EARY last month we featured an article entitled new technologies change marketing strategies.

In that article, we discussed a number of trends which have transformed the marketing landscape.

One of the transformative trends that we highlighted was the increasing awakening to the importance of data in marketing strategies.

Marketers have echoed the increasing reality that the marketing mix has evolved to include an additional element: the importance of data in marketing. This was evident in the global data driven marketing and advertising survey of 2014.

The global data driven marketing and advertising survey of 2014 was a ground-breaking study which surveyed over 3000 specialists from the marketing and advertising sectors, as well as related fields across 17 countries.

The study was the largest undertaken by a global consortium of marketing associations.

The global review of data-driven marketing and advertising report benchmarked current practices with the goal of helping practitioners identify and act on opportunities and challenges, as well as understanding market dynamics and trends.

One of the key and notable findings of this study revealed that 92.2 per cent of the respondents indicated that they expect data to contribute even more to their advertising and marketing efforts in the coming years.

In short, data not only matters, it is thought to be among the most precious assets most organisations have, regardless of industry sector or market.

The main findings of the global data-driven marketing and advertising survey underscore the importance that marketers and advertisers place on getting the right data to help them acquire and retain customers and meet business goals.

Global trends indicate that marketing spend is no longer aimless, but budgets are being targeted to support data-driven and results oriented marketing.

As we noted earlier, ‘data is now being regarded as digital, and digital is data’. This implies that all the currently known media are now being used for marketing using data. These media are: website or e-commerce content, social media, mobile, paid search engine marketing and online display advertising

Based on the data mapped out on what people purchase, business firms can customize offers and opportunities to the individual.

Managing more information broadens marketing’s charge but also increases the challenges of harnessing data channels, customer demands and performance expectations.

Additionally, this means that marketers, technologists and services providers need to intensify their efforts across virtually all functional components of data-driven marketing organisations.

Globally, the relationship between consumers and their bankers is constantly evolving especially with the advent of the mobile phones. This too, is working in favor of data driven marketing.

Marketers also use data to drive efficiency in their marketing organisations and are better placed to measure the effectiveness of their expenditure on marketing using a data driven approach.

In addition to measuring individual campaigns, shopping interests and experiences, marketers can now measure success in terms of the response of real people over time.

Marketers everywhere are stewards of consumer data. Their dexterity enables corporate and product brands to use all the data available to catch customer’s attention and engage them with the firms’ brands.

Marketers ideally believe that conventionally, 100 per cent of the people that are reached with every marketing effort convert into a buyer. In reality, however, this is a fallacy.

Data however, addresses this fallacy, Marketers can reliably predict that every data driven marketing effort could probably land a reliably predictable conversion of buyers.

We can use data to narrow down and focus marketing efforts and budgets to the right people who are most likely to respond.

Marketers analyse the data make-up of the firm’s existing customers to pinpoint common traits, income earning power, age, sex, location, occupation, hobbies, previous purchases, etc.

They in turn harness that information to target people with similar patterns. This consequently improves response rates, increase efficiency and boost the marketing return on investment.

Data driven marketing can help marketers reach their targeted audience at the right time. Imagine Face book is rated to store, access, and analyse 30 plus petabytes of user generated data.

This data could be used to predict people’s behavior, their connections, abilities, history and plans. This data could reliably predict a user’s lifestyle and timing which could be targeted as a prospect for a marketing campaign.

Marketers can reach people through the right channels using data driven efforts. Insight data can also tell us how people prefer to respond.

With so many communication channels available, people connect in different ways: e-mail, mobile voice call, SMS texts and the like. Using data, marketers can get a better insight of how individual prospects prefer to communicate.

The twenty-first century is truly proving to be an age of customised marketing. Data is increasingly becoming an amazingly powerful tool that gives marketers the ability to speak to individual personal preferences and tailor marketing to the individual.

When the right data is collected and when implemented properly, data creates a map for business firms showing marketers how to reach the right people at the right time, with the right offer through the right channel, and consequently obtaining the desired return on marketing investment.

The author is the Managing Consultant at GN Grant Business Consultant, a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified