.
React And Redo
From here, your main priority is going to need to be reacting and then redoing. Now that you’ve started to implement data into your marketing, don’t think the job is done. You need to be continuously reacting to the changes in your data and reacting to both feedback and how your customers behave to keep tailoring your activities to what they want.
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