Speed Should be a Marketer’s Best Friend

We live in a world of rapid acceleration. Attention spans are shrinking. Consumers bounce across the digital landscape like pinballs. If you don’t move at the speed of today’s frenetic consumer, you will be left in the digital dust.

There are several ways to speed up your marketing processes so you are not lagging behind your customer. Much of it has to do with making sure your data is current, tuned-up and instantly actionable.

Here are three ways to make speed your secret marketing weapon.

• Relentlessly Refresh Your Data

Data isn’t like a savings account. You can’t stockpile consumer information and then use it years later. Most data has an expiration date, and if you don’t constantly refresh it and add to it, it becomes useless.

Make sure that you have constant streams of new information entering your marketing software and CRM, giving you the most accurate, up-to-date portrait of your customers. Combine offline and online data sources to understand how your customers’ digital behavior and in-store behavior coincide or diverge.

This real-time, robust data effort will set you up to easily personalize marketing messages and segment audiences for more effective marketing campaigns down the road. With fresh data, your ability to complete complex marketing tasks will speed up exponentially.

• Respond in Real-Time

Data allows marketers to re-think the traditional marketing calendar stuffed with static campaigns targeting holiday shoppers, the back-to-school rush or summer vacationers.

While those campaigns can still work, data opens up the ability to dig deeper, increase targeting, and launch micro campaigns that respond to consumers’ needs in real time.

Use data to identify trends early, deliver specific offers to individual consumers, and launch micro campaigns that can be A/B tested before becoming full-fledged campaigns. Make your data work for you to create a marketing strategy that is more nimble than your competitors.

• Make Data Instantly Accessible

Data is only useful when it is accessible. You can have all the data in the world, but if you can’t call on it instantly to optimize a marketing campaign, you might as well be data poor. Make sure your IT department and marketing department are communicating and eliminating any barriers between your databases and your marketing software.

Work with partners and software platforms that allow data to be retrieved and put to use without complex technical steps. While this sounds simple, when you are constantly streaming new data into you system, and analyzing market shifts, it can quickly become complicated and cumbersome.

But all that work on the back end to make the most current data instantly actionable will pay off when your marketing campaigns are responding to customer demands, emerging market trends and individual customer needs at the click of a button.

Learn more ways to make data instantly actionable by leaning on ActionIQ’s expertise.

Action IQ is a leader in data-driven marketing that can transform outdated marketing programs into game-changing 21st Century platforms. Learn more by reading our Customer Intelligence data sheet.