Creating More Value to Your Data

Data has become a true business asset. It can drive key business decisions and is the foundation to marketing success. It is the underlying driver to personalization, omni-channel approaches, chat bots, and more. 

Surprisingly, 99.5% of collected data never gets used or analysed (Source: HostingTribunal). What’s the point of capturing data if it’s never getting used to understand performance? 

There are some underlying challenges for businesses. Not having the talent needed to understand their data. Or they aren't leveraging their current technology enough to see value. 

Today there are many tools that allow us to collect new forms of data and analyze it without the need for a data scientist. Even the most basic Google Analytics data is enough to propel new business growth. Regardless of where you are in your data maturity; there is a cost to ignoring your data setups.

Some interesting statistics where data is the root cause to each challenge:

1. Majority of marketers believe their marketing strategy is effective. Even though they doubt their strategies, they’re still pouring massive spend into digital advertising. 
2. Omni channel campaigns produce a much higher rate of conversion than single-channel campaigns. But most brands don’t understand how to create true omni channel campaigns.
3. Almost half of B2B marketing professionals state that a lack of quality data is their biggest barrier to lead generation.

Let’s Unpack these a bit.

Pouring Massive Spend into Digital without Proof of Success

Believing your marketing strategy is working without measurable proof is a common challenge. But it’s a very damaging one. 

Many companies tend to let data take a back seat to all other efforts. Execution of tasks is what drives traffic, but without the data, those efforts are shots in the dark. To focus on key targets, data is critical.  

First you need to know your KPIs to succeed. Vanity metrics like Impressions, Clicks, & Bounce Rate aren't important to decision makers. They want to see the dollars or revenue driven by the spend in marketing. 

Many platforms today make it easy to do this. They can stitch together user data to show the connection to sales. The goal is to understand what the path to success looks like. Set up weekly check-ins to see how far off the programs are from that path. Then make the necessary changes to get back on track in real-time, as best as possible. 

Creating Real Omni Channel Campaigns

The modern customer experience is fragmented across many channels. This makes it difficult to gain a holistic view of the customer journey. Today's analytics platforms have the capabilities of tracking customer touch points. It requires understanding what are critical touch points and the necessary tool modifications. 

With higher quality, actionable data that connects the customer journey, marketers can make smarter optimizations.

The path to buy is not linear, and won't be anytime soon. Making sure that your campaigns are consistent across all channels is step 1. Next, its critical to understand where each channel fits in your customer journey. Finally, the content needs to speak to each customer at that specific stage in the process. 

Google Analytics and many other systems have this data readily available. Knowing where to look and how to analyze the data is the difference between success or failure. 

B2B, Laggards in the Data Game?

B2B companies have traditionally focused on closed rates, sales forecasting and pipeline numbers. The lack of digging into what's driving top of the funnel leads and how the process is working has been missing. 

The sales cycle for B2B is longer, but that means they have more data points to analyze.

Recently, these companies have put a bigger emphasis on marketing data. They are starting to incorporate similar efforts used in B2C companies. Where customer journey data is being used to understand sales process efficiency. 

Connecting customer marketing data, improves the sales team more power when communicating with leads. Hubspot & LinkedIn have free tags that show the companies visiting your website. 

Better data efforts can help sales teams make that first contact more personal. It also helps to build out a highly effective lead scoring program. 

Making Data Work for You

Regardless of industry, data is critical. It can be used to get licensing deals, drive lower advertising costs, increase average order value, and more. 

Too many companies believe any data is good data. Data has a value to each company and can be a true business asset. It's up to you to determine what that value can be. Sometimes the smallest, simplest changes can make the biggest impacts. You just need to know where to look. 

If you're interested to find out the value data can have for your organization, send me a message. I'm happy to provide whatever information or assistance I can.

This article first appeared on the IME Coaching blog at https://www.imecoaching.net/post/creating-more-value-to-your-data.