Today, the marketing world is being re-established on digital foundations, just like many other fields. While traditional marketing techniques are replaced by digital marketing, the methods employed in marketing activities and marketing processes take on different dimensions. At the top of this list is user data management. So what are the vulnerabilities of user data in digital marketing activities?
How should user data be used in digital marketing?
In the era of technology, marketing decisions are no longer made based on assumptions or past experiences anymore. It is because we need analytics and data analysis for effective digital marketing activity. With the use of historical data and analytics based on estimations, businesses get more fruitful results from their digital marketing investments and gain healthier insights on every strategy within their structure. Proper management of the data obtained requires businesses to learn how to use this data in the first place. Wonder how? Here are the 5 points to be considered in data usage for digital marketing activities
1. Know your target audience well
The first step to be taken for proper data usage in digital marketing activities is to choose the right audience to collect data from. To serve this purpose, you should know your target audience well and learn which users visiting your website or ad campaign have the potential to become customers, what kinds of behaviors you want to trigger in these users, and which techniques can be useful to achieve them. This will help you determine how to focus on your digital marketing activities and make solid inferences from the data you obtain.
2. Prioritize useful data
Another point to consider in data usage for effective digital marketing activity is to focus on the quality of data, not the quantity. In other words, having more data in number is not a criterion for success. On the contrary, it makes things more difficult. What is important is to prioritize the data that will dominate your digital marketing strategy. To this end, you should set clear goals and analyze your performances retrospectively to determine what you need.
3. Target the right keywords
Knowing how your target audience search for things on the Internet is one of the most significant advantages of user data usage. It helps you easily identify the keywords you need to target in your digital marketing activities. What is essential here is to target the right keywords. If you fail to achieve this, you may need to overspend on your marketing activities and get nothing in return.
Using the data from Google Ads, you can lay solid foundations for the strategies you will pursue in many fields, from SEO to content marketing, from ad campaigns to social media.
4. Focus on increasing interaction
In digital marketing, you need to monitor your target audience’s behaviors to use the data you obtain effectively. For this purpose, it is important to employ methods that will call your target audience to action, that is, enable interaction. The most crucial method in this scope is to produce content that will encourage your audience to take action.
This content can be forms that you can direct users to, links or URLs in e-mail content, and buttons, i.e., CTAs (Call to Action), with expressions like “Click”, “Contact now”, “Send a message”. They will make your audience interact with you and increase the traffic you receive and the user data you obtain.
5. Target the most suitable media
An effective digital marketing activity does not necessarily mean existing on every platform. It is essential to find the media that your audience uses frequently and where you have the highest chance to interact with them. For this purpose, you should analyze your historical data and campaign results to see how close you are to your goals and identify low-performing campaigns’ weaknesses. This way, you don’t need to allocate a budget for channels that you find ineffective. You can devise campaigns with a higher budget for channels where you get better results.
Which sensitivities should we pay attention while managing user data?
Gaining insights on users through data is the golden key of sustainability for any structure that conducts its marketing and sales activities online today. In the modern world, where all kinds of online activities of consumers, i.e., purchasing behaviors, can be monitored, collected, and analyzed, this process is used to better understand and analyze the consumer.
However, we should note that consumers can see this opportunity, which offers an excellent advantage for structures of any size, as a massive threat to their privacy. At this point, it is essential for businesses to mind particular sensitivities not only to continue their development in data usage but also to maintain the trust their audience place in them. So what are these sensitivities we need to mind while managing user data?
Data security
In the era of technology, data privacy and security are among the most fundamental sensitivities of both users and companies that use user data. Therefore, businesses need to use the user data they obtain in compliance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Consent for data usage
Companies can legally use user data only on one condition. They need to inform users and obtain their consent for data usage. In other words, your website needs to ask its visitors to give their consent on the collection of their data.
Security programs
Users want to know if their data is safe rather than which data companies collect about them due to their consent to data, i.e., cookies, usage. Otherwise, identifying a possible breach in data privacy can bring both financial and moral damages to the company. In this sense, it is essential to use an ISO 27001-based security program. This security program ensures that security practices regarding customer data are continuously monitored and updated.
