If you're in the marketing industry, then you already know how large of a role data plays in the marketing game.
The question is, what are the different ways you can use data to your advantage?
With data outreach in mind, here are a few ways you can put data to work for your marketing endeavors:
Get Your Analytics in Gear
In today's marketing environment, if you aren't using analytics, then you're missing out on a number of helpful insights.
Your marketing endeavors produce tons of useful data that you can use to hone your campaigns and successfully target massive audiences and niche audiences alike.
For starters, content analytics tools such as Google Analytics allow you to track visitor traffic and discover which marketing campaigns grab the most attention.
In addition, there are a number of different software tools available that make it possible to track your social media marketing efforts as well.
Referred to as social listening tools, powerful social tracking software lets you follow the conversations of your followers based on keywords.
You can then use those conversations to inform your future social marketing campaigns.
Integrate Your Data
The data you use for marketing comes from various locations including social activity, website activity, and search engine activity. That's a lot of activity, which is why you need to effectively integrate that data in order to use it for your marketing purposes.
As the following article looks at, if you're wondering how marketers access a 360-degree view of their leads and customers using data from their marketing, CRM, finance and support apps, it all boils down to data integration. Data integration methods include analytic, operational and hybrid integration.
Analytic data integration uses data warehousing and business intelligence to collect pertinent marketing information.
Operational data integration takes advantage of operational applications across multiple business platforms, such as CRM and marketing software.
Hybrid data integration uses a combination of the two integration methods above.
Define Your Customers
Knowing your customers is all part of the marketing game, which is exactly where data comes into play.
By taking advantage of marketing data, you can more accurately profile your customers based on key outreach demographics such as age, gender, and location.
Take Advantage of Marketing Automation
Big data has paved the way for marketing automation tools, which are changing the way marketers reach out to consumers.
Marketing automation uses lead generation data as well as click-through data to help you better personalize your marketing campaigns.
This data collection technology automates certain marketing tasks, which makes the customer outreach process that much more effective.
Regularly Monitor Marketing Strategies
Data-driven marketing takes time to master, especially if you're taking a multi-channel approach. Fortunately, data analytics tools make it possible to regularly monitor your current marketing strategies.
Are you getting more engagement through your mobile campaigning? Is your email marketing experiencing a decrease in lead generation?
Monitoring and analyzing data using the latest data tools available can help you answer all of these questions and more.
When you're ready to take your marketing to a whole new level, don't forget to take advantage of all that data.