Your brand and your business as a whole need you to make wise decisions and initiate informed strategies. After all, an informed choice is far more effective than just flying off the handle and going in whatever direction the wind is blowing.
That’s why data-driven insights are essential for your company’s health in the twenty-first century, and precisely the kind of data we’re talking about driving things here is Big Data. If you’re interested in moving your brand forward by virtue of these insights, then read on, and get ready to be inspired.
Data-driven insights provide better means to drive your brand by showing you who your audience is.
Making Data-Driven Decisions
The article “Expert Interview Series: Kally Pan On Data Driven Marketing” best puts this idea into perspective when it says “By qualitatively measuring performance and defining results, you enable decisions that can build on each other, iterating and creating processes that you can be confident of returning better results.”
In other words, see what works and see what doesn’t, based on data returns. Do what works, avoid what doesn’t, and increase the likelihood of success. The problem in the past has been the difficulty in acquiring accurate data promptly. Fortunately, Big Data is the solution, as it rapidly delivers a vast amount of information from disparate sources.
But what tools help you to take the best advantage of Big Data?
Useful Data Tools
You have the information; now you need the means to process it. It’s sort of like having a large all you can eat buffet in front of you, but you still need a plate and utensils in order to fully take advantage of it. Well, here’s the dinnerware you need.
Social Listening Technology. You can use social listening tools to pick up threads where your brand is being bandied about online. That way, you can get an idea of what people online are saying about your products and business, and you can make adjustments accordingly if certain patterns manifest themselves.
Content Analytics. These utilities help you to ascertain exactly what people are doing on your website, and what’s grabbing people’s attention. Maybe no one’s clicking on that series of articles called “Soups I have known” while your ongoing feature about “How not to be a jerk on Facebook” is trending off the charts. By identifying well-performing categories, you can get a good idea where to focus your brand-building efforts (and where NOT to!).
Content Marketing Platforms. A CMP is a software solution that helps a business create awareness, draw leads, and monetize its content. By focusing on the four process areas of strategy, production, distribution, and analytics, you can effectively use data to drive your brand.
The Creative Process
Once you have a good picture of what your audience looks like, their online habits, and the things they like, you now have a good idea of how to frame your content. Is your audience skewing older, more Boomer-ish? Then you probably want to veer away from anything that appeals to hipsters, or at the very least, downplay that particular element.
After all, even though you want to focus your brand-building efforts on the portion of the population that fits your brand’s demographic, you don’t want to shut completely out everyone else. All things in moderation, including moderation!
When you develop content, keep these two C’s in mind: creativity and consistency. Your content should be engaging and entertaining, and all of the content should be in harmony with the brand image that you’re trying to project.
All in all, there are many ways you can craft your brand, but no matter what you do, you should let data gathered from the browsing public to be your guide.