In today’s world of ever-evolving digital marketing, it’s important not to forget your foundational data that supports your marketing strategy. The first step in any marketing plan is research. To be able to market your product or service, you need to have a firm understanding of who you are targeting to and who your competition in the market is. This will become the lifeblood of your strategy, and is no longer a luxury, but a necessity to ensure you stay competitive, and achieve your marketing objectives.
Data collection is like having a secret decoder that reveals the hidden treasures of customer behaviour, leaving behind valuable insights for you to leverage. Knowing the age of your audience, such as children, young adults, mature adults, or even seniors is one of the best examples, as you wouldn’t be marketing briefcases to young children, would you? Taking the time to understand who your customers are, is important in the long run for further development and innovation.
The four main indicators commonly used in marketing are age, gender, household income and parental status. To protect user privacy, exact metrics are rarely gathered, but rather grouped into similar tiers for example age groups – 18-24, 25-34. 34-44, 45-54. 55-64. 65+. By breaking these into groups, you’re able to target specific audiences without breaching any privacy laws, while still gathering essential data.
So now that you have established who you are going to target your product to, now you need to entice them to interact with your business. There are several marketing channels available these days thanks to the advancement in digital technology, but not all channels are interacted with the same way. Platforms such as Google Analytics help you understand exactly where your traffic is coming from, and how they interact with your website. There is a wealth of information to be found here, to help you better understand your market. Social media platforms provide their own insights, focusing more on reach, impressions, and interactions with your page.
By analysing all this juicy data and combining this with your purchase history, you can really start to identify patterns in consumer behaviour and work out which channel is going to serve you best, and how. It may not always be about launching into paid marketing on all platforms, but a combination of some, and omitting others.
So now that you have a comprehensive understanding of your target audience, and how they interact with your business, now you need to consider who else in the market is doing the same?
In this day and age, competition can be fierce, especially in the digital realm where more and more companies are moving their businesses online and furthering their reach of accessibility. It’s not just a shop in the next street over, or next town over, sometimes you might be competing with a company on the other side of the country!
Having a firm understanding of who your true competitors will give you that upper hand in ensuring you maintain that competitive edge. By finding those gaps and trends in the market, you can optimise your marketing efforts to stay one step ahead of the pack and tap into new markets.
Personalised marketing has become a major tactic in recent years and can be the converting factor from turning interest into a loyal customer. By filtering your data down, consider browsing patterns, past interactions with your company and the basic demographics you originally researched, and leverage this information to create highly targeted and specific content or offers. Not only can this help you increase your conversion rate, but also helps you build on your brand awareness, and establish trust with potential customers.
By looking through the data you have collected, you will be able to identify all the gaps in your marketing campaigns and create plans to improve your performance. Is your traffic from Facebook your highest market? Focus your market strategy there. Do you get more reviews from repeat customers? Focus on improving the interactions with your first-time purchasers, whether it is creating an email campaign to ask for them, or perhaps it might be adding a “thank you” card into the packaging before you send the products. You will be able to identify the areas that yield the best results, and where to re-allocate resources for improvement.
Continuous research and data monitoring is important throughout your campaign, it’s not just a once off task at the beginning. Customer behaviours and preferences evolve over time, so to stay on top of the game, you need to make sure you keep your finger on the pulse. You can engage in market research, analyse feedback from the customers, as well as monitoring industry trends.
By embracing customer research and really getting to know your audience, you can minimise risks, maximise ROI and make informed decisions on the best way to tackle your marketing strategy and create effective and compelling campaigns to grow your brand. Get the ball rolling on your Marketing Strategy together with Adllins Media, where we keep our finger on the pulse, and deliver a strategy that takes your business to the next-level.
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