Almost every company uses data to power their marketing campaigns – but less than half of them are making the right choices with that newfound strategy. You need to understand how to play this game to make the most of it. So, how can you maximize profits with data-driven digital advertising campaigns?
Data-driven digital advertising campaigns can help sales become straightforward, pushing customers to repeat seamless purchases. It can also create solid relationships between clients and a company’s brand. The relationship between data and privacy plays a big role for customers in this scenario.
Do you want data to drive your next marketing campaign? You’re on the right track, then. Before you get in the car and let data grab the wheel, you need to understand how digital advertising campaigns can increase your profits even more than you thought before.
What’s Data-Driven Marketing?
Data-driven marketing uses customer information to create better advertising campaigns. It’s like learning about what one person does before selling someone to them – but in bulk.
There’s plenty of data (and ways of acquiring more of it) online. Companies can learn so much about current and potential customers by looking at the people on the other side of the screen.
Data in this context could be anything: from demographics (where someone lives, what they do for a living, how old they are, etc.) to behavior (when do they buy something, what do they prefer, how do they pay for it, etc.).
Why should you care about data-driven marketing? Because those that choose this way of acquiring (and maintaining) customers see a five to eightfold increase in ROI.
How Can Data-Driven Digital Advertising Campaigns Help?
Data will help you understand customers by learning about their behavior and demographics. Something as small as knowing where most of your customer base live will help you address potential clients better.
Data-driven digital advertising campaigns use carefully comb-through information to increase the chances of making a sale. It’s the difference between being an online door-to-door salesman (casting a wide net and targeting as many people as possible) and sending the right message at the right time (get the client because you know who potential customers are).
In short, data-driven marketing is the right way of getting more customers – while traditional marketing doesn’t cut it anymore.
Those are the broad strokes of the data game, of course. It gets much more interesting than that when you give a closer look. Do so below.
Ways Data Can Improve Your Next Ad Campaign
- Know Your Audience. What’s the first thing you get when you look at data (the right way)? You begin to understand how your customers think – and who isn’t your customer. Wasting time on people who don’t want to buy your products is a great way to lose money. Knowing your audience is the best way to avoid that setback.
- Target the Right Way. It takes more than knowing who is buying to make a sale. You need to know how to sell your products to your base. That way, you turn an audience into customers. Data will drive that point home, though many companies are playing that same game – so you need an edge.
- Stand Out. Are you in the business of selling apples? You probably have countless other companies doing the same. It doesn’t matter if we’re not talking about apples – because competition will be out there anyway. The right data will show you what makes your clients get up from their seats.
- Relate to Customers. Greeting and calling someone by name is the right way to do business. In fact, more than 70% of people expect a personalized experience. How can you make that happen when you have countless customers? Employing data-driven digital advertising campaigns will help you there.
- Builds Future Campaigns. Data doesn’t relate to customers alone. It also explains how your previous campaigns are doing – so you can better model future ones. You can also use data to change your current marketing approach in real-time. You get to do more when you know more.
Where Does the Data Come From?
1. Buy in Bulk
Big data is a billion-dollar industry. In fact, it’s estimated to be worth 162 billion dollars – and almost double in the next couple of years.
So, you can probably guess people are buying and selling customer information all the time.
You can dip your toes in that data pool anytime you want. Countless companies can source data for you and sell it at the right price. Unfortunately, it’ll take time to find the right seller for your needs.
Does that mean you have to put money down to get information? Not at all! You can also roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.
2. Source It (Directly)
Do you want to learn more about your customers? You can ask them yourself! That’s right: you can set up surveys to learn more about your audience and clients – right from them.
Of course, you can’t expect people to give up time out of their day just because you’re asking. You have to promise something in return. A 5% discount, a freebie, or something similar will push people to give away data.
Some people even buy data! They pay small amounts for (what appears to be) negligible information – that companies love to use.
Why are companies happy to put money down for people to give up information? Well, we’ve talked about it above.
3. Source It (Indirectly)
Remember, data is more than where customers live or what color they like. How people do things often gives out a lot of insight, though you often can only source that indirectly.
You need to start paying attention to how your customers act. Or better yet, get software that can do it for you. Behavioral analytics plays a big part in data-driven digital advertising campaigns, and learning how your customers behave can give you plenty of eureka moments to improve your future campaigns.
You can get a glimpse of what we’re talking about by using Google Analytics.
The Main Concern Behind Data-Driven Marketing Campaigns
Privacy is the main issue behind the business of data. People want companies to respect their privacy – but at the same time, they want personalized experiences and better deals, as we’ve explained in the first part of the article.
What can companies do when it comes to data and privacy? Respect customers! You should ask for data without concealment when you do so, and if you’re using analytics to learn more about your customer base, be open about it.
Plenty of companies have had trouble with the law –and paid hefty fines in the process– because they weren’t open about their data policy. You don’t have to go through that if you are open about what you do – something which customers will love.
5 Benefits of Data-Driven Ad Campaigns
1. Straightforward Sales
Sales should be as easy as “I have this item for $1. Do you want it? Sold!” However, things get more complicated when you add more customers, companies, and products into the mix.
Learning how these parties play with each other and against each other will help you understand how to make a profit out of the volatile and ever-changing game of sales.
How can you do that? Use data-driven expertise and facts.
Data can help you better shape your sales funnels as well as show you how to capture traffic and turn it into customers by holding their hands and walking them every step of the way.
For example, the right dataset may show you you’re losing sales halfway through the funnel – and that may be enough to recover a revenue drop.
2. Customers Keep Coming Back
Customers want to buy cool stuff and carry on with their day. They want solutions. The one thing they don’t want is to have more trouble. Is your marketing campaign straightforward? That means customers will continue to come back.
In contrast, a convoluted marketing campaign or overly complicated website will deter people from clicking the purchase button.
Data-driven digital advertising campaigns work the same way: they simplify your marketing effort, so customers have an easier time finding what they want, making a purchase, and coming back to your business right after.
3. Easy Scalability
One of the biggest benefits of data-driven marketing is scaling your operations when the time is right. You can try it for yourself: use a small dataset to target a specific tier in your demographic (e.g., would-be customers aged 24 to 30), then adjust to launch multiple campaigns over time.
You can grow your marketing effort tenfold with one-tenth of the effort once you realize how much of a game-changer holding the right data is.
At the same time, you can do the same the other way around: grab a huge data-driven marketing effort and scale back. That way, you can target a very specific part of your demographic – and do so with precision.
4. Empower Other Areas
Data-driven campaigns will not drive sales alone. They can also help empower and improve other areas of business, such as customer support.
Think about it! You’re using data to better understand your customers, so you can get more sales. That information can also help you improve the way you treat people after the sale is done and out of the way.
That could mean approaching old customers to maintain the business relationship or deal with their inquiries when the time comes.
Data can help you understand your customers (and make them more human in your eyes). That can help your employees to better deal with them – and everybody wins when that happens!
5. Campaign Assessment
Data-driven campaigns are not about customers alone. They’re also about the companies running them. You will look for information about would-be clients, sure – but you’ll also have datasets about how you’re doing sales-wise.
What does that mean? Running data-driven ad campaigns can help you shed light on your sticking points. For example, you may understand why you know so little about a certain part of your customer demographics.
That, in return, can help you understand why you’re not reaching a certain part of your customer base the right way. Even better, you may tap into new clients you didn’t know existed before.
What’s the Biggest Setback Behind Data-Driven Marketing?
You can reap plenty of benefits and rewards using data-driven ad campaigns, though you have to comb through data before doing so. In other words, picking the right dataset is what separates good campaigns from bad.
The biggest companies behind data collection (such as Alphabet and Meta) have at least 1200 petabytes of information in storage. Each petabyte is roughly 1000 gigabytes times 1.2 million. For comparison’s sake, your average computer can store 500 gigabytes of data.
A successful e-commerce owner has countless gigabytes of customer data just by running their operations. That’s why you need pros to curate your dataset and design your next digital advertising campaign the right way.
Can Data-Driven Digital Advertising Campaigns Help Your Company?
Data-driven digital adverising campaigns will push your company’s profit line to new levels. It’s easy to see why that will happen: learning about your customers will help you understand new ways to approach them (as well as improve the ones you already have).
What’s the best part about that? Data streamlines itself: you get more data from each data-driven campaign. That means you get more information to work with after – when you use said information!
This way of doing marketing creates a snowball effect – that will revolutionize your revenue and create customer relationships like never before. It’s not a silver bullet, however: you need the right data and the right way of implementing your new strategy to make it work.
Conclusion
Data-driven digital advertising campaigns can increase your ROI by five to eightfold. This way of marketing will create seamless interactions between your company and customers and deliver straightforward sales as a result. Customers make less effort to learn and buy your products, and your company makes more money in return. W2Development is here for all your data-driven digital advertising compaigns needs.
