With the growing expanse of available online data, marketing strategies also need to be advanced for businesses to adopt and harness and utilize the important information. Wondering where to start from and how to enhance your data-driven marketing efforts?

Here are some reigning trends in the marketing arena and some tips to exploit them to stay ahead in your game plan.

Personalized User Experience

You would have observed when you log into your Amazon account you will find customized recommendation given by Amazon, which is based on your shopping and browsing pattern.

Ever found your homepage experience personalized in real time to reflect your online behavior? These are some of the examples how marketers are using data to realize their customers preferences better and establish individualized user experiences.

Adopt this trend by following these simple steps:

  1. Identify your target customers’ demographics and tailor your content and website experiences accordingly. For example, if you are targeting at selling your products to females of age 20-35, depict such a person on your homepage.
  2. Try to emphasize the products or services on your homepage where majority of your revenue is made and try and make them found easily and smoothly navigated through pages.
  3. There are many tools and platforms such as Optimizely that provide valuable customer insights and you can club it with the data you already have and use them to easily create various personalized homepage experiences for your customers. Another important point to note is to use a tool that will allow you to conduct A/B testing on different homepage variations to determine which one will produce higher consumer engagement.

Predictive Analytics

As per SAS, “Predictive analytics is the use of data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. The goal is to go beyond knowing what has happened to provide a best assessment of what will happen in the future.”

This is quite a viable approach for impactful strategic approach in account-based marketing (ABM) which promotes sales-and-marketing alignment by focusing only on key target accounts that match your company’s ideal customer profile. The aim is to develop better understanding of businesses that will have more chances of showing interest in your services you offer and do business.

On the other side in B2C marketing, predictive analytics can help marketers focus on ad spend on the right people, helping them achieve more ROI.

Predictive analytics is a very effective technology to be leveraged to enhance your marketing results by helping you identify:

  1. Companies that match your profiling of ideal customer: Predictive analytics tools often provide vital firmographic information on prospects, along with industry, employees count, ballpark figure of turnover and funding rounds. You can use these variables to zero in on companies that fit your buyer personas and can afford your products.
  2. Accounts with higher turnover:Intent data or data sets that consist of people who have shown a strong inclination to be in-market for a specific product or service category, has become quite widely available in both B2C and B2B spaces. Having said that all intent data created does not consider viable variables. Intent data compiled from individual behaviors on social media is more accurate and is known to drive better ad targeting.

Identity Resolution for 360° Customer View

For most engaging omnichannel experience, you must recognize and knit your customers’ identities across all the channels and devises. Identity resolution helps in enabling you to expand your view of a customer to their apps and interests. Identity resolution makes possible more precise targeting, omnichannel tracking and measurement, and personalization at scale.

Toolset such as StiristaLINK is helpful in connecting B2B and B2C identities for a 360° view of your prospects. This lets you develop integrated communications to reach the same person, for example, via Facebook, LinkedIn and other social channels, and personal and business email.

Data Onboarding for Targeted Ads

Data onboarding is again a potent strategy that’s widely popular and trending. As per reports the data onboarding market is predicted to reach $1 billion by 2020.

“The process of transferring offline data to an online environment for marketing needs.” Lotame, a data management platform, defines data onboarding.

Lotame adds, “Data onboarding is mainly used to connect offline customer records with online users by matching Personally Identifiable Information (PII) gathered from offline datasets to find the same customers online.”

As a marketer, you can use Data Onboarding along with Identity Resolution and omnichannel marketing, in order to touch base with same audience set on various devices with personalized messaging.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Top data-driven marketing companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and LinkedIn have been actively using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data and predictive analytics to improve their products.

For instance, LinkedIn uses ML (the ability of machines to teach themselves from data they collect through their programmed algorithms) to power its smart replies recommendation engine.

Google uses AI and predictive analytics in autocomplete search prediction engine. Once you begin typing in the search box, an algorithm utilizes all user data acquired to show what you might be interested in before you finish typing. These predictions are based on information gathered on the interests of other people with similar search queries.

Facebook also uses machine learning to power its Website Conversion engine. For instance, the tool can calculate your cost per purchase and estimated conversions after 50 conversions. The “machine” requires a certain number of conversions to learn and predict which type of audience will better respond to your offer in the future.

So, these were some of the most noteworthy and crucial data-driven marketing trends to adopt or start using expansively. Now more than ever, businesses must assemble and integrate customer data to gain insights that will help you create a great, seamless customer experience spanning multiple channels. Leveraging these trends will move you along that path toward better results.