Here's how a personalized, data-driven approach can turn a crisis into an opportunity.
There’s a lot of doom and gloom around these days, and marketers and brands aren’t exempt from the feeling. Marketing budgets are shrinking around the world, as corporations tighten their belts in anticipation of a prolonged recession. UK adspend is expected to dip 8.9% in 2020, while in the US even with a Presidential election in which the candidates and their Super PACs are expected to spend up to $10 billion on appeals to voters, adspend is expected to dip by at least 4%. But the rollback in marketing budgets could actually be a positive for your brand, as the cuts to marketing expenditure force you to use more discretion, creativity, and savvy in the way you dispense your precious resources. Today we’ll let you know how a personalized, data-driven approach can turn a crisis into an opportunity.
We already know that the COVID-19 crisis has driven consumers online in ever greater numbers. This is good news if you have adopted a data-driven approach. An online purchase, and online interactions with a brand can yield a host of valuable information which lets you know whether your strategies have been effective, what kind of appeals are spurring interest and purchases, and how the typical shopper behaves. Unlike purchases occurring in brick and mortar stores, online transactions leave a trail which you can follow to the El Dorado of optimal marketing efficiency: the right message, to the right person, at the right moment, or to put it more succinctly, personalization.
This treasure trove of data is a strong inducement to shift your adspend online. With the right advertising partners, shoppable content, and sales-platforms that allow you to access the information you need, you can harness the power of data to ensure that you wring every last drop of value from your marketing budget.
As one data-marketing expert notes, one of the biggest challenges to successfully incorporating a data-driven approach is “finding the time, the people and the money, as well as getting organizational buy-in, to break down the data silos.” What this means is that the information you need to get the most out of a data-driven approach is likely spread out across a variety of stakeholders, who may not be communicating regularly. He notes that “Many times I’ve consulted with clients who were spending $10 million over just a three-year period in order to get their technical infrastructure in a better spot to warehouse their data.” You probably will need to re-organize the way your company collects, stores, and shares customer information, but at Adimo, we’re confident that we can help you find ways to harness the power of real-time data that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
Once you’ve unleashed your data, it may take a while to find a formula that allows you to quickly turn raw numbers into something useful and actionable. Remember that each nugget of information needs to be used to create a portrait of a customer. What are they buying? What ads are they clicking? What times of the day or days of the week are they open to shopping online? Do they seek out information or act on the spur of the moment? What platforms and types of content do they usually engage with? You’re trying to merge all of the information you can acquire about a customer into a a cohesive picture of an individual, and in order to do this you’ll need a system that can quickly aggregate and analyze all of the data you accumulate.
The goal of seeking out and breaking down this plethora of information isn’t the quest to hound your audience into making purchases against their better judgement. You should be focused on the ways in which you can use the data at your disposal to make their lives better and more convenient. Find out when they run out of the household staples they need and make it easy for them to replenish their pantry. Show them the articles of clothing, cosmetic products, and electronic devices that they’re likely to fall in love with. Offer them a shoppable recipe based on the ingredients they love to purchase, or already have in the fridge.
The greatest algorithms and fastest response times will mean nothing if you use them to annoy your audience, clutter their inboxes, and bombard them with unwanted offers. The golden rule of data-driven marketing is ensuring that you’re putting your data in service of a customer’s wants and needs. To do this you need to ask them for feedback at every turn and take action on it immediately. You also need to use their online behaviour as a road-map to what makes them tick (and spend).
Many companies aren’t about to hire an army of IT workers to build an elaborate and wholly original system for generating and managing sales data, especially in this period of economic uncertainty. The good news is that they don’t have to! By seeking out and engaging with marketing firms and tech partners who are capable of doing the heavy lifting, you can get data-driven marketing to work for you without a massive expenditure. According to Colin Sheard, Nestle’s head of eCommerce for the UK and Ireland, partnering with Adimo “not only makes it easy for customers to buy our products, but provides crucial insights that drive long term increases in marketing performance.” We are committed to offering our clients seamless shopping experiences across all platforms, while sharing (and explaining, if necessary) all of the sales data which will enable your brand to ride the wave of data to the personalized experiences consumers will soon demand! Get in touch with us today for a glimpse of your future!