Using Data Analytics in Your Marketing Strategy

Data analytics are wonderful for short-term goals. Still, long-term strategies benefit tremendously. Therefore, all of your business’s teams should implement data analytics in some way to guide their decision-making.

Marketing teams, in particular, have a better chance at seeing their long-term goals be accomplished when they use data analytics. Analytics can help you visualize your progress and make adjustments in your strategy, and help you reach greater success.

With that being said, analytics can be tricky. But if you take the time to learn how to collect, process, and leverage data productively, it can have a profound impact on your marketing strategy. So, let’s look at how marketing teams can use data analytics to achieve their long-term goals.

Continually Learn About Your Audience

Your marketing strategy’s success relies heavily on how well you know your audience. It also relies on your commitment to learning about them as their needs and wants evolve.

Data analytics tools can help you continually learn about your audience. First, however, you must ensure you’re asking questions that influence your marketing strategy and how you progress toward your marketing goals. These questions should include:

• What communication channels does your target audience use the most?
• Which social media platforms are they engaged on?
• What content are they consuming on these platforms?
• Which businesses are they interacting with online?
• Are your tone and brand voice still effective?
• Have your ideal customer’s needs changed? What about their wants?
• Is your target audience navigating the customer journey differently?
• Do they recognize your visual branding elements?
• Are the call to actions you use helping you get closer to your marketing goals?
• Should you change the key performance indicators you measure for your goals?

These questions are essential to ask, and collect data, on because the answers may be different going forward. If you don’t adjust your strategy when the answers do change, the impact of your marketing techniques may decline over time and hinder your chances of achieving your long-term goals.

Data analytics can also be used to study your competition.

Study Your Competition

One crucial factor in achieving your long-term marketing goals is your ability to differentiate yourself from your competition. This is especially true in regards to how you market to your target audience.

Data analytics can help you grasp how well your competition is doing and what they’re doing to attract your target audience. You can then find the gaps in their tactics and create marketing material that fills those gaps and draws your target audience to you, rather than to your competition.

Get answers to the following questions to study your competition and inch toward accomplishing your long-term marketing goals:

• Who are your biggest competitors? Have they changed?
• What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• What marketing tactics are they using, and are they converting?
• Is their target audience the same as yours? What are the differences, if there are any?
• How are they marketing on their website, email and social media?
• Are they leveraging SEO?
• How are their products and services evolving?
• What pain points are they addressing for their target audience?
• What are they doing and offering that you aren’t?

In addition to studying your competition, analytics help you learn about market and industry trends.

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Learn About Market and Industry Trends

Just like your audience and competition, your market and industry will evolve as well. So, it’s essential to use data analytics to collect information on your market and industry.

Studying the following questions will help you progress toward your long-term goals as your market and industry evolve:

• How big is your market? Has it grown or shrunk in size?
• What are the opportunities and threats in your industry and market?
• How much of the market do your biggest competitors own?
• What are current trends in your industry?
• What type of marketing strategy is usually used in your industry and for your particular market?
• How are those strategies evolving?

Also, you can optimize your use of content when you implement data analytics in your marketing strategy.

Analyze Your Content’s Performance

As you’ve probably heard, content is king in your marketing strategy. No matter the channel or platform, the success of your marketing strategy rides on how well you create content for, and distribute it to, your target audience.

With data analytics, you can analyze your content’s performance and use those insights to produce content that consistently resonates with your ideal customers. Additionally, excellent content can build your authority in your industry and establish your brand as an expert in your market.

Ensure you’re analyzing how your target audience is engaging with your content.

Are they leaving comments? Have they been sharing your content across their digital platforms? Are they opening your emails and clicking on your call to actions? Do they enjoy the visuals you use? Do they complement your written message? Are the stories you’re telling creating an emotional connection with your audience? Are your cross-promotion efforts working and creating a cohesive content experience across all your channels?

Additionally, using data analytics in your marketing strategy makes it easier for you to adapt to changes.

Improve Your Business’s Adaptability

Your long-term marketing goals depend on your business’s ability to adapt. Data analytics tools are incredibly beneficial in this respect because they inform you why you need to adjust and guide you on how exactly to do it.

In other words, data and business analytics make it much easier to adapt to changes. Additionally, they help you make sense of the raw data you collect on your marketing strategy’s effectiveness.

Then, you can come up with short-term solutions for your marketing shortcomings while also prioritizing long-term goals for future growth.

Make Productive Adjustments to Your Strategy

Ultimately, data analytics can help you make productive adjustments to your marketing strategy that keep you on track toward your goals.

However, the data you receive from your analytics tools only makes a difference in your marketing strategy if it’s accurate. In other words, your data must accurately reflect your audience and what they need in terms of marketing.

So, be sure to re-examine your data collection process continuously. First, find holes in how you’re collecting data. Then, identify ways you can update your collection process both digitally and offline.

All in all, continuous adjustments are the key to achieving your long-term marketing goals.

Conclusion

Using data analytics in your marketing strategy is highly beneficial in accelerating your results and achieving your long-term goals. Use what you’ve learned  in this blog post to start your data analytics journey on the right foot. If you need assistance analyzing your data or developing a solid marketing strategy, let us know! You can connect with us through our contact page or via the form below.