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There is no ignoring the monumental weight that data carries in the modern marketing landscape. It has contributed to the unprecedented success of marketing innovators like Google and Facebook, and enabled smaller businesses to utilize smaller budgets and analytical savvy to thrive in an increasingly competitive economy. Today, we’re answering a couple of questions we get asked often about the importance of data-driven marketing and discussing where we predict data-driven insights will take marketers in the future.
1. Why is data-driven marketing so important?
To truly understand the increased relevance of data in marketing, it’s important to understand the evolution of analytics since the 1950s. The advent of data usage in business, often referred to as “Analytics 1.0,” only marginally involved data in strategy. Businesses used small, structured data systems and constructed time-consuming models only in rare cases, basing many decisions on intuition rather than experience.
Around 2010, a new wave of business data enabled organizations to utilize massive amounts of data and variables in real time. Often associated with the buzzword “Big Data” (find out some key misconceptions about this phrase here), Analytics 2.0 enables marketers to use data to instantly assess performance, run tests, and change strategies. Its predictive tools measure the interaction of marketing efforts across channels, and identify how different variables affect performance. Data-driven marketing plays an important role in today’s business landscape by empowering marketers to answer questions that could previously only be guessed at and drive strategies with a relative amount of certainty about how they will perform. In fact, according to the Harvard Business Review, companies utilizing data-driven marketing tactics can often achieve improvements of 10 to 30 percent (sometimes more) while maintaining their existing budgets.
2. What are the best ways to approach data collection and analysis?
The goal of any marketing effort, digital or otherwise, is to target a product or service to a consumer’s needs. As marketers, we don’t simply tell our customers why they need what we’ve already created. We consider our customers in every stage of the marketing process by designing our product or service to fit their needs and then using targeted tools to communicate our solution. Therefore, the primary goal in data collection and analysis is to truly understand the needs of our customers. In the past, such research was conducted with surveys and educated guesses. Luckily, due to the mass amounts of consumer data at our fingertips, finding the answer is no longer as difficult: it lies in our digital footprints.
We all react differently to online marketing — in just 10 seconds on the internet, we might read, hover, click, and close a window before navigating to a new one or running a new search. Such activity, known as a “digital footprint,” when considered in aggregate, contains invaluable information about each potential customer — it’s the closest you can come to actually watching them interact with your marketing campaigns. Ask yourself, “Which pages do customers go to and from? What happens after they click our links? What content are they uploading or downloading and at what times?” Use this information to better target your marketing efforts to what your customers are looking for. In today’s data-driven market, your business is far more likely to succeed if you can harvest, blend, and analyze real-time customer data to identify patterns and predict customer needs before they’re even aware of them themselves.
3. Where will data-driven insights take marketers into the future?
Fittingly dubbed “Analytics 3.0,” the future of data-driven marketing involves integrating analytics into every level of the business, both internal and external. From an external perspective, Analytics 3.0 will involve a new resolve to embed data smartness into the products and services sold to customers, thereby providing an invaluable source of information and insight to every level of the organization. In order to integrate the new trend with organizational strategy, Tom Davenport, IIA’s Co-Founder and Research Director, recommends that companies align analytics with strategy, ensure leadership embraces analytics and leads by example, and create a management role exclusively responsible for overseeing the strategic deployment of analytics, and we couldn’t agree more.
Although it is a constantly evolving concept, data collection and analysis now holds unprecedented weight in the success of startups and established businesses alike. To learn more about the evolution of marketing from a rules and tools approach to a data-driven process, read our white paper, The New Marketing Value Chain.
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For most companies, the marketing optimization process never ends. Smart marketers continuously use past insights to modify strategies, redesign metrics, and analyze new information. Without accurate measurement, however, it’s impossible to use data to improve upon past efforts. Identifying the most valuable metrics is therefore both a pivotal and elusive component of the marketing process. When so many variables are at play and constantly in flux, how can you accurately measure success?
It’s no surprise that the data analysts at Movéo believe in the power of identifying KPIs and setting benchmarks. After a few rounds of implementation and analysis, data can provide a guiding light for what often seems like a shot in the dark. In today’s post, we’re taking a look at three ways marketers can set and pursue new goals based on insights from data.
1. Focus each metric by channel
Although it’s important for marketers to focus on the big picture, make sure your benchmarks aren’t too aggregated. Simply measuring “engagement” won’t be very useful when it comes time to distinguish the most effective aspects of your campaigns in order to make future budgeting decisions. The Content Marketing Institute recommends focusing on channel-specific interactions instead of broader categories. By segmenting data collection by channel, you’ll be able to discern whether Facebook ads, mobile search or weekly emails drove the most engagement, and use that information to optimize the next stage of your campaign.
2. Use cross-departmental data to carefully define ROI
Return on Investment (ROI) is a key metric in almost all areas of business, and marketing campaigns are no exception. Before you can measure ROI, however, you have to define what it means to your organization. Doing so accurately usually involves meeting with the sales and finance teams to develop one key definition of ROI and then pooling data from multiple sources (CRM, marketing automation and financial systems) to optimize data collection. Once you’ve begun collecting cross-departmental data, you can carefully set metrics based on company-wide goals, instead of those specific to the marketing department’s definition of success.
3. Focus on personas
In a recent post, we mentioned using data to identify customer segments. Of course, simply identifying the segments is only half the battle — you also have to set benchmarks to ensure that you’ll glean value from them going forward. To do so, set different goals based on your marketing efforts for each persona. For example, imagine your website tracker has identified a large portion of your monthly visitors as 25 to 40 year old women. Last month’s data indicates that most of them came to the website from Facebook ads, and set a specific benchmark dedicated to increasing your monthly Facebook reach to this group.
Successful marketing embraces the idea of continuous improvement, and accurate measurement is at the helm of this process. Don’t let a lack of data inhibit your campaign’s success – ensure that measurement and analytics are at the core of your organization’s approach to marketing. Learn to capitalize on this ever-changing marketing world in our white paper, Return on acceleration.
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When you use data analytics wisely, you open up a new level of targeting and personalization in your marketing. Now think about what happens when you factor in the element of time, so that you can watch analytics populate, change and skew as new points are added to your data set. Powerful, right?
That’s what real-time analytics can offer you. Today, we’re talking about the uses (and misuses) of real-time data and how you can use it to give a better understanding than ever of how your audiences engage with your content. Read on for a few of the benefits of real-time analytics:
Debugging analytics processes
Don’t you hate it when you start building a new analytics process on Monday, turn it on on Wednesday and when you check it on Friday, you see that something didn’t trigger correctly? You’ve done all that work but have nothing to show for it except an incomplete data set.
Real-time analytics help you solve this problem right away. Once you set up your event triggers, run real-time analytics to test how everything is working. You’ll know within seconds whether there is an issue—so you’ve got more time to focus on the complete, clean set of results when they come in.
Enhanced personalization
Whether you’re looking to drive sales, engage audiences or simply point prospective buyers in the direction of a new product they may be interested in, real-time analytics allows you to boost how your digital marketing personalizes content.
Take Amazon, for example: they collect data on what pages a person visits, what items they’re looking to buy and what they’ve previously bought to create recommendations that are consistently and constantly updated as new data comes in. What’s more, their algorithm is able to segment recommendations into multiple categories: New for You, More Items to Consider, Related to Items You’ve Viewed and more. This targeted marketing allows them to reach customers with items they want, when they need them.
Gain new insights and shorten response time
Remember the blackout during the 2013 Superbowl? Oreo was the only company that had the capacity to develop a piece of marketing content to respond to the news while the blackout was still happening. The resulting Tweet was widely considered to be the factor that helped Oreo “win the marketing Superbowl” that year.
How did they do it? They had a team of social media experts, copywriters and designers poring over the minute-by-minute trends in order to identify what they could piggyback off of. Because they were already set up to create and respond in a shorter timeframe, they were able to achieve a memorable success.
Three years later, marketers have even more opportunity to gain real-time insights and shorten response time. With real-time analysis, you can target content thematically, geographically or to align with trending news. As a result, you’re able to keep your brand relevant to a wider audience and generate crossover appeal.
What real-time analytics mean for B2B marketers
While they can be exciting and open up new opportunities, real-time analytics are often best used in customer-facing marketing. However, B2B marketers can also benefit from utilizing real-time analytics. Here are a few quick reasons why:
- You still need to customize content. Real-time analytics that provide content or product recommendations to your customers, leads and website visitors are a natural next step to the personalization efforts you’ve probably already started.
- Your buyers come in contact with real-time analytics all the time. In our personal lives, we’ve come to expect real-time analytics that give us up-to-date information. Why should your buyers expect something different when they come to your site?
- Everyone else is doing it. According to an eConsultancy report, 65 percent of B2B companies are carrying out some form of real-time marketing, and 87 percent agree that “real-time marketing is essential as behavior, device, place and time come together.” Don’t get left behind.
Are you looking to partner with an agency to develop the best possible marketing strategy for your business? Contact Movéo. We’d love to learn more about what you’re up to.
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“Big Data” is often hailed as the new competitive advantage in marketing, but what happens when marketing data simply becomes too big to analyze in any meaningful manner? Professor Patrick Wolfe, executive director of the University College of London’s Big Data Institute, claims that the rate at which data is being accumulated “is rapidly outpacing our ability to analyze it,” and that transforming these massive data streams from a liability into a strength is key to harnessing the power of data.
In this post, marketers will learn our three tips to glean the most valuable insights from large, overcrowded data sets.
1. Segment large quantities to better organize findings
Segmentation involves categorizing data together by similar traits (such as age, income, or email behavior). By segmenting data into “clusters”, important attributes may reveal themselves even if they initially escaped marketers’ attention.
When it comes to segmenting large amounts of data, we recommend carefully planning your short and long term strategies to analyze this information. Instead of trying to sort through all the information at once, begin with the segments you’re already aware of—or those with immediate, short-term importance—and commit to carefully exploring the less obvious groups later on. Segmenting data can reveal powerful insights, but be careful with how you use these insights. Remember when Target grouped customers by purchase history in order to recommend new products? They famously predicted one teen girl’s pregnancy before her own family.
2. Visualize Data
In 1973, statistician Francis Anscombe demonstrated the vital importance of visualizing data for understanding patterns when conducting analysis. He claimed that discerning trends from a crowded datasheet is nearly impossible, not to mention time-consuming. The same data that might seem useless in numerical format, however, can provide valuable insights when transformed into visual form. For example, although you may feel that you have a surfeit of information about this month’s email metrics, differences across the individual campaigns could be invisible until they are visually graphed together.
3. Understand patterns and determine underlying insights
Not only is visualization necessary when determining which data is most important, it is also essential when searching for patterns and insights. Interactive data visualization tools allow users to interact visually with their data, instead of simply looking at static graphic representations of the numbers. Interactive tools like Tableau Software enable researchers to transcend common two dimensional tools like pivot tables, and instead utilize interactive and imaginative methods to visually represent their information.
Do you find yourself being weighed down by massive amounts of data? Find out how we helped Molex, a $3.5-billion world leader in electrical interconnect and electronics solutions, access data from multiple sources and visually analyze their data.
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Unfortunately, data mistakes don’t stop at the collection stage. It’s all too common to see marketers misunderstand perfectly clean data by employing sloppy analysis practices. If you’re worried whether your data analysis is lacking, here are a few common culprits that may be leading you down the wrong path—and how to correct course.
Analyzing with assumptions already in mind
When you look at your data thinking you already know the answer to what worked and what didn’t, you’re going to miss key insights. You’re also more likely to mistake correlation for causation, and misattribute changes in your marketing’s performance. Instead of looking for ways that your data can support a theory you have already formulated, look for patterns in the data and draw conclusions from them. This practice may force you to reconsider what’s working and what’s not working in your marketing, and that’s a good thing.
Confusing correlation with causation
It’s tempting to find meaning in data, even when there isn’t any there. For example, take a look at the results of this survey of Reddit users, in which data on users’ employment status and cheese preferences was collected. If you confused correlation with causation when looking at this, you may be tempted to think that being retired makes you more likely to enjoy cheddar cheese—or perhaps those who like cheddar cheese are more likely to be retired? Obviously, one of these doesn’t cause the other, but the correlation makes it easy to think so. In your marketing, it’s essential not to fall into this trap.
If your new ad campaign is associated with a drop in traffic, you need to look a little closer before assuming it’s all because of your creative approach. Have all ads you’re running seen a similar drop in the same time period? If so, it’s equally possible that there’s an outside cause. Instead of immediately drawing conclusions about a specific campaign, do some digging. Has the use of a new ad blocker recently spiked? Are there holidays or other events that might be causing your audience to be less present where you’ve placed your ads for the time being? Conduct similar detective work when you see positive changes in performance, so you can rule out things unrelated to your marketing choices before making campaign changes based on considerations beyond your control.
Measuring data against the wrong benchmarks
When assessing whether your marketing is performing in a meaningful way, you should be comparing the numbers against benchmarks set during the strategic planning process. However, this can cause you problems if you have not set appropriate benchmarks.
What would be an inappropriate benchmark? If you’ve simply chosen an arbitrary number as a goal, it’s not going to tell you anything about your current actions. For example, if you’ve made your Q3 benchmark goal a thousand leads a quarter when you are working with a specialized B2B organization that has been reaching one hundred leads a quarter in the past, you’re not going to learn anything when you fall far short of the goal. Instead, look back at your performance and take note of what your average growth rates are. Then, factor in new marketing tactics, predict how they’ll benefit those rates and base your benchmarks off of that number.
Instead of setting this sort of goal beyond what you can hope to meet, create a series of challenging but achievable goals, which build over time to reach the numbers you need. Each of the smaller progressions you make will give you, through robust data analysis, more of the insights needed to build on marketing’s success.
Are you looking for more insight on how to keep up with the rapidly changing world of digital marketing today? Read our white paper, Return on acceleration for advice.
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In the rush to collect data and modify marketing campaigns, marketers can lose sight of what quality collection really looks like. To draw useful insights from your data, you need to collect clean, useful information, not just vacuum up every imaginable data point and try to glean meaning from them. But how do you ensure you’re actually doing that?
Avoid the following data disasters in your next campaign by incorporating these best practices into your data collection.
Inconsistent data collection
If data is not collected consistently in the same manner and under the same conditions, error is introduced into any conclusions drawn from that data. That means you should not change data collection methods halfway through a campaign — not if you want to be able to draw useful comparisons between data from both periods. Using different data collection methods or parameters may not seem like a big deal, but it can dramatically impact results.
Instead, if and when you change your data collection approach, make it a clean break. Do so between campaigns when possible, and when you must compare data between the two approaches, make a note of the potential error introduced by these changes. You may even want to collect data in two overlapping systems for a period of time to get a sense of how much error there may be.
Muddy testing practices
If too many elements of a campaign are changed at once, even robust data collection and analysis cannot determine which changes caused gains or drops in campaign performance. What’s more, when you modify multiple elements of a campaign, you’ll begin to accrue very different data points that may skew the results of your overall collection. To ensure you’re collecting valuable insight in your tests, use more strategic, gradual A/B testing.
In gradual A/B testing, you change only one aspect of your campaign at a time, even if that change is as small as changing one form field or the call to action. By making these individual alterations, you can track the impact of each one scientifically and compare the two results. This is valuable if you’re looking to test the impact of one part of a whole system—like a subject line on an email or the color of a button on your website.
Gradual A/B testing is generally the best practice to follow, as it will give you the most detailed, actionable insights. However, there are some situations that may call for radical A/B testing, in which you treat two separate wholes as two different variables. For example, you may test how one downloadable white paper performs against a video on your website to increase engagement. These situations include when your traffic is too low to practically perform a series of gradual tests, when gradual A/B testing is not showing any meaningful results or you need to see large growth immediately. Remember, this test doesn’t teach you anything about the performance of an individual component, like the title of your white paper or the screen size of your video. Instead, it has demonstrated how each of those landing pages works as a whole.
Have you hit a snag in your data collection? We’d be happy to talk more about what you can do to improve data collection in your campaigns. Contact us today.
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When marketers talk about “data,” it turns out they mean a lot of different things. And that can cause some confusion. You’ve heard of “big data” — data in high volumes, arriving at high velocity, and presenting varied and evolving information — but it can become a buzzword, tossed around with little real impact on marketing processes or results.
At Movéo, we resist the big data buzzword: instead, we believe in a holistic approach to data analysis and insights that drive smart marketing tactics. In fact, we’re dedicating this month’s blog theme to reconceptualizing the use of data in marketing, and using a smarter approach to data to avoid mistakes in your marketing tactics and analysis.
Today, we’re kicking things off by highlighting some frequent misconceptions around data-driven marketing. Here are a few things we believe about your marketing data:
Misconception 1: Quantity is more important than quality
To be clear, there are A/B tests and other situations that require data sets large enough to observe statistically significant differences. But once these thresholds are reached, bigger is not always better. In other situations, such as small but representative lists of B2B targets, the question is not about reaching a certain threshold at all but simply about observing patterns in the data you do have. In any case, dirty data is counterproductive. You’re better off with a clean, representative data set than with an artificially-inflated one.
Misconception 2: Data insights stand alone
Data insights are in the DNA of all strong digital marketing campaigns, but without the application of creative and strategy they cannot move leads to action. The best campaigns are data-driven, but also have a strong creative hook that engages the emotional side of B2B buyers. Review both the big and little data you have access to, then craft a strategic plan and creative ideas that work with the data to engage your audience.
Misconception 3: Data takes care of itself
Despite all the tools you probably use to collect data, it needs some attention. Customer data must be proactively organized and protected. If you’re haphazardly vacuuming up data and have no system for tracking or reviewing it, it’s not much use to you. Set monthly and quarterly benchmarks and take the time to sort your data, check for any problems in how it is collected and ensure that it is tracked in a consistent manner. Use these times to also review how securely your data is collected and stored, especially if you deal with protected health information.
With all the data you’re collecting, it can seem like marketing has to move faster than ever. Do you feel that way? If you’re looking for more guidance on how to stay up-to-date on data and technology that affects your marketing, read our white paper, Return on acceleration.
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Last week, Movéo digital media supervisor Erik Gebhardt and engagement manager Bari Scheinbach gave the rest of the team some critical insights on lead generation best practices — or rather, what to avoid in order to run a great campaign. Let’s take a look at those insights.
How lead generation is like dating
Good marketers liken lead nurturing to dating. With every encounter you learn something new about the other person, and share something new with them. It may take time to grow closer, but things go step by step. The experience is mutually positive — that’s why you continue the relationship.
Now, imagine going on a coffee date. You enjoy it, and you indicate your interest in seeing your date again. But when you meet again for dinner, your date shows up and asks if you’re ready to book a wedding venue. Let’s be honest: you’ll probably leave that date immediately and never answer a text or call from the other person again.
When sales calls are made too early in the marketing process, they scare off leads much in the same way that overeager suitor would. When one of your leads downloads a single white paper, they are asking to begin a relationship with your organization, but they can reasonably expect a similar level of engagement at this point, such as the offer of similar resources through email marketing. A call from the sales team at this point in the process is too rapid an escalation of the marketing relationship. It can drive away even a strong lead who would have been a good match if the relationship were to develop gradually and naturally over time.
The takeaway here is that it’s critical your marketing team establish a lead nurture program, in alignment with the sales team, and that your sales team adhere strictly to the established lead nurture program. There are three key ways that you can establish the proper flow of leads from marketing to sales, and they are what separate a successful lead generation campaign from one that falls flat.
Red flags vs. best practices
- The use of a CRM. Does your organization have a customer relationship management (CRM) program in place? Is it used consistently by both marketing and sales? Never start a major marketing campaign without a CRM in place — that’s a case in which poor marketing-sales alignment is almost guaranteed. Instead, put a CRM in place and train your marketing and sales teams on it now, so that you can improve all your future marketing campaigns.
- Lead scoring. Lead nurturing campaigns should always include a robust lead scoring structure. Salespeople should only make contact with leads who have scored above a certain threshold based on their interactions with the organization’s marketing materials. A lead nurturing campaign that doesn’t include lead scoring is set to undermine itself.
- Timeframe for converting leads. The B2B sales cycle is long, and your campaign planning should reflect that. If your organization’s leadership is pushing campaign goals that would expect leads to be converted to sales in less than three months, push back. Lead nurturing is all about building relationships, and those take time. A strong campaign respects the time needed to convert customers, and bakes that time into the plan from the beginning.
With the right systems in place, well-planned marketing campaigns can have great results. To see a few we’ve worked on, visit our library of case studies.
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There’s a massive amount healthcare-related messages out there, and consumers often aren’t sure which ones to trust. As a marketer, it’s up to you to craft campaigns that will stand out among all of the other messages your audience encounters every day. Whether you work on your own or with a marketing partner, take the time to plan a strategy that will make your organization stand out and your message stick. Here are a few tips to keep your healthcare marketing strategic, targeted and able to cut through the noise.
Include a thought leadership component
As we’ve discussed in past posts, healthcare is an area in which both consumer audiences and professional audiences crave an expert opinion they can trust. That’s why a thought leadership component can be so valuable to your healthcare marketing.
Rather than adding it haphazardly later on, make thought leadership a consistent and constant part of your overall strategy. Identify an expert voice on your team or who you can work with to develop medically-sound content. Determine the best places to reach your audience. What do they read, online or in print? Do they listen to podcasts? Would they be open to branded content? Are there partners, whether a healthcare app, news outlet or trusted social media presence who you could partner with? Once you’ve researched and identified likely avenues to impact your audience, create a multi-channel approach that incorporates each relevant option.
Refine your message with data
There’s a second key way to set your healthcare marketing apart, and that’s through continuous and data-driven campaign optimization. Every aspect of your digital strategy, from ads to forms gating original content, can be tracked, analyzed and optimized.
When you set your strategic plan, incorporate regular checkpoints to review what’s working and revise your tactics based on successes and missteps. But don’t limit yourself to just putting more spend behind ads that perform and pulling those that don’t. Employ rigorous A/B testing to examine details like the text and design of calls-to-action you use on forms and determine how well they’re reaching your target audience. Even small tweaks in these areas may yield impressive impact, showing that one choice engages your audience in a way another does not.
These are just two of the most notable ways you can construct and enact a healthcare marketing strategy that will make your organization memorable. Would you like to learn more about how your unique brand can make an impact? The Movéo team can help. Contact us now.
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As we come to the end of June, it’s time to take a look back at our healthcare marketing series and review the most important lessons. From crafting a strategic plan to analyzing the data you collect and using it to optimize your campaigns, here are five best practices for healthcare marketing.
1. Use the new marketing value chain to guide strategic planning
Do you remember the new marketing value chain? If you could use a refresher, revisit our white paper or recent blog post recapping the process. In today’s digital marketing landscape, we believe that the new marketing value chain is the best guide for getting your marketing on track and keeping it there. As you create a strategic plan to guide your healthcare marketing, employ the new value chain’s three links: application of insight, application of strategy and application of rules and tools.
2. Carefully consider your tone
If you’re experienced in B2B marketing, you likely know plenty about conveying expertise and speaking to decision-makers in the language of their own specialties. When marketing to an audience that includes medical professionals, it’s particularly important to include high-level, medically-accurate information in your marketing. Pair this information with your usual attention to crafting compelling copy that will intrigue and offer value for an engaging marketing campaign.
3. Work with an experienced marketing partner
While healthcare marketing shares much with B2B and B2C marketing, depending on your target market, there are critical aspects that are unique to healthcare. Healthcare marketing isn’t the only marketing space in which policy, privacy and sensitivity in messaging each play a role, but they are particularly prominent when dealing with health and medicine. An experienced partner firm can help your organization navigate each of these topics, and help shape your strategic plan with them in mind.
4. Identify your entire audience
Consumer healthcare decisions are often influenced by many people, rather than made by a lone individual. If your marketing focuses too narrowly on the direct users of your health services, you’ll be missing the chance to influence others, like the family and friends of those who need your services. Considering your audience broadly is also important in marketing that seeks to reach healthcare professionals and organizations. Remember that your messaging should work to reach both decision-makers and the end-users of your product or service. In all circumstances, segment your audience and tailor messaging to have the greatest possible impact.
5. Learn from the data you collect
In healthcare marketing as in all digital marketing, the data you collect provide invaluable insights into your audiences and how they respond to your messaging. From your first work on a strategic plan all the way through your campaigns, data should be central. In order to accurately and usefully collect and analyze healthcare marketing data, make certain that you are:
- tracking engagement with marketing materials all the way through to conversions.
- regularly assessing your data to make sure that it is consistently and correctly collected
- including scheduled data evaluation and related campaign modification in your plan
Remember to work within applicable privacy laws where protected medical data is concerned.
For more lessons on how to optimize your healthcare marketing, read our blog post on Mercy Health.
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