Leveraging Your Own Data to Increase Profits From Digital Marketing

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We are in the age of endless amounts of data. And today, businesses have access to more data than ever before. As a data obsessed organization, we believe that this wealth of information can be a powerful tool to increase profitability. By analyzing customer data, website traffic, and other digital engagements, businesses can create extremely targeted campaigns to drive conversions. In this article, we’ll explore the different ways you can leverage your own information to increase profits through targeted digital advertising.

The Importance of Data in Digital Advertising

In order for companies to perform and achieve their business goals, they need to deeply understand their customers, to more effectively sell to them. Data is the key to gaining a deeper understanding of audiences. By collecting and analyzing data on customer behavior, website traffic, and other digital engagement, businesses can gain insights into what their audience wants and needs. This, in turn, allows them to create targeted campaigns that are more likely to resonate with their audience and drive conversions.

Types of Data You Can Leverage for Digital Marketing

There are many different types of data that businesses can leverage for digital advertising. These include:

• Customer data: Customer behavior, such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographics. For some industries, this could be shopper data, credit history, household income, etc.
• Website analytics: Information on website traffic, such as pageviews, bounce rate, and time on site.
• Third-party data: This includes data from external sources, such as data providers and ad networks, like Google or other platforms.

Depending on the type of product or service, there various data partners that can provide a deeper understanding of your customers or target prospects.

How to Collect and Analyze Your Data

To leverage your own information effectively, you need to collect and analyze your data in a meaningful way. Additionally it is essential that you collect data that aligns with privacy laws and regulations. Here are some tips for doing so:

• Use analytics tools: There are many analytics tools available that can help you collect and analyze data on your website and social media channels. You can use Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics or other similar platforms.
• Work with data providers: Oftentimes, first party data lacks the context or ability to take action. This is when a third-party platform, such as Experian, LiveRamp or others can help.
• Segment your data: Segmenting your data allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your audience and their behavior. For example, you might create a segment of customers based on demographics or purchase history.
• Use data visualization tools: Data visualization tools can help you make sense of complex data sets. Tools like Tableau and Google Data Studio allow you to create interactive visualizations that make it easier to spot trends and patterns.

Using Customer Data to Personalize Marketing

An incredibly powerful ways to leverage your own information for digital advertising is by using customer data to personalize your campaigns. You can tailor your advertising messages to individual customers, who are in-market for your product. Or, you can ensure that you are hyper-targeting prospects who need a specific product. For example, if you are a windows company, targeting consumers with older homes and interested in a renovation is a key opportunity. You can create a more personalized experience that is more likely to resonate with them.

There are many other ways to use customer data to personalize advertising. For example, you might use purchase history data to recommend products that are similar to items a customer has purchased in the past. Or, you might use browsing behavior data to retarget customers with ads for products they have viewed but not purchased.

Personalization can be a powerful tool for increasing conversions and driving customer loyalty. By leveraging your own information in this way, you can create a more personalized and effective digital advertising experience for your customers.

Leveraging Website Data for Better Targeted Marketing

Another way to leverage your own information for digital advertising is by using website data to improve your targeting. By analyzing website data, you can gain insights into what types of content and messaging resonate with your audience.

For example, you might analyze data on which pages on your website receive the most traffic and which pages have the highest bounce rates. This information can help you create more targeted landing pages and ad campaigns that are more likely to resonate with your audience.

You can also use website data to retarget visitors who have not yet converted. By tracking visitors who have abandoned their shopping carts or left your website without converting, you can retarget them with ads that are more likely to convert them into customers.

The Role of Data in Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising is a form of digital advertising that uses automated systems to buy and sell ad inventory. Data plays a critical role in programmatic advertising because it allows advertisers to target ads to specific audiences in real-time.

By using your own information, you can create more effective and efficient programmatic advertising program. For example, you might use customer data to target ads to specific demographic groups or use website data to target ads to visitors who have viewed specific pages on your site. You may cross-sell or upsell to specific consumers based on their previous purchase behavior with you. You may target people based on contextual searches.

Programmatic advertising can be an extremely powerful tool to increase lead and sales conversions, as well as improve overall ROI. An easy way to start, is by using your existing consumer data to create more targeted and effective programmatic advertising campaigns.

Best Practices for Using First Party Data

When you are use first party or your own information, it’s important to follow some best practices.

• Start small: Don’t try to collect and analyze all of your data at once. Instead, start with a small data set and expand from there as you gain more experience.

• Keep data privacy top of mind: Make sure you are collecting and using data in a way that is compliant with data privacy laws and regulations.

• If you are uploading your data to a third-party platform, such as LiveRamp, Google or Facebook, ensure that this is your data and not purchased data (third-party data). Ensure you have consent to use the data.

• Test and iterate: Digital advertising is an iterative process. Test different campaigns and strategies, and use your data to optimize your campaigns over time.

By following these best practices, you can leverage your own information to create more effective digital advertising campaigns.

Tools and Platforms for Data-Driven Advertising

There are many tools and platforms available that can help you leverage your own information for digital advertising. Here are a few examples:

• Google Analytics: This is a free analytics tool that provides insights into website traffic and user behavior. It will provide you high level aggregated information on your website visitors.
• Facebook Ads Manager: To create and manage Facebook and Instagram ads, you’ll need to use Ads Manager. This platform also allows you to upload customer list, and build lookalike audiences.
• Google Ads: This is a platform for creating and managing ads on Google’s search and display networks. You can upload customer lists and build lookalike audiences.
• Programmatic advertising platforms: There are many programmatic advertising platforms available, such as The Trade Desk and DoubleClick.

You can also use first party to exclude audiences. Exclusions can be used for any of the platforms I mentioned above. By leveraging these tools and platforms, you can create more effective data-driven digital advertising campaigns.

Related articles:

The Power of Targeted Marketing: How to Reach Your Ideal Audience
How to Implement Data-Driven Marketing Solutions

Measuring the Success of Your Data-Driven Marketing Efforts

It’s important to measure the success of your data-driven advertising efforts. This allows you to determine what is working and what isn’t, and make adjustments accordingly.

Here are a few key metrics to track:

• Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.
• Click-through rate: The percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it.
• Cost per acquisition: The cost of acquiring a new customer through your advertising efforts.
• Your Data: I always take advertising platform data and then compare it to database data or CRM data. This helps validate the information the advertising platforms are reporting, which tend to be higher than actuals.

As a data driven marketer, it is critical that you track metrics that align to your business but also gives you insights into your consumers, friction points along their journey, and the effectiveness of your campaigns. By tracking these metrics and using your data to optimize your campaigns over time, you can increase the ROI of your advertising efforts.

Conclusion

First party data is a powerful tool to increase efficiency and profitability for your marketing campaigns. By collecting and analyzing data on your customers, website engagements and channel engagements, you can create more targeted and effective campaigns that resonate with your audience and drive conversions. By following best practices and using the right tools and platforms, you can take your digital advertising game to the next level. So, start leveraging your own information today and see the results for yourself.