Transforming Critical Consumer Data Into Great Marketing Decisions

Published in

Becoming Human: Artificial Intelligence Magazine

6 min readMay 14, 2021

At a time when consumers think in terms of “I want it now” and demand personalization from the brands they engage with, the marketing landscape is experiencing a transformation. Such transformation involves the increased necessity for information to drive decision-making.

As a result, marketers need substantiating data to help determine the development and implementation of the right marketing campaigns for the right target audience to deliver the desired revenue.

Despite this growing need for high-quality and relevant data, many marketers struggle with cultivating data that acts as a road map for brands that endeavor to make good marketing decisions. What’s needed is a shift in thinking and digital transformation that converts critical consumer data into great marketing decisions.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is the practice of using digital technology in multiple business processes, radically changing and streamlining operations to meet the growing needs of changing market conditions. It is a cultural shift that requires a change in the status quo. However, digital transformation is not limited to merely setting up a website or digitally formatting a business.

According to Forbes, 70% of companies have a digital transformation strategy already in place or are already working on one. Today, marketers are diving into digital change and finding virtually unlimited amounts of consumer data.

The data is not the goal. The goal is to know how to collect, analyze, and utilize it to improve the customer experience with customer journey tracking. This is precisely what digital transformation brings through proper planning, creating a data strategy, and integrating platforms.

Make Data Collection a Priority

Your organization must institute a comprehensive data gathering system that includes mechanisms designed to collect data, such as consumer behavior tracking across social media, partners, and other channels. Data collection can also be retrieved via qualitative and quantitative methods, with or without company communication channels.

Making data collection a priority will lead to understanding your target audience in ways never before imagined. This is then the entryway to good marketing decision-making.

Utilization of Data for Increased Revenue

The practice of big data collection is being added by chief marketing officers (CMOs) to drive marketing decision-making. In a recent study conducted by Villanova University, marketing decisions are based on customer insights, customer retention, and branding. Forty-six percent of the interviewed CMOs agreed that they would be willing to utilize several strategies to gather more consumers.

Such strategies may include personalization, mobile reporting, and targeting based on location. The study also highlighted that 42% of CMOs base their decisions on the number of customers acquired, 40.5% on the consumer’s insight, and 39.1% view digital marketing as the most important factor, whereas 35% base their decisions on customer retention. Finally, 34.5% base their marketing decisions on branding.

Where To Get Data

Meaningful data helps drive the marketing decision-making process and the performance of campaigns and decisions around customer segmentation. From the same Villanova University study, 29% of marketers indicated that utilizing marketing analytics contributed 26% to the company’s revenue growth. In comparison, 54% of companies have noticed an increase in profit through marketing analytics.

Internal sources were responsible for 54% of business data, 25% from external resources, and 21% from internal and external sources. Sales and financial transactions were responsible for providing 56% of the data. Fifty-one percent comes from leads and sales contacts on the customer database, 39% from email correspondence, and another 39% from productivity applications.

The Digital Marketing Funnel

The digital marketing funnel includes the steps utilized to turn prospects into paying customers and keep them as paying customers. It is a strategic model representing the journey buyers go through, from the first introduction to the brand to an actual purchase to a return for more.

The marketing funnel has always been in place, but the use of communications technologies and its ability to track customer behavior has led to more advanced decision-making. Customer journey tracking now allows brands to engage and keep customers for the long term.

The digital marketing funnel involves six stages a lead goes through when deciding to buy from you.

Exposure: This is where you establish your business and the stage where prospects become aware of the product and service you offer.
Discovery: This step is where your prospect digs further to learn more about your brand and whether it fits what they’re looking for. Using methods to keep prospects on your website and drive engagement is critical to maximizing this step.
Consideration: Your prospect is in the process of contemplating a purchase and can be led further along the journey with good content and overcoming barriers.
Conversion: This is where the prospect is converted to an actual customer by making a purchase.
Customer Relationship: In the customer relationship stage, the goal is to continually serve your customer, offering solutions and ensuring they view your brand as a valuable resource.
Retention: Because it can be as much as five times more expensive to gain a new customer than to retain an existing one, many brands have focused on customer satisfaction and the need to have your customers return again and again.

Salesforce.com has determined that 69% of customers want a connected experience when they engage with a brand. The digital marketing funnel facilitates this in ways that were not as effective several years ago.

Peter Schwartz, Salesforce Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning at Salesforce, states, “Customer experience and service have converged. It’s more than call centers and successful responses to problems; it is service opportunities in sales, support, and marketing. Delivering great customer experiences now means providing amazing, almost magical service at every opportunity.”

Data as a Decision-Driving Tool

As organizations learn more about their customers, the better their marketing decisions. The key is using the actual data in order to implement successful marketing campaigns and, as a result, generate more revenue.

Make the Customer Experience Personal

Tailoring content to customers’ different preferences and interests resonates. The more organizations deliver information prospects actually want in a way that improves their situation, the better chance of converting and retaining that customer.

Doing things such as segmenting your email lists to provide just the right headlines, content, offers, and promotions to those specific personas you’ve identified will result in greater ROI. If it’s personal to them, it’s important to them.

Leverage Predictive Analytics

Data plays a significant role in predictive behavior and preferences among your target audience. Predictive analytics is an approach more marketers use with the availability of more data. Through statistical algorithms and machine learning, organizations can identify specific outcomes based on their already retrieved data.

Machine learning is no longer the sole domain of banks and insurance companies. AI, and its related methodologies, can be used to leverage data regarding what has already happened to predict what will happen.

An example of using predictive analytics to drive decisions around marketing campaigns might include the fact that retailers know men who buy diapers also purchase beer. Insight such as this paves the way to utilize a variety of cross-promotional campaigns designed to take advantage of their customers’ buying habits, thus resulting in greater ROI.

Collecting, analyzing, and leveraging vast amounts of consumer data can be the difference-maker for brands hoping to dominate their market. Digital transformation opportunities exist for marketers, allowing them to use a variety of arrows in their quiver to gather that data and use it to make the best marketing decisions possible.