5 Types of Marketing You Can Improve with Audience Data Insights

Creating innovative, viral marketing strategies aren’t as easy as the big brands make it seem. For every viral video or heartwarming brand story, there are hundreds of simple marketing efforts performing well because of great marketing strategies. And at the core of those strategies are accurate insights on specific audiences that inform messaging and ad spends for increased ROI.

Audience data insights are the perfect complement to first-party data. There are hundreds of data points to choose from that can inform marketing efforts, in both B2C and B2B campaigns. Using insights to segment, personalize, and target your ideal customer persona, your marketing tactics are rooted in accurate data.

Beyond first-party data, identity resolution can equip your marketing stack with a single customer view to help you identify your customers at scale. Audience data insights have moved past demographic data points like age, gender, and location to incredibly precise insights like social handles, social reach, and affinities. With unique data sets like social insights, transaction/purchase data, and company affiliations, you can begin communicating on a personal level with prospects and customers.

Using a wider breadth and depth of data, you can create meaningful campaigns with insights that are frequently updated. Here are a few examples that can help your marketing department move customers into the funnel.

Email Marketing

Sending nurture emails to the customers in your database is a given for sophisticated marketers. But with most companies sending emails for assets assigned to personas, wouldn’t it be better to communicate on a one-to-one level with the person on the other side of your emails? Using audience insights, you can create highly targeted nurture emails that can help solve pain points for your customers. Based on affinities, transactions, and other psychographic data points, your customers can feel understood when they open your emails to discover a tailored message and asset just for them.

According to a study done by DemandGen Report, 95% of buyers choose a solution provider that provides them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process. The popularity of programs like account-based marketing and other niche efforts have provided companies with a better ROI.

Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing is a strategy that reaches across platforms, to move prospective customers down the funnel and maximize your brand’s opportunities to interact with them. Whether it’s email, print ads, a website, social media, or a mobile app, customers expect you to provide a seamless and personalized experience. In fact, 73% of consumers use multiple engagement channels in their interactions with a single preferred retailer.

You can ensure your customer experience is consistent from the beginning by using audience insights to segment, tailor and personalize interactions with your brand. Take the guesswork out of building personas using known contact data dimensions like affinities, emails, psychographics, and more. Communicate with your audience on the platform of their choice in emails, web messaging, display ads or any other channel using customized content.

Surprise and Delight

Unexpected offers from brands, especially in the hospitality and travel industry, go a long way to build repeat business. Bad customer experiences are quickly shared on review sites and social media but great customer experiences can go viral just as fast. Considering that 93% of consumers think rewards are very important or somewhat important, using publicly available insights with transactional data can inform which of your offerings would be most valuable to them.

Noting the amount of time or money a particular customer has spent with your business, you can take the time to give them something special in the channel of their choosing. Take a look at their social data, affinity data, and other interests to learn what works best for them. It could be something as simple as the tactic from the Four Seasons, who share ready-made Pinterest boards to guests based on affinities and locations so they can make the most of their trip.

Advocate and Influencer Marketing

If you’re struggling to reach a mass audience with your offering, why not try engaging people who interact with your target audience? 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations but 40% purchase something after seeing it on Twitter, YouTube or Instagram. Using a trusted advocate voice for your brand can help bring authenticity to your marketing messaging and use cases.

For example, Concord Direct, a direct response agency, worked with the Sierra Club to achieve engagement on a new site they were launching. Using social insights, the agency created an influencer campaign for the Sierra Club’s new website. They took a look at their customer database to find individuals most likely to take action and reached out to those with a large social following. Once they asked advocates to sign a petition on the new website, Concord Direct used social data to ask the advocates to invite others on Twitter to participate. The response rate for the campaign increased 6%, a percentage comparable to the email strategy Sierra Club used in the past to activate users.

Experiential Marketing

One of the biggest brand plays that companies rally around is the concept of experiential marketing, also known as engagement marketing, live marketing, or participation marketing. This style of marketing thrives not just creativity and interaction but truly knowing what works well for your audience.

Social data and social listening drive the insights needed to understand which type of experience would make the most impact for your followers, lookalike audiences, and ideal customer personas. In fact, the experiential brand experience is the most powerful form of word-of-mouth driving activity for 50 to 80% in any given product category. Understanding where your customers are and what means the most to them will provide better ROI for this risky marketing play.

When Delta airlines wanted to engage young travelers, they partnered with Vice to find entrepreneurs and trendsetters to create the Delta Launchpad event series. They threw events in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle that showcased films, music, and food using influencers to help promote the event.

Insights Help Engage Customers Where They Are

No matter the campaign your team wants to tackle, using accurate audience data insights will ensure you reach your customers with the right message, at the right time, and in the right channel. Whether you’re casting a wide net with experiential marketing or creating niche campaigns with segmented audiences, you can count on ROI with a data-driven strategy.