3dataIn a recent global research study, conducted by the Winterberry Group and Global DMA, 80% of the marketers, technologists and service providers, surveyed said that data is crucial to the deployment of their marketing and advertising efforts.

Data for businesses has evolved from merely providing learnings to giving answers and driving actionable insights. Increasingly, businesses are moving towards a smarter, more consumer-centric approach that can only be achieved by gathering insights from data.

But what are the key trends that marketers need to consider to be truly data-driven? Saurabh Dangwal, Vice President, APAC, MediaMath, provides some trends in data-driven marketing he expects to resonate with marketers across the globe.

It’s all about the consumer

As consumers increasingly expect better targeted and personalized communication, moving from a channel-centric approach to audience-centric marketing just makes good business sense, he states. For evidence, the increased usage of ad blocking technology is a direct reaction of consumers being delivered irrelevant and inappropriate advertising messages.

To meet their customers’ expectation, businesses rely heavily on their marketers to know all they can about their customers and to be able to interact with them effectively. Not to mention that the demand to deliver more relevant communications is one of the most important factors driving the use of data in marketing today. Data helps businesses deliver better-crafted messages, delivered to the most appropriate members of an audience population, and also improves the customer experience across media touchpoints.

Digital channels are the new POS

Consumers from all demographics are now spending more time online. With almost half of the world’s internet users sitting in Asia, there is a huge opportunity for digital channels here to lead the pack in terms of touchpoints with consumers. Marketers are tapping on this by bridging the gap between traditional and digital in their media mix.

Web and eCommerce content, social media, mobile, paid search engine marketing and online display advertising all make up today’s marketer’s arsenal to achieve the Holy Grail – reaching the right customer, at the right time, with the right messages.

In fact, the study by The Winterberry Group and Global DMA found that digital channels posted the most substantial performance gains compared to other media channels in the past year. Fact is that marketing has gone digital, because that is where the consumers are – and therefore, that is where the insightful data is.

Talent is required

Going digital requires experts who can unlock and generate more value from data-driving marketing efforts. Many business managers are known to look across the globe for professionals with data analytics experience, demonstrating a clear demand and scarcity for these talents.

Within organizations, employees with data analytical skills, at all levels, across all functions, are valued today more than ever before. A recent study by IDC found that organizations with a strong analytics culture, supported by upper management, see significant improvements to organizational performance. With the right people and the right attitude towards data use, businesses can really reap the benefits of better, more actionable insights.

Tackling the challenges

The task of navigating more complex data, several media channels, increasing customer requirements, and higher expectations from business leaders for better insights, is even challenging for the data-savvy marketer, as there is a lot of  information to manage.

For example, MediaMath sees on an average over 150 billion online advertising opportunities per day. For a marketer, managing these opportunities across multiple marketing campaigns every single day is unthinkable; there is too much data behind these opportunities that cannot be made sense of by the ordinary human mind. Synthesizing these data points across a few million consumers and intelligently delivering personalized content can only be done through advanced technology powered by algorithms.

Digital marketing technology is indeed the solution, deriving meaningful insights from massive, complex data sets. With these insights, digital marketers will be able to execute across many areas of digital, such as e.g. programmatic advertising, data management, audience analytics, marketing automation and creative management. The more intelligent the technology, the better the consumer insights, and the more targeted the marketing approach – eventually leading to better business decisions and results.

Source: MediaMath