3 Ways to Let Data Direct Your Marketing for Better Results

Marketing can often feel like a guessing game. Where are your customers? What’s going to work to reach them? What will resonate with consumers so they want to do business with you?

We believe that by applying data to these decisions, you can remove some of the guesswork and see better results based on what’s proven, what we know about consumers, and what the data shows us in regard to their preferences and behavior.

Here are three ways you can specifically apply marketing data to your decisions.

1. Use Data to Optimize Your Ad Creative

Technology has simplified many aspects of marketing, and one of those areas is in analyzing ad creative using AI to provide recommendations for improved ad design. This technology looks at your ad creative to determine what’s working to drive results and what’s not and then based on that information, what needs to be changed for an ad that produces better results. This is called data-informed design, and it’s something our teams use for businesses’ ad creative across channels.

Our technology can look at the call to action, images used, messaging, and more to determine what’s going to drive better results for your specific ad.

Here’s an example where a simple tweak in design resulted in a 17% increase in clickthrough rate:

Before and after of an ad that went through LOCALiQ's data-informed design process.

By constantly looking at the data around what’s working and what’s not, you can make small optimizations that yield bigger ROI.

2. Use Data to Refine Your Content Marketing Strategy

For content that you’re creating either on your website, your company blog, your social media sites, or your ad creative, it can be a struggle to understand what’s resonating with your audience. Sure, you can look at Google Analytics or the metrics on your social media pages, but that data doesn’t paint the big picture — it just gives you small snippets.

By applying data based on how consumers are behaving and what’s performing well on a national to local scale, our teams are able to create content that’s connecting with your consumers.

Recently, our branded content experts looked at what type of content has been performing best across our networks around coronavirus to inform the content strategies for clients looking to connect with consumers.

Based on this data, they’re able to develop content topics and types of content that consumers are actively engaging with right now.

This wealth of insights and access to consumer data from the USA TODAY NETWORK allows us to create content that resonates with consumers and builds brands that are forward-thinking, in touch with their communities, and truly connecting with the customers they want to reach.

3. Use Data to Determine the Best Ways to Reach Your Audience

A big question in developing your marketing strategy always comes back to where you need to invest your marketing budget – especially during a potential economic slowdown. You don’t want any of your precious marketing dollars to go to waste, so this is the most important area to apply data.

We have insights from over 125 million consumers and put those insights to work based on your specific location, target audience, industry, and marketing goals to develop a strategy that’s custom-tailored to your business. Our data tells us how your most likely customer is behaving, what type of media they’re engaging with, and what their full customer journey looks like, so you can feel secure that your strategy is reaching the right people in the right places — whether that’s digital ads, print, mailers, or developing your brand.

Then, once we implement your strategy, our experts and technology never take a break — we’re always using data to optimize your campaigns and make changes so you’re on track to reach or exceed your marketing goals.

We know that times are a little tougher right now, which is why it’s so important to remove the guesswork from your marketing and rely on data to make your marketing decisions. We put our data to work for you, and our marketing experts are dedicated to helping local businesses thrive. Plus, we’re a one-stop-shop, so you can get all your marketing, branding, and media planning covered in one place with us. We’d love to talk to you about how we can partner for success. Reach out today!

Related Articles

3 Major Reasons Your Web Presence is More Important Now Than Ever

How to Transform Your Social Media Campaign Using AI

3 Ways Consumer Technology is Changing Marketing (and What You Can Do About It)

Stephanie Heitman

Stephanie is the Associate Director of Content for LocaliQ and WordStream. She has over 10 years of experience in content and social media marketing and loves writing about all things digital marketing. When she’s not researching the latest and greatest marketing news and updates, she’s probably watching reality TV with her husband, reading, or playing with her two pups.