Storytelling is not a new concept. Brands have been telling stories for ages. What’s constantly changing is the expectation of consumers from brands that never fail to go the extra mile to appease them. And to meet this ever-evolving expectation, brands keep re-defining their marketing strategies, making them sharper, more targeted and closer to the expectations of their much-valued consumers. Today digital marketing is more than building a website and measuring the visits to gauge the success.
Marketing of 2017 is the intersection of what was created and how much of it was liked. Data is at the heart of every strategic decision, be it budding or large scale. Data leads to insights, which business owners use in order to generate more ROI next time.
The basic definition of digital intelligence is to capture, manage and analyze data to provide a holistic view of customer experience which in turn drives the measurement, optimization and execution of marketing strategies. In simpler words, it’s your performance report card that helps you measure your efforts and highlight areas of improvement.
What’s incredible is the way this number game plays a gamechanger in not one but every domain of your digital efforts.
Intelligence for Strategy
Great marketing techniques are a blend of creativity and data. Though, both are very different from one another, they are closely interlinked to form the basis of a concrete marketing strategy. While creative content focuses on telling a compelling story, data determines whether, and to what degree, the content is resonating with people and also help in evaluating the ROI of your content.
Intelligence helps you determine the value of your campaign’s key performance indicators helping you tie your efforts back to the business results. For example, digital intelligence gives you answers to the following:
- What is the reach of your content? Are you reaching the audience you targeted for your business?
- Are people interacting with your content? If yes, in what ways?
- What did your audience do after they saw your content? Did they go to your site? Sign up for a newsletter? Download a piece of content?
Marketers have a wealth of data. With a brigade of online tools at their disposal, getting relevant data is not a challenge anymore.
Google Trends for what the world is talking about, real time.
Google Adwords Keyword Planner to identify what your customers are searching for
Facebook Insights to know how your Facebook page performs
Google Analytics to measure the performance of your website
What needs aptitude is the skill to leverage this data appropriately to create a marketing strategy that leads to engagement and conversions.
Marketing is omnichannel. Your customers are on social media, on your website, in your physical retail store, and on your mobile app. The ROI on your content is a result of a customer behavior modelling on some key metrics:
- Where did your consumers hear about you?
- Did they like what you said?
- Which platform delivered your content better?
- Which piece of content got more engagement?
Intelligence for Creation
Getting your performance report card at the end of the year is fine, but what really helps is a mid-term or quarterly analysis of your efforts so that you know the way forward before it’s too late. More than post-campaign data, monitoring campaign performance real-time is also important to identify target audiences and trending topics, channel-specific preferences of potential customers, and the influencers most relevant to those groups. Before creating anything, you need to have a clear picture in your mind on how the content will interact with your audiences through content performance monitoring.
- Does your content move them?
- Does it evoke a positive sentiment about your brand?
These may or may not be the only elements for great content marketing, but answering these questions to yourself will give you a clear idea on where your content stands and the kind of content you should be creating next. It’s all about channelizing your efforts towards the direction where it pays the most. Simple.
According to a study, only 38% of B2B companies believe their content strategy works well. Maybe they failed to define their target audience, failed at defining realistic goals for their content marketing activities or failed to know their audience preferences.
It’s like giving all you have to make mind-blowing beef steak and serve it to a vegan.
Intelligence for Distribution
Sometimes you have checked all areas; like you make amazing beef steak, and even better risotto. And you know a great percentage of people liking beef steak for dinner and a good number preferring risotto. But how do you make sure you reach out to steak lovers with steak and…you get the drift ?
Here comes your distribution strategy. Intelligence to create a strategy is only half the job done; the rest depends on how intelligently you distribute the content.
What device is the consumerusing to access your content?
At what time of the day is heactive ?
On which platform is hegetting the content ?
In what form the does he like the content ?
Answers to all these questions ensure a seamless consumer experience and perfect justice to your steak..err content.
Intelligence for customer experience
The primary goal of marketing in 2017 is creating a customer experience and scaling it back to your brand goals. And right content to the right person at the right time ensures just that. Sentiment analysis involves opinion mining to discover how people feel about a particular topic or a brand.
“Data mining can allow you to offer products and services to customers before they even know they want them. The best part is that your returns with data mining increase over time – the more you know about your customers, the easier it is to provide them with exactly the kind of service they want.”
Kirk Chewning
Co-CEO of Cane Bay Partners VI, LLLP.
Digital intelligence enhances personalization. Talking about personalization, it’s no longer just addressing your consumers by their names. The level of content personalization has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. And what has helped it grow? Data, of course.
With customers allowing cookies tracking their online activities, it is more than clear that they want brands to accentuate their experiences by putting that data to use smartly. They expect more relevant, personal content that’s easily consumable at their own leisure.
With customers growing more intelligent than ever, digital intelligence is no longer an option. Brands need the intelligence of data to make smart investments and take smart decisions.
