I am constantly amazed when recognizable brands are quite willing to pull the trigger on large content marketing campaigns based upon little more than demographic information and a hunch. More-robust customer data probably exists somewhere in the company—collected for a random email campaign, a website analytics report, a Facebook ad campaign—but no one knows about it. Many times, the conversation goes something like this:
Can we get your email list to conduct a simple online survey of your existing customers/users?
“Uh, well, our group doesn’t really have access to that list.”
OR
“I’m not sure who has that database.”
OR
“Oh, God, no. The departments are incredibly protective of their lists.”
Well, can we take a look at your website analytics from the past few months to see what we can glean there?
“Our IT department controls all of that. I can put in a request, but it might take a few weeks.”
OR
“I’m not sure we can get that information. I haven’t seen any website analytics since I’ve been here.”
Or, after we spend a few days or weeks strategizing and recommending keywords for a search engine marketing campaign:
“We can’t use any of those keywords. It turns out the ______ department is already bidding on those for one of their campaigns.”
You Already Have the Data
A recent report sponsored by Gleanster and Yesmail surveyed 100 senior marketers from B2C mid-to-large ($10 million to $1 billion+) companies with online and offline sales models. The report, The State of Customer Lifecycle Engagement in Mid-to-Large B2C Companies, found that “nine out of 10 organizations collected a tremendous amount of customer data that marketers simply don’t have access to when crafting customer communications,” including:
● Behavioral data. Where else do they shop? What else do they eat? What else do they read?
● Web analytics. What do they do on your website? What do they search for on your website?
● Online/offline profitability. Do they purchase more, or shop more often, in store or online?
● Life stage attributes. Did someone just get married, divorced, have a baby, retire, get laid off?
● Socioeconomic data. Education level, income level?
● Channel preferences. Do they prefer a print magazine? Do they have more than one email account? Do they use Facebook mostly for family photos or to collect coupons and special offers?
● Propensity modeling. Is this person a high-value, ready-to-act person?
Incredibly, most of the respondents in the Gleanster report said they believed they were effectively delivering targeted offers to their customers. But, “just two out of 10 B2C organizations incorporated channel preference data, household composition data, propensity scores and behavioral data in targeted customer communications.” Instead, they used past-purchase data to “personalize” their customer communications, mainly because it was the only data available to them. In other words, they left money—sometimes a lot of money—on the table.
Start Measuring Somewhere…Please
If you’re about to commit big dollars to a large-scale, multichannel content marketing campaign, make sure it is based on more than an awesome creative idea.
6 Key Marketing Trends for 2013 — and Tips for Succeeding, a whitepaper sponsored by Silverpop, predicts that “leading companies will move away from a list-based marketing approach to a constantly evolving ‘persistent database’ married to behaviors across multiple channels, providing an all-encompassing view of customers and prospects.” (Read “Zoom Out to the Ecosystem,” here.)
But what if your company isn’t yet able to deliver individualized content to segments of one? What if there is no centralized database tied to a robust marketing automation platform?
Easier just to skip it altogether and make assumptions about your audience, right?
“After all, who knows ‘our’ customers better than we do? We’ve been doing this a long time and we know what they want.”
You must start somewhere. I know it’s difficult. Daunting, even. Big data scares the hell out of people because there’s just so much of it.
But even a little bit of data is better than a hunch. It can be as simple as remote user testing, a Web-based survey, a social media survey or an email survey that you promote on your LinkedIn page or your Twitter account. You could even call your customers (Yes! On the phone!). You could do a series of focus groups, or even one focus group. Buy a few ads if you must, but get your actual customers (or at least your target audience) to tell you what they like, want or hate.
Be transparent; tell them why you want to know how old they are, what channels they use and what times of the day they use them, what they like/hate about your website, the likelihood they’ll shop for one of your brands in the next 30 to 60 days. Go ahead, ask them. Some of them might answer for free, some might require an incentive, and many won’t respond at all. But you’ll have more real information than you started with. If that information matches your hunch, well, good for you. But you might just be surprised at what your customers tell you. And then you’ll be able to spot a really awesome creative idea when you hear/see it, because you’ll know it resonates with your customers.
Michelle O’Hagan is senior vice president of digital delivery at Imagination.