Collecting data and then using it well can be overwhelming to marketers. But these tasks don’t have to be. Get the expert advice and sound recommendations you’ve been looking for from our own Ben Diesbach, director of analytics and insights, and Justin Orkin, VP of business development and strategy. Tune in now to their recent Digiday presentation (or read on below for the highlights) as they break down how to boost your data-driven marketing.
1. Harness Your Own Data
Tap into your first-party data to drive results and return on investment (ROI) by using the data-driven marketing process we at Goodway Group use ourselves:
- Take it one step at a time. Keep it simple to start. Identify and get a hold of the data assets you have (even if your first-party data is laid out in a disparate or disconnected manner).
- Think about what you want to solve. Have a hypothesis and broader goal of what you seek to achieve before you even make decisions about using a customer data platform or DMP, building something on your own, or investing in tech stacks, custom data integrations and more.
- Curate the right custom audience targeting and segmentation strategies. Base your decisions on real data rather than gut feel.
- Test and learn. Start with simplistic tests that answer larger high-leverage test first. Then get granular and iterate and refine as you go to inch closer to your goal over time.
Throughout the process, Ben says the most important thing is “to stay flexible and not let perfect be the enemy of the good.” “As you test different data segments, different platforms, different ways to get in front of the right users at the right time, where your attention goes, where your time goes will shift and change. That’s OK,” he says. Your data strategy is a journey.”
Though while you’re on that journey, Ben cautions, “Whether you’re testing creative iterations for a media strategy or different audiences you’re targeting for a prospecting strategy, the key is to not test too many things at once or you can end up not learning anything.”
2. Create Custom Audience-First Segmentation
To connect and engage consumers, develop audience targeting strategies rooted in the actual behaviors, demographics, and context of your existing first-party audience. Then create impactful segmentation strategies for your existing audience as well as with those audiences you want to target – to get net-new customers to engage with your brand.
When you do, results can be eye-opening. For instance, at Goodway, we recently worked with a client that has a large ecommerce presence selling a variety of at-home products across a couple primary categories. From a creative and audience standpoint, there’d been an assumption that cross-brand messaging can serve as a great upsell tactic to get customers from one brand to buy from another. We wanted to work with the data and actually test this assumption.
We checked if there was any amount of natural cross-over purchasing between the client’s brand categories in the first place. Surprisingly, we found little crossover between brands. The purchaser buckets from the client’s two brands were largely mutually exclusive to one another. Next, we examined the audience characteristics of both brands and spotted some key differences. In this case, the client’s data combined with ours informed us a cross-brand upsell strategy wasn’t the right one. Instead, the data revealed we should build more individual audience targeting strategies for each brand.
3. Keep Pulse on the Future of Data, Identity and Privacy
Data analytics as a practice has been historically siloed to an individual team, but the mindset and skill set are now being infused across organizations. Justin thinks this evolution will really pick up steam in 2021, especially now that the C-suite is paying more attention to data analytics and looking to marketing to drive results.
“Now we finally have the ability to measure and track marketing and put things in place to get a full view of the customer,” Justin says. “The cookie may be crumbling, but a lot of new partnerships and avenues are forming that will help give clarity into those users with or without the cookie.” In fact, Goodway is one such company now taking part in a few councils where we get to dig in and partner with leading buyers and publishers in the digital advertising industry and think about ad tech challenges from a discovery, targeting and measurement standpoint.
Ben says he’s excited to see the ad tech industry actively getting their hands dirty to come up with alternative and sustainable identity and privacy solutions to test and implement. He thinks this will serve everyone in the ecosystem better. “Though a lot of challenges lie ahead when it comes to data, especially related to identity and privacy, third-party cookies going away in Chrome, and the IDFA consent on iOS, they force ad tech to come up with a better long-term solution.”
“Targeting is not going to be like the targeting with third-party cookies that we’ve been used to,” he said. “There will be obstacles, and there won’t be 100% match rate, but the unfolding solutions will be something that works for marketers and consumers in the end. 2021 is going to be a great step forward in getting there.”
Justin is also optimistic about the future. When he thinks of the challenges ahead, he sees only new opportunities such as these. “You can put the consumer first across your website or mobile app and really think through that data-driven marketing process and what that journey looks like starting from the consumer,” he said. “And companies and brands can put the consumer first through this journey while ensuring acknowledgements exist along the way to build brand equity through one-to-one relationships.”
If you want to execute data strategy, audience targeting and brand messaging built for the future and get a return on advertising spend (ROAS), we’re here for you. We can help you create effective custom data-driven marketing and navigate the ever-changing, complex ad ecosystem with ease.