Remember the kerfuffle that came with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) that became law earlier this year?
Essential and mandatory for those doing business in Europe, they are of course important, but the focus on compliance missed the essential point, which has always been about how you can better serve your customers by earning their permission to engage with them, and through relevant and respectful communications, earn the right to talk to them again.
GDPR was a regulatory formalization of what organizations have always needed to do: understand what their data tells them, and then use these insights to make better marketing decisions.
Real-time Tracking
If data and permission verification are the first steps in any data-driven campaign, real-time tracking through the campaign is the second. Any paid media that is served to an individual with their permission, based on their declared areas of interest, will have a larger impact and deliver a better ROI than the alternatives.
Checklist for SMBs and Startups
For SMBs and startups, here’s a checklist to use with customers as the focus:
- Consider how data supports your business – and should support your business. Data is an asset, not a burden
- As with all assets, make your data sweat: keep it updated, put it at the centre of everything you do, and find the management tool best-suited to your business and marketing budget to help you track how effective your marketing is, and how effectively you use your data (and we can help here)
- Channel the focus on data prompted by Europe’s GDPR to sharpen your game. Even if you don’t need to be formally compliant with GDPR, use its momentum to make your marketing management and customer experiences better than ever
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- Use your data to define your programs, and then be open with your prospects and customers about how you plan to use their data: seek permission, establish transparency in your operations, gain trust, demonstrate value
Marketing is about nuanced conversation: rather than bludgeoning prospects until they surrender, digital and social marketing let you negotiate and convince based on shared knowledge, collaboration, and mutual benefit for the long term.
Any organization of any size can be successful using data. SMBs and startups, being lighter on their feet, might just have an edge.
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To start your data-driven journey, register for Digivizer at https://digivizer.com and compare the performance of your digital content across all your owned, earned and paid social and search accounts – all within a single platform.