Data-driven Marketing — Evolution of pamphlets!

The use of data analytics in marketing is gaining ground across businesses. Taking advantage of the fact that the digital consumer community is growing by the day, marketers are using various methods using digital technology to reach out to, and engage with potential customers. These initiatives help create a win-win situation, where both the customer and the marketer can benefit. The use of analytics has given marketing a new face, where conventional and modern technology complemented each other.

The tech-savvy customer uses digital devices like phones, tablets, laptops, and websites for practically everything. The touchpoints that they create across devices are a boon to devise and provide personalized recommendations to customers. In the present digital ecosystem, big data is generated around people’s digital activity and this data is a mine of information. Using analytics, we can predict patterns in customer behavior. This helps in creating campaigns to target individual customers and groups. This quantum step, along with many others, is at the top of the agenda of marketers across companies to improve marketing quality, make it more focussed and personal, and, in the process, substantially reduce costs.

This note deals with some of these innovative thrusts adopted by digital marketers.

Making online shopping more personal preference oriented

Online shopping is here to stay, especially after the lockdowns imposed practically all over the world. Digital marketing specialists have realized this early and have made the right moves to mine data about customer preferences based on online habits and location. This data is used to make online offerings custom-built and personalized, thereby increasing customer acceptance and appreciation. Customers’ time browsing for suitable products has also drastically reduced.

Using next best action (NBA) for customer engagement

NBA is a completely different approach from the conventional practice of creating or manufacturing a product and then finding customers for it. NBA uses data to determine and consider customers’ needs and preferences, and then zero in on the most optimal one. This information is used by the organization to determine the right solution for the customer. NBA uses real-time decisioning technology, which uses real-time data, call center data, customer information, and relevant business rules and information to determine what the customer is entitled to. These options are presented to the customer after a prioritization process.

The use of data monetization to advantage

Data monetization and the use of various sources of information are used to focus on customers based on their location and advertise their products using information available with mobile providers. This is because mobile phones are the source from which people get their information. Mobile network operators see this as a big opportunity to monetize the data available to them. This data is very useful and deep since it includes, among other things, data for marketers to arrive at customer preferences and location information.

Decision making

It is said that deciding on the optimum use of marketing analytics is more an art than a science. There is an abundance of data at any point in time and deciding on the right way to use that data has to be based on strategy and other factors like the preferences of the target segment and consumer behavior. To assist in this exercise, organizations have to take the following steps:

1. Identify the best analytic approaches: Decision makers can choose based on data available and techniques like marketing mix modeling (MMM), Clustering, Factor analysis, Text- Analytics, heuristics like reach, cost, and quality (RCQ), using emerging approaches like attribution modeling, demand forecasting, and using competitor, brand and trend analytics. Using the right combination of these ingredients will lead to the best recipe for growth!

2. Integrating capabilities and winning strategies based on past experience may prove useful to generate insights, based on which the strategy can be decided. One factor to be kept in mind is that the temptation to decide the approach on short-term ROI may have to sacrifice in favor of a long-term strategy. This depends of course, on various factors

3. Making analytics central to the marketing function. This is very important since many companies tend to outsource data analytics and consider it as a support function. Nothing can be more foolish than that. Outsourcing can be done, but the marketers have to integrate with the data scientists and analysts to finalize strategies and the way forward.

Marketers must be convinced that irreversible progress and growth can only happen once data analytics is an integral part of the whole digital transformation journey.

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