To help you understand the most crucial customer data for creating a successful marketing campaign, we asked twelve CEOs, Marketing Managers, and other industry professionals to share their insights. From tapping into reading and purchasing behaviors to evaluating demographic information, here are the top insights these leaders shared on the most important customer data to consider. Here are 12 tips for effectively using customer data in marketing.
- Tap Into Reading and Purchasing Behaviors
- Prioritize Behavioral Data Over Demographics
- Focus On the Client’s Lifetime Value
- Track Website Visit Frequency
- Leverage Personal Background Information
- Utilize Lead Scoring for Prospects
- Understand the Audience’s Motives and Objectives
- Tailor Campaigns to Customer Intent
- Learn From Past Campaign Performance
- Employ Lead-Qualification Data
- Align With the Audience’s Preferences
- Evaluate Demographic Information
Tap Into Reading and Purchasing Behaviors
Understanding “Customer Reading and Purchase Behavior” is crucial when crafting marketing campaigns in our book services and publishing business.
This data, encompassing genre preferences, format selections (e-books, audiobooks, physical copies), and purchase timing, illuminates customer desires and habits. For example, a rise in historical fiction purchases would prompt the spotlighting of related titles.
This targeted approach empowers our campaigns to resonate more deeply with our audience, fostering engagement and driving conversions.
Tapping into reading and purchase behaviors enables us to meet readers where they are, crafting campaigns that capture not only attention but also hearts, turning both pages and profits effectively.
Vikrant Shaurya, CEO, Authors On Mission
Prioritize Behavioral Data Over Demographics
As a marketing manager working in an accounting firm with plenty of experience handling customer data for marketing, here are a few remarks regarding your query.
A foray into personalized marketing taught me that the key lies in more than just demographics. Behavioral data, such as past interactions with your brand, purchase history, and preferences, is the secret sauce. If a client consistently engages with educational content on your site, informative campaigns may be more effective.
Rather than focusing solely on age and location, examine how customers behave. Take advantage of tools to track website interactions, email opens, and social media engagements. This will allow you to identify patterns that reveal not only who your customers are but also how they interact with your brand.
Kelly Chan, Marketing Manager, Accountant Online
Focus On the Client’s Lifetime Value
Discerning which data points are pivotal can be a challenge in the vast sea of metrics available to marketers. However, from two decades of crafting campaigns and steering a digital agency, one metric consistently rises to the top: a client’s lifetime value (LTV). Understanding LTV goes beyond immediate sales; it offers a comprehensive view of the long-term revenue a customer can generate.
By prioritizing LTV, insights into customer loyalty, repeat business, and referral potential are gained. It helps allocate marketing budgets more effectively, ensuring that acquisition costs don’t outweigh the customer’s long-term revenue.
Recognizing the lifetime worth of a client allows for tailored marketing strategies, fostering deeper relationships and ensuring sustained engagement. While there are myriad metrics to consider, LTV stands out as a cornerstone for any successful marketing endeavor.
Shane McEvoy, MD, LeadFly
Track Website Visit Frequency
Knowing when a prospect or customer last visited your website can provide insight into the relevance of the information you market to them. If a customer has frequently visited your website, you can offer them a discount to push them over the edge and convert.
If the customer hasn’t visited your website in a long time, you can cater to this customer with a top-of-the-funnel marketing campaign. Knowing this data will help your marketing team create more effective campaigns that lead to conversions.
Marshall Weber, CMO, Stor-It
Leverage Personal Background Information
Customer’s personal background information, including age, gender, location, and income, undeniably makes up a pivotal component in marketing. Diverse marketing endeavors may call for distinct types of customer data, making robust customer data the foundation of your data analysis and a focal point in marketing.
Personal background information aids in pinpointing the suitable audience for particular target markets and products. Different age groups and backgrounds exhibit varying product requirements. For instance, children’s toys are designed for young parents. Given the evolving times, parental demands for children’s toys extend beyond mere amusement; they now encompass safety and educational attributes.
Other customer data, such as purchase history and behavioral insights, also warrants attention. These facets provide a more profound comprehension, contributing to fulfilling customer needs and the establishment of enduring relationships.
Iris Chan, Marketing Content Manager, GeniusHub
Utilize Lead Scoring for Prospects
Lead scoring is a go-to method. It acts as a quick gauge to identify genuinely interested prospects.
Positive interactions, such as spending ample time on our site or registering for webinars, increase their score. Conversely, if they’re less engaged or don’t align with our ideal customer, their score decreases.
This approach helps channel resources towards those with a higher likelihood of purchasing.
Neil Hodgson Coyle, Content Marketing Manager, PRLab
Understand the Audience’s Motives and Objectives
The most crucial client information for a fruitful marketing effort includes both the “what” and the “why.” While knowing your audience’s underlying motives, difficulties, and objectives is key, demographic and behavioral data are also important. Surveys, interviews, or social listening can reveal this.
You can learn more about your consumers’ psychological makeup and their needs, wants, and decision-making processes. You can develop emotionally engaging material that speaks to their actual wants and aspirations thanks to this greater insight.
It converts your marketing from a generic, customer-centric strategy to a customized one, increasing engagement and conversion rates.
Matt Magnante, Head of Marketing, Fitness Volt
Tailor Campaigns to Customer Intent
One of the biggest things to consider with a customer when creating a marketing campaign is customer intent. This could be online, on social media, in-store, etc. What is their intent? They could be online, for example, to purchase a product, looking for answers to a question, trying to find a website/store, or gathering more information on your products.
Within your marketing campaigns, it is important to tailor your approach to what users are searching for. In the online marketing world, looking at search queries that are coming to your website will help you understand your customers more. Then, you can craft your approach to ensure that your website achieves what they are looking for.
It is important to consider all kinds of customer intent when creating a marketing campaign because when customers visit your store, company, website, etc., they are more likely to convert or perform the desired action if it is tailored toward them.
Aaron Grimes, Strategic Sales and Global Product Manager, TYKMA Electrox
Learn From Past Campaign Performance
It’s crucial to look at how customers responded to prior campaigns if you hope to build even better ones. You can see which materials and content customers responded best to, and the areas that were the least effective.
Whether you choose to improve those problem areas or reduce the focus there depends on your overarching goals and budget, but either strategy should work to improve your ROI.
If you’re creating new marketing campaigns without looking at past performance, you’re doomed to make the same mistakes repeatedly. Users will tell you a lot about how they respond to older marketing strategies—you have that data, so use it!
Hardy Desai, Founder, Supple Digital
Employ Lead-Qualification Data
When a lead interacts with a brand, whether by engaging with content, responding to emails, or browsing products, they leave behind data trails that show their interest level and readiness to make a purchasing decision.
This is called lead-qualification data, and it’s a key requirement for any targeted marketing campaign. Why? Analyzing these interactions allows for precise identification of whether the lead is at the awareness, consideration, or decision stage of the buying journey.
This stage-specific insight is crucial as it directs the tone, content, and call-to-action of marketing messages. For instance, leads in the awareness stage require educational content that addresses their pain points, while those in the decision stage benefit from comparative or testimonial content that nudges them toward making a purchase.
Michelle Burson, President and Co-Founder, MarComm
Align With the Audience’s Preferences
The most important customer data to consider when creating a marketing campaign would be your target audience’s preferences or interests.
Understanding what your customers like, what they’re passionate about, and what appeals to them will help you make a campaign that will align with them on a personal level, making it much more likely to succeed.
Camille Fortuno, B2B Marketing Research Specialist, UpCity
Evaluate Demographic Information
The most important customer data to consider when creating a marketing campaign is demographic information, such as age, gender, location, and income level. This information helps to understand the target audience and tailor the campaign accordingly.
For example, if the target audience is young adults, the marketing campaign can focus on social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. However, if the target audience is middle-aged professionals, the campaign can be more suited for platforms like LinkedIn or targeted email marketing.
Abdullah Prem, Digital Marketer, Bloggersneed
