Only 1 in 4 marketers use data driven marketing. This means that just 25% are using research and data to make their marketing decisions that affect their company. There are many advantages to data driven marketing and how it can help you make better decisions. Many different concepts and ideas can be applied to help understand data driven marketing.
Why is Data Driven Marketing Important?
There’s various reasons as to why the concept is important. The biggest reason is that it helps marketers make the best decision possible. Many times marketers will have an intuition on what is the correct decision and most of the time they are correct. However, sometimes they may be conflcited or end up making the wrong decision. This is where data driven marketing can be beneficial becuase you have data that ensures you are making the correct decision. Another reason that it is important is because it helps you prove your worth. When you can back up your successful decisions with research, it allows you to prove your worth to the company.
A/B Testing
A/B Testing is one of the most efficient ways to implement data driven marketing. The way that A/B testing works is that you have one variation of the website (A) and a different variation (B) and the users are split in what variation of the site they are sent to. From there you can compare the sales, engagement, clicks, etc from each of the two variations. For example, if the B side of the test is consistently selling more and getting higher engagement, then it is smart for the company to move to this variation full time. A/B Testing allows for companies to test their ideas while getting good feedback.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are a tool used to be able to analyze where your customers are either looking or clicking when they view your website. The red areas indicate that a user’s attention is more likely to be drawn there. This can be helpful because if consumers are more likely to look in a specific area, then it would be beneficial to put important or helpful information there.
I.D.E.A.
It’s key to have a plan to implement and test your ideas as they come to you. One way to do that is to use I.D.E.A. This acronym takes you through all of the steps to make sure your ideas are being tested and gather data and if they are working or not. The I stands for “Identify Metrics.” This means that you want to find out what you are testing and how to measure it. For example, you can use sales, engagment or clicks as your metric that you are testing. The second part of this is to “Define SMART goals.” SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely goals. These goals can help you identify the problem you are trying to tackle and if you are doing so. E stands for “Experiment.” The best way to do this is to use A/B Testing. Like we discussed earlier, these tests allow you to find what is working better. They provide rich data to allow you to perform the last step. The last step is to “Analyze.” This step involves going back and looking at all of the metrics that you decided to mesaure. Impressions, views, clicks, sales, revenue, etc are all things that should be considered in the analyzing stage depending on the campaign.
