Why Data Should Play a Pivotal Part in your Marketing Strategy

By Iris Meijer, CMO, Vodafone Business

Iris Meijer, CMO, Vodafone Business

Data has always been a crucial part of effective marketing, helping to center strategies and ensure that businesses are talking to the right customer, at the right time and in the right way.

Today, there is an ever growing amount of customer data to work with. While this should make our jobs easier, the sheer amount of data poses a challenge for marketers – how can we analyze it to make sure that campaigns cut through the noise and deliver results?

Meanwhile, customers are becoming more demanding. According to Vodafone’s 2019 Global Trends Report, 85% of business leaders agree that customer needs are changing rapidly and almost all (93%) believe that customer expectations are increasing.

This presents a problem for marketers. The sheer amount of data available can be bewildering, while customers are less likely to forgive inaccurate or non-personalised content.

Closing The Information Gap

Sifting through data is the first place that marketers should start. There is always a gap between what we want to know about our customers and what is actually knowable. This information gap is closing with the availability of new customer information and our ability to merge structured and unstructured data sources, which can deliver new and more accurate insights.

To close this gap even further, marketers should bring the following elements in their data strategies:

• Integration: bring different data sources together to deliver better insights

• Look across channels: work out how to bring these insights into play across all your customer-facing channels

• Measurement: measure and benchmark campaigns. Part of marketing in a modern environment is constantly learning and adapting techniques for the best result

• Transparency: in a digital world, trust is king. Customers should know how you use their data, and that you will treat their privacy with respect

The reward for getting this right? Deeper personalization that is context-aware, meaningful and genuine – and a better relationship with your ever more discerning customer.

Don’t Just Think Digital

It might seem like enough of a challenge to integrate data to engage across digital channels, but effective use of data is not just confined to the digital world.

Location intelligence has been part of the strategy for marketers for decades, but big data offers something new – the opportunity to gather real, actionable insights about where your customers are. For brands with a brick and mortar presence this offers truly exciting possibilities.

For example, JLL (an international real estate services provider) provides advice to businesses on the best locations to base new outlets to maximize their success. By utilizing Vodafone Analytics, JLL is able to use anonymized data to analyze patterns in the way that people move around cities and help brands to understand where to place stores to reach their customers.

Making Data Work For You

Data underpins the experience demanded by modern customers. Customer experience, in turn, is not a means to an end, but an ongoing commitment. It must be every CMO’s job to establish customer experience as a key goal across all functions. Data, and the personalization that it powers, is a big part of this capability. Joined with a collective will to pursue the best customer experience, brands have the potential to create enduring competitive advantage.