Whether you’re a tenured CEO, a budding business owner or you manage a team, you also need to be a DIY marketer to ensure that your business will grow. A “do-it-yourself” (DIY) marketer is someone who has many things on their plate, including marketing duties.
A successful DIY marketer is someone who knows the shortcut to harnessing the power of data to fuel their marketing and drive revenue. Fortunately, today’s DIY marketer has a new breed of tools and platforms that can help them leverage cutting edge technology – like artificial intelligence (AI). No degree required!
Here are four reasons why business leaders should embrace their role as a DIY marketer and how data can help.
1. Yesterday’s Customer May Not be Tomorrow’s Prospect
As a business owner, you strive to know your customers. Most likely, you’ve invested in market research and taken the necessary steps to ensure you have a competitive offering for your target market. But once the customers start rolling in, how much do you really know about them? Audience analysis is key for learning – and relearning – who are your actual customers. What are their key demographics? What are their spending behaviors? Do they respond better to certain marketing channels? The truth is, as you evolve your business and aim to sell new products or services, your customer base may shift as well.
DIY marketers should consider creating a profile of key customer segments so they can dissect and analyze key attributes. In fact, it could even be a best practice to do this annually, if not quarterly. By getting a snapshot of your current customer makeup, you may see a shift in buyer behavior or even an increased interest in a specific service or product. With the appropriate data points, you can then make informed decisions about how to shift your marketing strategy in a manner that will put you steps ahead of your competition.
2. You Can Drive More Revenue with Less Effort
DIY marketers rely on the power of marketing tools and platforms to run their business. According to Oberlo, nine out of 10 marketers rely on email marketing to distribute content. Did you know that marketing across all channels becomes more powerful when data is infused?
For example, savvy DIY marketers often look to append additional data points to their customer file. This data can then be used to inform your automation strategy. For example, by adding demographics, behavioral data or even additional marketing identifiers like address, email or phone, you can enhance the power of your customer file.
As an example, you may find that a younger male audience responds well to coupons in the inbox while an older female audience responds well to the same offer in the mailbox. By taking the simple step of enriching your audience data to make it as robust as possible, you now have valuable insights about your customers and create automated and highly targeted omnichannel campaigns that feel personalized – and ultimately perform for your business.
3. You Can Make Your Marketing Dollar Go Further
Some companies choose to launch large blanket marketing campaigns as an opportunity to get in front of as many potential buyers as possible. What’s the harm, right? If a prospect isn’t interested they’ll simply opt out. DIY marketers do not think this way. Why? The DIY marketer is keen to make smart investments in their business. Simply put, mass marketing can lead to mass waste, especially for smaller growing brands. This is expensive and most companies do not have the funds to invest in a marketing strategy that may yield an unpredictable ROI. Now, there are tools available that enable DIY marketers to build predictive models in just a few clicks. The models essentially help you “find the twin” of your best customers. Pinpoint your most promising prospects is exactly how DIY marketers maximize their investments.
4. You Can Save Time Through a Single Strategy that Goes Multichannel
As entrepreneurs, we’re strapped for time and resources. So when we find something that works, we stick to it. Why recreate the wheel? Although this is an age-old saying – this mindset can deter innovation. As we know, the market can shift and the overall customer journey can change. For example, the pandemic completely shifted priorities for the buyer and the seller. If you’re using the marketing strategies that worked in the past – it may or may not resonate in today’s new normal. CEO’s must drive the business forward intelligently and efficiently. Enter data. With a robust, complete customer data set, DIY marketers can build a single audience and then activate a campaign across channels – like direct mail, email, digital, mobile and even CTV. With a single audience strategy, it’s so much easier for DIY marketers to assess what channels are working best and where to make changes.
There are a number of data-driven marketing tools and strategies that can help CEOs, business owners, and entrepreneurs thrive as they wear their DIY marketer hat. More and more we’re seeing technology evolve to a place where you no longer need marketing expertise or even a full team of marketers to accomplish revenue goals. With data, automation and AI, entrepreneurs can be empowered to make data-driven business decisions that will build brand awareness, improve the customer experience, and increase revenue.
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