How to Become a Data-Driven Marketer

In today’s world, data influences everything. In marketing, that includes campaign metrics, customer information, return on investment, market segmentation, audience targeting, the list goes on. With this, there is a lot of data available and many marketers don’t know the specific data they need to use to glean insights.

With the need to justify marketing resources while budget cuts are happening almost everywhere, you have to be data-driven to be an effective marketer. To become a data-driven marketer, you first need to understand what it means to be data-driven.

What is Data-Driven Marketing

Data-driven marketing is using company and advertising data to understand consumers and make informed decisions to improve the marketing for the company. You’re questioning assumptions like “we have always done it this way.”

Data-driven marketers study what customers buy, how they react to ads and how they behave on their websites and social media accounts. This customer data gives marketers insight into who they should target, how they should target them and when. It’s the who, what, when and where of marketing.

At WVU, Data Marketing Communications is taking a wealth of data and working to find the metric that matters — the metric that tells the story. It’s not math. Data Marketing Communications is designed for storytellers, creatives, strategists and problem-solvers alike. Data is at the heart of the marketing communications industry and having the ability to be a data-driven storyteller is a highly sought-after skill set at any level.

Being a data-driven marketer means you possess the skills necessary to sift through the data noise and achieve a path to solid marketing strategy that can get results. Data is useless if its meaning is misunderstood. That’s why the Data Marketing Communications program is so important to my future career goals. Kelly Greathouse, Lead, International Communications, GNC and M.S. Data Marketing Communications Alumna

Why Should you be a Data-Driven Marketer?

Not only do you need to justify ROI to keep marketing budgets, but you also need to be data-driven to personalize and improve the customer’s experience with the marketing.

Why? According to Infosys, 74 percent of consumers feel frustrated when seeing irrelevant ads. Plus, according to Marketo, 79% won’t consider an offer unless a brand personizes it to their previous interactions.

You should consider understanding data to:

• Personalize the customer’s experience.
• Target the right audience for your brand.
• Find the right platforms to focus your time.
• Justify your ROI.

Becoming a Data-Driven Marketer

So, we’ve noted you use data to inform marketing decisions. But don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you need to be good at math. You’re not studying business analytics or data science where you need to understand statistics. You’re using the data available to pull valuable insights out to apply to marketing campaigns.

To become a data-driven marketer, you need to be able to take raw data and turn it into meaningful knowledge that leads to better decision-making. You’re pulling insights to tell the right story to the right customer.

High level, to become a data-driven marketer, you need to:

• Set goals for your marketing.
• Collect customer data.
• Analyze customer data.
• Develop a marketing strategy.
• Use the strategy to launch campaigns.
• Measure the campaign’s performance.
• Optimize the campaign.

A deeper look into data-driven marketing often requires:

• Audience Segmentation: exploring demographic data and other key indicators that can inform successful campaigns and serve the development of unique market segments to support specific marketing communication goals.
• Brand Data Collection and Visualization: mining your company’s brand data for insights that could influence marketing communications decisions with an emphasis on how that data can be presented visually to key stakeholders.
• Campaign Metrics and Assessment: using data to inform key performance indicators that define a campaign’s success.
• Campaign Planning and Programmatic Media Buying: understanding the connection between how data input affects media buying output and examining the automated media buying landscape.
• Data Management Platforms: using database platforms to analyze and develop specialized and highly targeted marketing communications.
• Message Customization: using data to customize messages to target audiences as small as a single customer to provide brand communications that are relevant, timely and personal.
• Messaging for Customer Relationship Management: leveraging communications to retain customers and acquire new ones through relationship building and value.
• Social Media Optimization: using data from social media to ensure marketing communications messages reach the intended target audiences to make a maximum impact.

To be data-driven, you need to understand the data landscape and how to use that data to make informed decisions. You’ll leverage quantitative and qualitative data to effectively communicate to a targeted audience and make a maximum impact. To do so effectively, you need to master the skills and gain knowledge about the topics above. WVU’s M.S. in Data Marketing Communications prepares you to be a sought-after data-driven marketer.

WVU’s M.S. in Data Marketing Communications

If your passion for marketing is driving you to understand the data behind it, WVU's M.S. in Data Marketing Communications is for you. Online shopping, digital advertising, social media metrics, web analytics, customer relations management platforms, website user statistics — the data available to marketers to better understand audience habits and motivations is growing daily. Ready to be CMO? Pair your already-existing marketing creativity with sharpened analytical skills and an understanding of technology-driven media.

You won’t find a program like this anywhere else. The marketing communications industry demands smarter insights and better results across a variety of media. We worked with data marketing experts to create the nation’s first online master’s degree explicitly focused on the strategic use of data in marketing communications. Request more information today. The program starts in August and January.

---

---

Meet the Author

---