In the digital age, there’s no excuse for being oblivious to what your customers want. Successful companies like GrubHub, Activia, and Nike know exactly who their audience is, how those people behave, and what they desire by researching extensively about them. They use this information to guide each stage of their marketing campaigns.
This is called data-driven marketing, and it has seen massive success across different industries. Take a deeper look into how it works and why it’s so effective.
Data-Driven Marketing: The Definition
This is a process where marketers find out trends and insights about their customers through market data. The information may include demographics such as the customers’ location, age, or gender; psychographics, like their audience’s interests, buying habits, or life goals; and more.
Market data can be generated by the company itself, by a third-party provider, or even by the audience themselves through social media. These companies then use the data to create more personalized and targeted marketing campaigns.
Successful Examples
Here are some successful data-driven marketing cases.
- Olay’s Scary Success – In 2019, Olay’s marketing team was given the task of creating a hit Super Bowl ad. The event gets an average of 99.9 million viewers across the globe. As such, the crew needed a guaranteed hit. So, they turned to Google and YouTube for data. They looked for the queries and videos their customers often searched for. These were “horror stories” and “football.”
They created a campaign with horror-themed videos dubbed “#killerskin,” and it was successful. The company got millions of views on their videos. Plus, they also saw a significant increase in search queries about their brand.
- Nike’s Spark of Greatness – Nike is no stranger to creating engaging ad campaigns. They’ve been doing it consistently because of their data-driven approach. The company needed a captivating and relatable campaign for the 2012 London Olympics, as people from different demographics would watch it. The marketing team found that most of their customers were everyday athletes who used their products for self-improvement and fun, not just for pro sports.
As such, they moved away from featuring the usual professional athletes. They shifted the lens to their main audience. Their #FindYourGreatness campaign featured average people who used Nike products to improve themselves or simply to have fun with friends. The message was: greatness isn’t just about winning in pro sports; it’s about achieving one’s goals, no matter how small or big they may be. It was a huge hit because it resonated with everyone, despite Nike’s use of targeted data.
Benefits of Data-Driven Marketing
Data-driven marketing is becoming more and more popular for companies of all sizes. But what can it actually do to help your company?
- Personalize Campaigns – This is the biggest benefit of data-driven marketing. It’s basically what the earlier campaigns planned to achieve. More than 70% of consumers want ads personalized to their taste. It doesn’t have to apply to broadcast or print ads either. Simple website ads based on your consumers’ shopping and browsing behavior can easily net you visits and conversions.
- Get the Timing Right – If your research shows that there are common events your customers participate in, you may want to create a campaign specifically tailored to them. For example, if you’re a CMO for a financial service provider, you can plan speaking appearances in trade fairs and conferences for your client.
- Retain Loyal Fans – Data-driven marketing isn’t just for acquiring new customers; it’s also for retaining current ones. You may collect your customers’ buying data and demographics to come up with a loyalty program that will surely keep them hooked.
The internet has made data easier to acquire and marketing campaigns easier to implement. Data-driven marketing is relatively convenient now with social media, search engines, and video platforms having analytics functions. Getting customer information is just a few Google Forms answers away. In this digital age, data is the key to marketing success.
