3 Ways To Use Your Data Today For Successful Marketing In 2015
Feeling the pressure to become “data-driven” in all that you do? Marketing in 2015 will be no exception. Using data to drive your marketing strategies and tactics doesn’t have to be daunting. Here are three ways you can action your data right now to hit the ground running on January 1st, 2015.
BUILD THE ULTIMATE CONTENT PLAN
Only 32% of marketers say that their content marketing strategy enables personalization (Econsultancy, Adobe). And yet, personalized content can greatly accelerate the sales cycle. You can use data to key up the right content based on your contact and accounts’ buying stage. Bucket your targets according to where they are in the buying journey. For example, those accounts that have a low level of activity (maybe they have visited your site once or twice) could be sent an educational whitepaper or an infographic. Prospects who are lower in your funnel and are clearly in market to buy based on their actions could get a time-based offer or a phone call from telesales.
Keep a running list of all your marketing collateral—webinars, whitepapers, blogs, etc.—and categorize them into the stages of the buyer’s journey. By knowing where your prospects are in the buyer’s journey and using that knowledge to send them the most relevant content in your toolbox, you’ll increase your conversion rates and see your deals grow.
PERSONALIZE YOUR WEBSITE EXPERIENCE
Companies with a website-content strategy designed around their audience’s preferences are nearly twice as likely to convert as those without. With 80% of today’s buyer’s journey taking place online, the experience a prospect has visiting your website and the information s/he encounters along the way is critical. Capitalize on your existing data to improve user experience and website lead conversion. How? Tap into the data emanating from your weblogs. Use your visitors’ company profile, web behavior and associated buying stage to personalize the web experience to fit each visitor. Homepage hero banners, for example, can be targeted to different individuals according to how close they are to making a purchase.
Beyond improving UI, your website visitor data can also drive marketing and sales alignment, a top priority for many companies in 2015. Say that three individuals from Company X have visited your site in the last week, specifically checking out Product Z’s page. You could either launch a targeted nurture campaign or immediately send that marketing intelligence to your sales team if the lead is hot enough.
ROLL OUT A TARGETED ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING CAMPAIGN
In the B2B world, buying decisions (especially highly considered purchases) are made by a buying committee rather than a single individual. Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on nurturing that group of decision-makers as a whole. The more you know about an account’s behavior, the more personalized, precise and effective your ABM becomes…and the higher your chance of closing that account.
Planning for an ABM campaign in Q1? Then today, collect as much data as you can about your priority target accounts. Find out who the key decision makers in the account are; what channels they use to make their purchasing decisions (such as the blogs, forums, and sites they use for their research); what products are of interest; and what products they already have that might warrant a cross-sell or upsell conversation. To uncover these insights, you’ll want to use external data in addition to the data you have in your CRM or Marketing Automation.
Once you’ve collected these data points on your target account, plan the corresponding ABM campaign. Let the data guide your strategy: tailor your tactics (live events, demos, printed collateral, case studies, etc.) to that account’s behaviors. For example, if you discover that decision-makers from target company X tend to compare product pricing and read vendor reviews on certain sites, you may want to run an ad on that review site. Or, you might share a piece of collateral that showcases your value proposition vis-à-vis your competitor. This kind of targeted, “account-aware” marketing will help you close your biggest target accounts in Q1.
Applying data to your marketing efforts is easier than you think. Start with these tactics in 2014 to set up your data-driven marketing strategy for 2015.
Courtesy: http://www.cmoessentials.com/3-ways-use-data-today-successful-marketing-2015/#sthash.xnQcTHEn.dpbs