You have a lot of options when it comes to deciding how to market your business. But you also have a lot of data available to you, and the right marketing strategy will use that data to find out what resonates with your target audience so you can make sure you’re speaking to them directly with everything from your ads to your packaging and website design. Here’s how to create a data-driven marketing strategy that works for your business in Little Rock, AR.
Decide What You Want
First, you need to decide what exactly you want. These goals must align with your objectives as an organization. How will sales growth, brand awareness, or improved customer relationships improve your business? Make sure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Relevant/Time-Bound. Note that attractive is not one of these criteria.
Decide Who Your Audience Is
In marketing, your target audience is everything. You must have pinpoint clarity about who you are selling to in order to hit your sales and marketing goals. Do not make assumptions here; determine exactly who drives your best sales and write it down! Try to eliminate as many variables as possible by getting data on all of your customers—their demographics, their preferences, etc.—and using that information to develop an effective strategy for selling to them.
Creating a Clear Call-to-Action
A call-to-action should make it easy for your audience to understand what you’re asking them to do. You’ll also want your message to be reflective of your brand and consistent with any other marketing messages you have shared. Since you know your audience, think about what keeps them up at night and how they communicate that frustration. Is there an action they would take if someone offered them help? By clearly defining what that action is, writing up a CTA becomes easier.
Start with Google Analytics (if you don’t have one)
Start with Google Analytics and analyze your marketing, blood test your key website pages (think: lead generation) by simply changing out one word at a time, run A/B testing of different headlines and ask your audience what they want to know. Remember, businesses aren’t built on myths and assumptions but rather on data that can be applied over time to improve results. This is how you get better results more consistently.
Setting Up Conversion Goals in Google Analytics
To figure out if your marketing efforts are working, you need to set up some goals. Google Analytics provides three options: pageviews, events and ecommerce. To begin with, set up goals on your website; these will let you know how many people visit each page or action on your site. For example, a goal could be set up that monitors how many visitors reach your Contact Us page and then convert into leads by sending them an email in exchange for their contact information.
Use Facebook Ads To Test Different Calls-to-Action
Facebook allows you to test different creative and see what converts best. You can use Facebook Ads’ built-in conversion tracking, or use third party tools like AdEspresso and Google Analytics. Since Facebook has such a large user base, it’s easy to run tests without spending much money. For example, I recently used Facebook ads to try testing some different calls-to-action on one of my blogs. Here are two examples: Which CTA do you think converted better?
Use A/B Testing To See What Works Best For You
There are lots of strategies to use and we can help you optimize your digital marketing efforts. For example, with A/B testing, you can test different creative pieces to see what resonates best with your audience. If you’re using Google AdWords or Facebook Ads to promote a new product, A/B testing allows you to test different creatives across both channels at one time.
Understand if People Are Reading, Watching, or Listening
You might think you know what your audience wants, but ask yourself if you’re basing that on anything more than hunches. You can’t create truly effective content if you don’t have data about how people are engaging with your content. Without that information, you’re just guessing.
Change Things Around If Needed
Have you heard of perception analysis? If not, it’s worth exploring. Perception analysis is simply asking your clients, your customers and potential buyers what their perception of your business is — that could mean questions about what they think of your product or service, how they hear about you or even where they think you’re located. In addition to having an interesting discussion with these people, another thing you can do with perception analysis is understand how some of those perceptions align with reality — and decide how you want them to be aligned going forward. Do people think that serving on time is important when dining at a restaurant? Should it be? What if more people thought that servers were attentive and friendly at restaurants?