How Data and Analytics are Influencing Modern Marketing

In 2023, you’ll see the use of data and analytics everywhere. 

For example, your favorite streamlining platform, Netflix, uses data to identify which movies will be a hit. Your go-to music app, Spotify, uses data analytics to recommend you new songs. Uber, a company many of us rely on, uses data to match your drivers to you. 

However, at Breadcrumbs, we believe you don’t need to be one of the bigwigs to incorporate data and analytics into your product or service. 

So, here are the ten easy ways you can use data and analytics, specifically, to shape your marketing efforts. 

1. Find ideal customer profiles 

With a treasure trove of customer data (thanks to lead magnets or past purchases), you can use tools like Breadcrumbs Reveal to identify ideal customer profiles (ICPs). 

Identifying ICPs allows you to speed up the sales cycle. For example, if you know which leads are red hot or ready to convert, you can focus your energy on only converting them.

Additionally, you can deploy tactics like account-based marketing (ABM), which lets you customize your customer interactions based on their lifetime value. 

And while we’re on the topic, you can also increase your customer lifetime value if you have ideal customer profiles at your disposal. Case in point, research shows that 81% of consumers expect companies to understand them. What better way to understand your target audience than by developing ICPs? 

2. Improve personalization 

One sale unlocks access to a customer’s entire purchase history. In other words, a goldmine of data right from when they became a paying customer to when they raised a support ticket, and even other data points like:

• Dates of their exact purchases
• What they brought 
• What made them buy it (e.g., sale, limited-time offer, special occasion) 
• Customer demographic (age, gender, address)

And wouldn’t it be great to be able to personalize your communications and improve interactions with existing customers and potential leads? 

For example, sales folks would know what to say to upsell to prospects. Marketing professionals would know how to target ICPs. And customer support people would know how to overcome customer objections—all while continually learning new ways to improve their communication processes. 

Have you ever heard the automated message say, “This conversation might be recorded for internal quality and training purposes,” or something along the same lines while on a call with customer support? Yeah, that’s how companies use your data to provide better service in the future (this is also known as call listening). 

3. Know how your posts would perform

Imagine if you spent 10 hours on an ad for your social media only for it to perform poorly. Now, there’s quite a possibility you wouldn’t know what you did wrong or how you can improve your efforts next time. 

Has this happened to you? Don’t worry. We’ve all been there.

Thankfully, with data, you can learn from your past mistakes. Companies like Dash Hudson exist to show you predictive insights, such as how your social media posts will perform based on a score and how you can improve that score by improving X, Y, and Z factors. 

Say goodbye to silly mistakes and hello to top-performing social content. 

4. Be more targeted

When you have multiple data points to work with, you can also segment them to create a more targeted approach.

For example, if you’re a travel agency, you’ll have to run different campaigns for two customer subsets—one for college students and the other for older adults.

Your data suggests that the first subset of people ideally look for cheaper tickets and more fun activities. In contrast, the latter subgroup of people looks for luxurious, relaxing vacations (maybe even adult-only resorts).

From there, you can dive deeper and divide college students into additional subsets—students who work part-time, international students, and in-state students. 

For example, in-state students prefer to avoid visiting local places for sightseeing, but international students might choose it. Similarly, students who work might have to plan trips around their work schedule and academic calendar. 

The point is, the more targeted you can be with your campaigns, the more likely you are to convert leads. It might sound too simple, but trust us, it works. 

Here’s a real-life example to consider. Norfolk Florist uses data analytics to track the popularity of specific flower arrangements, identify peak order times, and analyze customer purchase history, thus ensuring their communication with customers leads to a conversion.

Not to mention, they use these insights to strategically place the most popular flower arrangements for that season front and center on their homepage: 

This simple use of underlying data reduces friction in the buyer’s journey, improving the likelihood of conversion and enhancing the customer experience. It’s a true win-win scenario.

5. Identify partners to work with

Marketing requires you to work with many stakeholders (such as influencers, ambassadors, employees, companies, etc.). 

One key question many marketers ask themselves, particularly in the case of influencer partnerships, is—how do I identify which person is suitable for this organization? 

The answer to that question lies within your data or publicly available information. Today, you can use data to identify which influencers to work with based on their engagement rate, audience, the content they specialize in, and goodwill. 

Tools like BuzzSumo and SproutSocial can help you unlock these vital insights for a successful partnership.  

6. Make key decisions

Data analytics is a great asset for business decision-making. For example, you can unlock the answers to the following questions using data: 

• How to improve my marketing campaigns?
• Which type of content converts well?
• Where should I invest my efforts?
• How can we improve our conversion rate?
• How to improve my product or service? 

All you need to do is take a deep dive into your data and analytics, and they’ll point you in the right direction.

Side Note: To not lose track of any of the discussions you’ve had in your decision-making meetings, we recommend using a board minutes template to keep up with the highlights.

7. Create a better customer experience on your website

Good web analytics tools like Ahrefs or Semrush will point you towards SEO analytics, your website’s UI/UX performance, and site load speed. 

They’ll also tell you which products customers clicked on the most, which web pages they bounced from, the status of your backlinks, content gaps, etc. 

As such, when you have a better handle on all these factors, you can improve your website’s customer experience. 

For example, with the data above, you can improve your SEO efforts, invest in content that converts, improve site loading speed, and address all content gaps.

8. Improve your knowledge about purchase drivers

Getting a good grip on customer purchase drivers can be a huge asset. 

Imagine a world where you know what makes your customers click, engage, and convert—that information allows you to structure your future campaigns better than your competitors and increase your sales rate. 

Thanks to advanced artificial intelligence technology, this ideal world exists today. You can analyze which posts perform better, which ads see the highest conversion rates, which visuals have the most impressions, and which campaigns have brought in the highest sales rates. 

Knowing that customer profile A has purchase drivers X, Y, and Z., you can use these purchase drivers to create more targeted marketing campaigns in the future and boost return on investment (ROI). 

9. Identify the right metrics 

When creating PPC ads, you often have to deal with multiple metrics, such as clicks, cost per click, quality score, impression share, and conversion rates. Someone new to the game might run ads on keywords with the most clicks. 

However, a seasoned expert who knows PPC ads in and out might prioritize conversion rate, search impression rate, and search lost IS (budget) above clicks.

When you have a sea of data points and metrics with you (such as above), you can identify the most valuable metrics you should rely on to create top-performing content. 

The same applies to any other marketing campaigns you run, not just PPC ads. When multiple data points and metrics back you up, it eventually becomes easier to polish your campaigns, see better conversion rates, and target your customers better. 

10. Find which channels work best for you 

Suppose your marketing strategy involves creating content for blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, email newsletters, gated resources, templates, etc. 

Creating content and staying on top of many channels and mediums can get taxing. So, what can you do?

You can identify which marketing channels see the best engagement and conversion rates through data analytics and focus your energy on those channels. 

For example, if your email newsletter is your secret weapon, you can double down your efforts and create less content (or repurpose content) for other mediums. 

Take it to the next level by using a free AI blog writer that can generate unique content for blogs, articles, ads, products, websites, and social media in seconds. Think of it as having your cake and eating it too.

How can Breadcrumbs be of help? 

Modern marketing activities are here to stay thanks to data analytics and technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and IoT spearheading the movement. 

So what does that mean? We must switch from the traditional sense of marketing and start polishing up our marketing campaigns and improving conversion rates with the help of data analytics and the related technologies that power these insights. 

And as far as what Breadcrumbs can do for you? We can assist on two fronts:

• Through our customizable lead scoring models (which will help you streamline your sales and marketing efforts by identifying hot leads, ICPs, revenue opportunities, etc.)

• Through our blog (which will provide you with data-backed insights to help you improve your marketing and sales operations). 

Discover new growth opportunities for your business with our team of revenue experts. Schedule a demo today and learn about what effective lead scoring strategies can do for you!