Information is everything in marketing. If you have enough information, you can develop a more effective strategy, reach more customers, and receive higher profits.
You can only ascertain “information” after processing the data itself. Analytics is the key to improving the quality of said information.
In other words, data delivers engagement, efficiency, and accuracy. Strategic data management has already become a cornerstone of a successful marketing strategy for both B2B and B2C.
However, the following outdated misconceptions often undermine the quality of data management.
Common Misconceptions about Marketing With Data
Below, you’ll find the list of the most common misconceptions about using data in marketing. Each one of these can limit your ability to deliver on data-driven goals.
An agency can provide a full view of your customer
While it’s reasonable to bring in an agency to enhance your marketing effort, you will find that no agency is capable of managing your end-to-end customer data.
Agencies use only a fraction of the overall customer data. They are better suited for meeting specific marketing needs, such as social media marketing, content generation, and managing your online ads.
The customer data you have is fine the way it is
Data-driven marketing is built on customer data. Unfortunately, you can’t always rely on customer contact information in your database.
Why? Because people change their contact info very often.
This is why it’s imperative for you to verify and validate customer contact information on a constant basis.
Many businesses turn to data enrichment and predictive analytics tools like Datanyze to make this happen.
Your marketing data warehouse is sufficient to support data analytics needs
A data warehouse is the central hub where a business stores all of its data.
Many marketers have the misconception it can effectively manage content from a diverse range of data sources, including social media and digital notes.
Realistically, it cannot. Limit the use of your marketing data warehouse to storage, and use the data in it for reporting and intelligence.
Data-driven decisions are sufficient for quality marketing
Your organization will make the right decision by adopting data-supported decision making for your marketing efforts.
However, many companies stop there. This is a big mistake.
You can only deliver on quality data-driven marketing by making a long-term commitment. In addition, you will need to invest in exploring new sources of getting data and methods of its use.
The answer to everything is more data
Given that data delivers engagement and accuracy, many marketers think that the more data they have, the better their marketing strategy will be.
However, this is not necessarily true. The heart of a quality data-driven strategy is using better data, not more data.
In other words, choose quality over quantity.
Marketing data is all a marketer needs
“According to this misconception, many marketers overly rely on data provided by marketing applications,” says Matt Brown, a marketer from A-writer.
Doing so is a mistake. This very specific data is merely one part of the overall data that is relevant to one’s marketing.
For example, by focusing on data from marketing applications, you might disregard social media data, customer service data, and sales data.
Clearly, you’ll be better off by focusing on a more comprehensive analysis. Marketing data alone is no longer enough.
Your product data is fine the way it is
Data marketers often make the mistake of assuming that their product data is of high quality and sufficient for understanding customers.
Just like customer data, product data should be updated on a regular basis. For example, it can be missing information, contain inaccuracies, and even be outdated.
First-party data is all a marketer needs
To a certain degree, this assumption may be true only for data about people visiting your site and engaging with your content.
Aim to combine first-party data should with conversion data, in order to provide the most relevant and helpful information output.
Data-driven marketing can slow you down, because it is complicated
A survey by a popular marketing news resource Relevance found that 69 percent of marketers viewed data-driven marketing as an effective tool for making their work more efficient.
Complicated or not, when applied correctly, data-driven marketing wins for efficiency of execution and post-campaign analysis.
Customer service should hold all customer data
A strong data-driven marketing strategy cannot exist with all customer data owned by another group. Why? Because this approach naturally leads to data silos, where one group controls quality and access.
To eliminate this problem, one needs to integrate different databases of customer information across the organization.
Data marketing is all about technology
While technology is important for eliciting insights from the data to support your marketing strategy, the right people and culture are equally important factors.
You need employees who know what to do with the data, how to analyze it, and how to keep it clean. You also need processes in place to encourage the right use of the data and resources.
Feature Image Credit: CC 0; Public Domain. View original feature image on Pixabay.com.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
Nancy Spektor
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