An infographic produced by Google offers 5 steps to exploit the “date audience ». In other words, how to use the data from qualification to activation of your audience target ?
In 2017, American companies planned to spend $20 billion on external data and $10,05 billion on third-party data. More than 10,13 billion dollars would be spent on activating this data.
In addition, 54% of distributors worldwide have set up loyalty programs to deepen their knowledge of customers and 24% plan to do so. The idea is to collect data in order to qualify the audience.
5 steps to activate your data and set up your audience strategy
#1. Who are your high value customers?
- 96% of consumers leave a site before converting
- 72% of customers abandon their cart without buying
- 49% of individuals visit between 2 and 4 sites before converting
All of the Internet users who visit your website do not have the same value. Thus, you should not address them in the same way, with the same offers and the same messages. Some of them cost more than they bring. Others, on the other hand, are difficult and expensive to acquire but will be much more profitable.
It's up to you to adopt a so-called approach “Customer Lifetime Value” which will allow you to better target and make marketing actions profitable. In other words, with this method, you focus on acquiring high-value customers and growing current customer spend. To do this, you can implement cross-selling, up-selling and customer retention strategies (with various loyalty offers).
#2. How to find more high value customers?
Who are they ? What do they want? Where are they ? Audience signals make it possible to know users beyond demographic information and thus determine who they really are: passions, intentions, uses, purchasing behavior, etc.
At this stage, you must adopt an audience strategy “full funnel”. Combine data sources to have a unified and 360° view of the user. You can also expand your audience target to include new, qualified users you've never reached before.
#3. How to reach a customer throughout his journey?
Companies that use consumer behavior analytics and insights outperform their peers by 85% and achieve +25% gross margin. This means that when the preferences and intentions of consumers are known, their path can be completely recreated and you can thus optimize contacts by offering the right information, at the right time, on the channel preferred by them.
The objective is then to establish connections throughout the purchase journey by taking into account devices, online browsing behaviors but also in-store purchasing behaviors, as well as the preferences and intentions of each in order to build a personalized experience.
#4. How to engage your audience ?
Now that you know (in theory) what your customers' preferred touchpoints are, you should try to engage your audience. 78% of consumers appreciate advertising when it is personalized and 64% have a preference for messages in line with their centers of interest. Personalization is truly essential to earn the trust of your audience. It also makes it possible to create commitment with individuals. They increasingly want perfectly personalized content with a message related to their preferences, their needs and even their location.
The idea is then to distribute relevant (and therefore personalized) marketing messages to the right audience (by targeting using auctions) at the most favorable time and place (hedging is then a question).
#5. How to activate your audience strategy?
The final step is to actually activate your audience strategy. For this, it is a question of measuring conversions at first in order to determine solid bases for the development of an optimization strategy. Second, attribution helps to better understand customer journeys that are increasingly fragmented. The objective is then no longer to evaluate performance by silo, by channel, but rather to apprehend them over the entire purchasing process. For this, the “last-click” model is totally outdated. An attribution model should be in place to fully understand the influence of each touchpoint on the consumer journey.
