If you’re questioning whether or not your marketing is working or wondering if you can increase your ROI, then it might be time to dive into marketing data analytics.
Analyzing data is complicated, but all you really need to know is marketing data analytics points you to what’s working and what’s not working. Data scientists review thousands of different data points to help you get a clear picture of what’s going on and give you great insight into how to improve your results.
8 Ways to Use Data Analytics to Improve Your ROI
1. Understand the Past
Before you plan what’s next, it’s always good to evaluate the past. What have you tried? Which campaign worked? What elements didn’t work? Who did you target? Has your audience changed in the last 2 or 3 years? How did you target your customers and how did they respond? Data analytics can help you see positive and negative trends in your marketing with a response model.
Many different pieces and components go into a marketing campaign, so it’s important to look further than the overall response rates. Your copy or design could have been off or maybe customers responded to one offer better than another. Did one region outperform all the others? How was the marketing timing? Diving into each of these will help you see what you did right and should keep doing and what needs improvement.
2. Know Who Your Customers Are
You probably have a customer profile created, but do you really know who buys from you? Data analytics can help you see exactly which individuals are purchasing your products and what their lives looks like. Do your customers have a pool in their backyard? Do they donate to charities? Are they homeowners?
There is all sorts of information you can find out about your customers. Marketing data analytics can highlight your customers’ demographics and lifestyle and behavioral tendencies. The more you know about them and what interests them, the more you can customize your advertisements for them. Marketing that’s relevant to your target audience will catch their eye far more than a general advertisement.
3. Discover Your Marketing Footprint
Data analytics can map out your customers. This will let you see exactly where your customers live and where they come from. Once you see your marketing footprint, you can map out your prospects and see what areas might be good for you to target. Not to mention, you’ll have a good idea of which markets won’t yield a high ROI.
4. See Where You Currently Are
It’s always good to know how your current campaigns are performing. Marketing trends change, and your audience will evolve over time. Analyzing each campaign and who responded to it will help you quickly adjust to the changes.
5. Focus on the Right People
Data analytics can help you identify the best prospects. After building out a customer profile, data scientists can score your lead list and let you know which people are most likely to respond. This helps you invest your marketing dollars wisely.
Modeling reports typically divide your list into 10 segments, letting you know from most likely to least likely where individuals fall in your target audience. This is especially helpful if you’re doing a tiered marketing campaign. You might sent direct mail and digital advertisements to people in groups 1-2 and digital only to those in groups 3-6. If the individuals in groups 7-10 are flagged as least likely to respond, you may decide not to advertise to them at all.
6. Reduce Marketing Waste
No one wants to waste their marketing dollars, so how do you avoid waste and achieve high ROI? You stop advertising to people who aren’t responding. Marketing data analytics can help you identify the people who are least likely to respond. There might be people on your target list who haven’t responded in years. If so, go ahead and remove them from the list. It’s highly unlikely you’ll win them over.
Many times, customers eliminate 30-60% of their lead list because those people simply aren’t good fits. This helps you reduce your marketing waste and focus your efforts on the people who have the highest chance of responding.
Data analytics can also help you clean up your data. Examples of this would be de-duping your records, removing deceased individuals, and updating your customers home addresses after they’ve moved. Cleaning up your data will help you see more accurate results and remove unnecessary waste.
7. Try New Channels
It’s been proven that using multi-channel or omni-channel marketing is far more effective than using one channel of advertising. But if your customer data is incomplete, it can be tough to try advertising on a new channel.
For example, you might want to send out an email campaign and decide to add a direct mail piece but have no customer addresses. Or if you want to do a connected tv ad, but you only have names and addresses instead of email and IP addresses. Data scientists can actually append missing customer information, so you can reach your customers wherever they are.
8. Make Future Plans
Once you know how your marketing is performing and who you are targeting, you can make future plans. Data analytics uses predictive modeling and statistics to predict customer behavior. Having this information helps you make informed decisions in your marketing plan. You can use the marketing data analytics reports to help you create more effective marketing campaigns that deliver higher ROI.
For example, you can use your a customer profile to guide your marketing designs. A response analysis can aid your channel selection or what offer to make. And, customer mapping can let you know which areas to target.
If you are facing big marketing decisions and not sure what to do next, look to the numbers. Data analytics can give you the information you need to confidently make those decisions.
If you’re interested to see how data analytics can help your marketing performance, send us an email. Our team is happy to help!