As November rolls around, hunting enthusiasts pull out their orange gear, spruce up their deer blinds, and prepare to spend hours waiting for the opportunity to hit the target. If their shot is even a few inches off, they’ve wasted hours, and often the one chance they had to bring home the prize.
In many ways, the process of marketing to your audience is just as complicated and demands just as much accuracy. Consumers can be as skittish and hard to catch as an 8-point buck. As marketers, our tools are a little different than a neon orange jacket or a bow and arrow. Instead, we arm ourselves with data that allows us to track and nail our target with great accuracy.
Marketers have a complex relationship with data. Many who work as marketers consider themselves more as “creatives” rather than “number crunchers.” But data isn’t just a compilation of charts, but an amalgamation of information which demands that you target, target, target. We do a lot of this inherently, but often without the numbers to back us up. So how do we harness the data so often right at our fingertips? We target.
The key to harnessing your data is to target at every point in the process. Where to start?
Find the Target
Whether you’re a new business just launching your marketing plan or an agency launching a new series, use the data out there to find your audience. Define who your customer is and use available data to discover what marketing tools are most effective in reaching them. Imagine being in a room full of targets and deciding which one you want to send your flying arrow towards.
Target to your Market
The current marketing landscape allows you to target consumers in a variety of ways. Companies like Google have aggregated unlimited data, which companies can use to position their content in a highly effective way. Instead of spending ad dollars on television spots that may be relevant to only 1 in 10 viewers, ads can be placed according to algorithms based on search history or related interests. Be sure to harness this information to find the best placement. Check out context marketing.
Analyze the Shot
If you’re collecting your data on your marketing practices, or even if you aren’t, you almost always have too much data at your fingertips. Narrowing your focus in order to hone in on the relevant information is key. Luckily, software has become more and more targeted in order to help. Companies like Simply Measured or Sprout Social are great tools for tracking social engagement. On a company-wide scale, platforms like Domo or Salesforce help track the important metrics a company needs to measure their success.
Re-Target
The process of targeting around data doesn’t end when a campaign strategy is decided on, or even after a campaign is finished. Data challenges you to continually reevaluate your successes, timing, content, engagement and more. Throughout any process, you should be analyzing available data in order to help you create a more efficient, more effective strategy. Jon Hiedorn of Siemens PLM suggests that you “work backwards from your successful outcome to find the source of the success.” Track your successes back to their origins to find what’s working and what isn’t.
Data isn’t just about data. It’s about knowing how and when to use it. Targeting your data, and using targeted data, gives you that little “extra” you need to hit the target and bring home the prize.
Listen to local professionals talk about how they harness their data in the Michigan Marketing Minds panel discussion.
