Using Data to Understand Your Audience and Build Better Campaigns

Marketing runs on customer data. No matter which channel you use, businesses get more value from their digital campaigns when they can reliably define their target audience based on their characteristics, interests, preferences, hesitations, challenges, and more.

But too many businesses either misuse or overlook valuable customer data that can enhance their targeting and engagement strategies—including first-party data sitting idly inside within their own business network.

Harnessing this data can serve as a significant competitive advantage—and it’s the subject of our latest “Ask the Expert” webinar. We talked to J. Patrick Bewley, Data Science and Analytics Expert at True Local Labs, about the eight key truths for using data to understand your audience and build strong campaigns.

Read on for some highlights from that conversation—or watch the full video here.

The Most Successful Businesses Know Their Customers Best

Businesses have the inside lane when it comes to knowing their audience. By virtue of their active relationship with that customer, those companies have the opportunity to observe and interact with customers on a daily basis. Proactive businesses can take advantage of this relationship by gathering insights and feedback to become more responsive in meeting and adapting to their customers’ changing needs.

Every business in a given industry has this opportunity to collect data and deepen their customer knowledge, but few take advantage of it—and even fewer make it a priority. In-store and online interactions all offer potential channels for collecting information and learning more about your customers.

A lack of customer knowledge is a setup for failure. But this situation is easily avoided by taking advantage of channels and tools to gather data that informs your understanding of your target audience.

Today’s Customer Data Aggregators are Approaching Parity

Data aggregators have a long history of providing businesses with consumer data capable of enhancing customer knowledge and audience targeting strategies. Over time, though, Bewley says the distinctions between the data aggregators have blurred as they have begun to share some of the same attributes with one another.

The main reason for this change is that data aggregators have tried to expand beyond their specialized data aggregation domains, increasing the spectrum of data they offer to make their services more valuable to business advertisers. With fewer attributes to distinguish aggregators from one another, businesses have easier access to broad data insights even when connecting with a single provider.

Whether the data is coming from aggregators or your own data acquisition channels, make sure you’re using that data to get the full story about your customers—including who they are, what they want, and how your business can help.

Customer Data is Only Valuable When Put Into Motion

Customer data is a treasure trove of insights that can be used to improve your advertising and marketing strategy, as well as your overall customer experience. But that data only creates value for your business when it’s put to good use.

Locking data away in a safe won’t do you any good if the information isn’t being put to work. Bewley argues that too many businesses are content to sit on this data and keep it safe and secure, at the expense of mining them for valuable insights.

While it’s always important to keep data safe—especially your organization’s own first-party data—every business can benefit from putting data into action to uncover behavioral trends, monitor campaign performance, evaluate customer preferences over time, and optimize your engagement strategy.

Audience Segmentation is the Most Efficient Path to Personalized Engagement

As businesses pour resources into delivering more personalized experiences to their customers, 1-to-1 personalization is often hailed as the holy grail for any brand experience. But Bewley argues that 1-to-1 personalization isn’t the most practical or cost-effective approach for many businesses.

Instead, businesses can build more efficient advertising and marketing strategies by using audience segmentation to target campaign messaging to a specific, relevant customer group.

From the customer perspective, the messaging is still personalized because it speaks directly to their circumstances and needs—all of which is determined by their data attributes. Meanwhile, businesses of any size can realistically launch and sustain this personalized experience, even at scale—and see an increase in campaign ROI as a result.

The Journey to Better Campaigns is Easier When Working With an Expert

The principles of leveraging data for better campaign ROI may be easy to understand, but implementing them can be complex—especially for small and mid-sized businesses with limited resources to pour into advertising and marketing.

A digital advertising partner can help you quickly improve your use of data to enhance audience targeting, personalization, and campaign optimization for your business. Cox Media’s experts have the tools, resources, and personal experience needed to help you reach your advertising and marketing goals far faster than if you attempt this journey on your own.

Watch our “Ask the Experts” webinar with J. Patrick Bewley to get more of his expert insights.

Or contact us today to find out how Cox Media can help you take control of your customer data.