In the past, it was believed that in order to get maximum ROI on your digital marketing, you had to cover as many areas as possible. This caused businesses to pour money into random media channels in hope that at least one of them would be the one to reach their target audience. Seeing how this required a significant investment, small businesses were usually left behind. Luckily, today more and more marketing campaigns are data-driven — which makes them much more cost-effective and even more available. All in all, here are four tips for those who intend to go down this path.

Find Out “Why”

In order to get the right answer, you must first know the question you’re asking is the right one. When doing target market research, people usually focus on things like who buys, or where are they coming from, but seldom do they stop and ponder upon why they need your product or services. You see, just because you made a product or service to do one thing, doesn’t mean it will be what your target demographic will be using it for. A great example of this is the TV show My Little Pony, which was originally intended for children, but found its audience in adult men all over the world. Answering the question ‘why’ do people need you is the first step towards a data-driven marketing campaign.

Turn Data Into Information

When we say data-driven marketing campaign, we aren’t actually talking about taking raw data and turning it to your advantage. First, you’ll need to find a way to turn this data into usable information. We are talking about high levels of analysis, through a secure channel, using multiple data sources in order to deliver one version of the truth. For this however, you will need potent business intelligence software. Your safest bet would be to go with something capable of displaying all this information through detailed BI dashboards, giving you a better insight into the bigger picture.

Put It To Work

After you have all the information you need, it’s time to put it to work. First, you need to create content (blogs, infographics, whitepapers, etc) that is engaging enough (here it would be extremely useful to have the knowledge of ‘why’ we discussed in the previous section). Next, you need to find the best way to engage your audience. We’re talking about things like whether to do so through email marketing, social networks or to use some other media instead. All in all, you have a long road ahead. As you build out your channels, remember to keep them in manageable amounts. Consistency and manageability are more important than volume.

Cycle, Don’t Process

Speaking about data-driven marketing, most people believe that it is a linear process with a beginning (the start of the campaign) and an end goal (improving your sales). However, this is not entirely true. You see, a data-driven campaign resembles a cycle. First, you get to harvest the data, you analyze it, you activate it with campaign and content ideas, you engage your audience and then you optimize it. Still, this is far from over. From this point, you should once again listen to feedback, harvest the information, analyze it…you get the rest. All in all, like in any good marketing campaign, your job is never truly done.

Conclusion

The age where you made marketing decisions based on gut feeling is long gone. With a data-driven marketing campaign at the forefront, you need to make moves based on actual knowledge and never cease to evaluate the decisions you have made. Only then will your marketing efforts reach their maximum efficiency and all of the gathered data will go to good use.

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.