Did marketing without data ever exist? Even in the days of traditional marketing, brands surveye customers and teste audiences. Data-Driven Marketing (From an Agency Marketer’s Perspective). Digital marketing took those old methods, turne them upside down, and amplified them. Marketers no longer have to set up surveys or request feedback to understand the customer journey. Instead, many are logging into reporting dashboards that show them at a glance where their customers are on the path.
Today, data-driven marketing is a concept that marketers can’t escape, and agencies are starting to include it in their skill lists. We spoke with Ascend2 to find out how often agencies are adopting data-driven strategies for their clients and how they’ll approach it in the coming year.
We surveye 149 agency marketing professionals to get their input to provide actionable data. This report is built for you to use in your own marketing strategy. Download the full report Check out the charts after reading the highlights below!
The biggest challenge in leveraging data in marketing
The amount of data that marketing teams have at their disposal is staggering. Trying to organize and categorize all of this data can be a real headache. Especially if the tools being use don’t easily send data back and forth or aren’t fully integrate. This actually leads to a data overload problem for many marketers.
If there is so much data built into the tools marketers use, what’s the difficulty?
46% of agency marketers say their biggest challenge is collecting high-quality customer data. In order to effectively use it to inform campaigns, data must be clean and accurate. When pulling data points from multiple sources, information can become jumble. This means it’s difficult for marketing teams to know which data sets are accurate.
Overcoming the Challenges of Data-Driven Marketing
Even with these challenges and potentially incomplete data, 96% of marketers agree that their data-driven strategies are successful. This suggests that even when marketing campaigns are only partially optimize, teams are still more successful than when they use no data at all. If marketing teams have access to all the data they need, they will be able to upgrade their analytics and optimize across all campaigns.
The results show that only 8% of marketers almost never or never use data in their strategies. This means that the vast majority of marketers are making full use of the data they have – even if it’s slim!
Opportunities for the greatest impact
Customer data can be applie across the entire marketing funnel and can be as basic or complex as the quality of the data. Sure, name and age can be use to create a more personalize experience for customers through email. But as marketers layer on location data, website activity, and social media engagement, they are able to see how customers flow through the funnel from beginning to end.
We were curious about where marketers were focusing on creating the biggest impact throughout the journey. Surprisingly, most agencies have been using data in ways that lead to better experiences for their customers, rather than focusing solely on ROI.
The most common responses were creating a more personalize experience for customers (49%), developing a content marketing strategy (41%), and developing new products and services (36%). Last on the list was attribution (15%), which may suggest a lack of tools necessary to collect data and close the loop. Download the report to see the full breakdown!
Numbers Don’t Lie
These numbers also tell us that marketers are excite and willing to do everything they can to use the data at their fingertips. Optimizing data quality will only make this easier.
That’s exactly why more and more companies korea telegram data are turning to all-in-one marketing automation solutions that combine all of their data channels into one easily accessible system. After years of combining tools through endless API connections and widgets, marketers end up with bloate martech stacks that cost companies time and money. It’s no wonder many are turning to simpler solutions.
44% of marketers believe that technological innovation has had the greatest impact on data-driven marketing in the past year. They are using online marketing tools for small business marketing automation to simplify tools, collect better data, and even automate certain manual, repetitive tasks while maintaining a personalized experience for customers.
The results show that the problem really lies in a lack of tools, not a lack of knowledge on how to use data. 79% of respondents said they are very satisfied with their marketing team’s ability to effectively use current customer data. Marketers are already using the minimum amount of data they have to maximize their efforts! They need to integrate better data.
Improve data-driven marketing strategies
Data-driven marketing looks set to continue. So we also asked agencies how they plan to improve their approach in the coming year. Improving c phone number data quality (41%) is a top priority for many agencies. Improving personalization (39%) and leveraging more available data (37%) aren’t far behind.
Many organizations are putting their wallets where their mouths are by investing in data-driven initiatives for the year ahead. According to the survey, most marketers would like to see an increase in budgets focused on data-driven strategies.
If your company doesn’t view data as the future, it might be time to reconsider!
Key points
Data-Driven Marketing from an Agency Marketer’s Perspective points to some clear trends that we don’t expect to see any time soon.
In the coming year, we expect marketers to focus on collecting quality data to help optimize and inform strategy. We’ve seen that they’re already acquiring the data they have to inform current campaigns. But access to the data they really need is limited by the tools and resources in front of them. This means more companies will be looking for solutions.
Companies looking to use data to improve the customer journey are turning to marketing automation tools to streamline workloads, create better reports, and better execute campaigns. Does this sound like the future for your team? Schedule a demo of SharpSpring and let us show you how it can revolutionize your marketing.
