This month on the blog, we are focusing our content on using data to plan future marketing campaigns. Today, we’re beginning this discussion with a basic overview of the traits of data and analytics that make them such important tools in campaign planning.
At the UX Poland Conference, presenter Jeff Parks said “without research, businesses cannot make informed decisions.” Within the marketing department, this still rings true: as a marketing leader, it’s imperative to look at your past performance history to make informed decisions for the future.
When planning for a new campaign, it’s easy to plan with your heart as much as with your head. Instead of developing strategy around what you see as your marketing department’s strongest suits, use past data to determine what successful operations you’ve executed on in the past that have given you the best and most consistent outcomes. What you think is working and what is actually working may or may not overlap, but data doesn’t lie: you may find that your copywriter’s brilliant content doesn’t actually contribute to your overall goals, while the SEO strategy you thought was underwhelming actually pushed through a steady stream of new leads. Use data as an objective starting ground for ensuring that your next operations are contributing as effectively as possible to your overarching objectives.
Data and analytics provide insight to elements of your marketing campaign that aren’t always immediately present. In B2B marketing, look into data to glean insights that will help not only improve your marketing operations but also help the sales team seal the deal with a marketing-qualified lead. For example, use lead-mapping tactics to help sales teams better predict lead behavior and anticipate questions or areas of pushback those leads may have in the sales process. Not only will this streamline the entire marketing-sales process, but it will improve your ability to move leads through your pipeline and turn them into customers — and doing this through data-based resources allows you to easily share how your marketing impacts the company’s bottom line.
Data doesn’t lie, and it opens up new truths about how your marketing operations truly impact your audience. This is powerful information, and it allows you to predict how your campaign will run. From the anticipated outcomes of reworked tactics to predicted revenue attributed to your department, data lets you make informed projections about how your marketing operations will impact the company.
This predictability isn’t just nice to have: it’s essential to show your value as a marketer and demonstrate the impact your operations have on the rest of the company. And even if you find that your predictions are incorrect, by re-analyzing that data, you’ll uncover important insights into your operations.
Tune in next week as we discuss how to maximize accuracy in your data-driven campaign predictions; determining the most important KPIs for an upcoming project; and using data to manage or even deflect roadblocks before they occur. In the meantime, let us know: how does data help you organize and plan your upcoming marketing campaigns?
Photo credit: OpenDataInstitute via Flickr Creative Commons
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