Technology and customer behavior are constantly changing, and business owners have to adapt to succeed. In this setting, data plays a crucial role since it pushes most business operations. It gives a valuable reference for offering insights into customer’s behavior, which is vital for building and maintaining a profitable enterprise. That being said, if businesses want to increase conversions and amplify customer engagement, they must implement an effective data-driven marketing strategy for their eCommerce store, do this using this guide.
If you want to learn more about how to achieve this, the following article will examine what data-driven strategy is and how an eCommerce business can build one.
Data-Driven Strategy: The Basics
To be able to make a data-driven strategy for your business, you must, first of all, understand what data in the eCommerce context is. Most simply put, data is the information you collect from an authentic source about your customer, audience, and current market trends. Using that collected data to formulate a business strategy to accomplish your business goals and objectives is called a data-driven strategy.
How to build a data-driven strategy
#1 Know what you want to achieve
The first thing you need to do is clarify to you and your team what you want to achieve through your data-driven eCommerce strategy. Setting the right goals from the start, whether to pull in customers, drive sales, build loyalty, etc., will allow you to focus on ways to achieve them more structurally and efficiently.
#2 Centralize and analyze your data through an intelligence tool
To create a data-driven eCommerce strategy, you must be able to collect data from an authentic source. Google data and trends are some niche sites for collecting data that can be useful for a start. However, since data can be derived from various sources, it is better after collecting to centralize them to one place from where you can make the necessary analytics.
The best way is to pick a data warehouse that will store all data from your business’s operational databases as well as external sources. These systems are different from operational databases because they store historical information, making it easier to analyze data over a specific period. They also sort data based on the various subject matter, such as customers, products, or business activities. Using them, you can quickly and more accurately analyze massive amounts of data and, as a result, bring better decisions.
#3 Develop a buyer persona data-driven ecommerce strategy
After collecting and centralizing your data, the best way to continue building your data-driven strategy is by creating buyer personas. The buyer persona, though fictional, is a factual representation of your perfect customer, including critical information such as demographics, shopping behavior, gender, and average age. Thanks to it, you can have comprehensive information about your customers, their behavior, and preferences.
For example, a buyer persona can give you info on what product categories your customers prefer, which banners they like to click on, and how they learned about your services and products. Furthermore, they can help you understand whether your ideal customers check their social media more than their emails or whether they prefer their smartphones over their PCs. Equipped with this information, you will be able to better shape your marketing strategy.
#4 Find the most appropriate marketing channels
By using the data you gather from your buyer personas, you will know how your customers want to receive marketing messages, i.e., what marketing channels you should use. With this information, you will now be able to:
- Time your campaigns. Knowing when your customers browse, buy and share about your products, you are in a position to better plan and time your marketing campaigns. This way, your marketing messages do not get ignored by your prospects.
- Segment and personalize your emails. Email marketing is a powerful tool for eCommerce businesses. They can help retain and bring back customers, boost revenue and lower the rate of abandoned carts. By using your buyer persona, you can segment your email lists and send more targeted emails, which will mean sending the right email at the right time to the right person. So a good data-driven ecommerce strategy.
- Invest in influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a practical approach to boost engagement and reach your target audience. To find an influencer that appeals to all of your customers. Moreover, you can use your buyer personas. That will make sure that your marketing campaigns get noticed.
- Learn from your loyal customers. Use the data from your most loyal customers to examine their behavior and how they interact with your business. For instance, if they purchase a specific product, you can focus on marketing that particular product to attract similar customers. Similarly, suppose most of your loyal customers follow your business on Instagram compared to other social media accounts. In that case, you can devote more resources to Instagram ad campaigns to boost your profile reach.
#5 Have a clear grasp of the customer journey data-driven ecommerce strategy
To learn about your customer journey, you will need to create a customer journey map. This visual representation of your buyer’s journey helps you learn the story of your customer’s experiences with your brand across all touchpoints.
By understanding your customer’s behavior, you will figure out which parts of the customer journey need optimization. That, in turn, will result in an instant boost in conversion rates. So, keep in mind that a smooth purchase process can decide between making a sale or losing a customer forever.
#6 Further analysis and optimization with data-driven ecommerce
Your customers’ buying habits and behavior are influenced continuously by trends and technology. That means that you will constantly have to evaluate and optimize your customer data since they are not static. They will always be changing. Due to this, you must routinely re-evaluate your buyer personas. So, analyze marketing campaign results, examine customer data, and modify your strategy whenever necessary. Keep reading this guide and tutorial to use data-driven ecommerce marketing strategy guide.
Moreover, it would also help if you also considered using predictive analytics. That means using historical data to help you predict what will happen in the future. By analyzing algorithms, big data, and machine learning, this technique can forecast business outcomes. With predictive analytics, you can recognize various patterns. So, ultimately helping you identify frauds, reduce risks, improve operation and optimize marketing campaigns.
Data-Driven Ecommerce Strategy Conclusion
Your data-driven eCommerce strategy is the most reliable method for your business to attain its goals. By using data, you can maximize the sales and marketing efforts and help predict the outcome. continue to understand tutorial to use data-driven ecommerce marketing strategy guide.
However, one of the most important things you need to remember is that the way you interpret. In addition, use the data you have collected depends on you. You must remember to routinely analyze customer data, behavioral analytics, and purchase trends. If you fail to do that, you might miss out on crucial business opportunities. Finally, even though you have the information in your hands.
