Data is something we all are familiar with. All of us use heavy amounts of data in our day-to-day lives, be it using the internet on our phones, working on our computers, watching videos to relax, or even doing our business. Data has become an indispensable part of our daily lives.

Quite often, we do not know the basics behind the working and importance of these data services. And to run a business, it’s of utmost importance that we understand the what and how of these services. Therefore, in today’s blog, we’ll take a look at some of the basic aspects of data and also understand how it helps you in your marketing.

Join along!

What is Data Services?

‘Data Services’ is a term used for third-party services that help manage data for their clients. Other uses of this term also involve services that are known as “data as a service” (DaaS).

DaaS are web-delivered services offered by cloud vendors that perform various functions on data.

Data Services are companies that provide access to data sets, data analysis, and data-related tools. They help businesses save time and money by giving them everything they need to make informed decisions without having to go out and collect it themselves.

The data services are not just limited to the management of databases and marketing research techniques. They also take care of:

• Data analytics
• Creating ever-changing customer profiles
• Designing customer lifecycle campaigns

A Forbes article discussing a survey from Deloitte stated “49 percent of respondents said analytics helps them make better decisions, 16 percent say that it better enables key strategic initiatives, and 10 percent say it helps them improve relationships with both customers and business partners.”

Importance of Data Services in Marketing

Data-driven Marketing provides you with concrete insight into how well or how poor your business and marketing activities are working. Marketers, in today’s time, need data for almost everything – from client presentations to reports for company leadership.

Here are a few points that tell us how Data Services are of great significance in Marketing-

1. Knowing your Customer better

‘Customer’ is the most crucial part of any marketing strategy. You need to engage and entice your potential leads with your products and/or services, so understanding their requirements and how you can help them is a high priority.

With the data that you receive from analytics, you can find out:

• Your “ideal” customer

As a marketer, you need to find potential leads who will convert into customers and will be loyal, repeat customers. In this aspect, data provides you valuable demographic information about a user’s habits and preferences and interaction with your website.

• Data tells you where your customers are

With marketing data and analytics, you get to know from which website people came to yours. This also works with social media. Knowing the sites and social media platforms each customer frequents, alongwith the days and times they are most likely on them, can help your marketing and advertising campaigns.

• Personalised experience for your customers

Every customer likes to get services that are apt for them and matches their preferences. Data gives you a wealth of information about your audiences’ persona and what kind of things they care about. This makes them loyal customers who’ll be more likely to do business with your company again.

2. Right Pricing Strategy

Customer data allows you to drive pricing analytics which is important to overcome the challenges of price optimization. Pricing analytics also helps in identifying the channels that are most profitable, and thus conceptualise customised promotions.

Marketers need to look out for accurate answers to questions like:

• What should the price of my product be?
• How much cost do we put on the services we deliver?
• How should we choose the appropriate product and service price?

3. Forecasting the future

Data analysis gives you a sneak peek into your business’ past performance; this further helps to predict your future. Determining what worked earlier and what did not helps you to optimise your techniques for campaigns used for your digital marketing strategy. Your marketing team can determine how certain things affect the overall profit, which aids in determining your return on investment (ROI).

4. Better conceptualize Products & Services

Data helps you to better understand the performance of your product and services. Allowing marketers to identify products or services that are poor performers, helps them create processes so that unnecessary effort of building those products or services that have no demand is reduced. This gives a scope for improvement.

Data informs you of the needs, pain points, and desires of your audience – thus giving you a chance to tailor the value and features of your products to match what your consumers are looking for. This will give better product success.

5. Strengthens Campaign Strategies

Data-driven Marketing campaigns are an integral part of marketing strategies. Right data helps in testing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and strengthens and shifts the campaign strategies to desired forms. This can be achieved through predictive analytics-based predictions.

Most importantly, this data helps in streamlining your lead scoring initiatives – allowing you to identify leads that have a higher chance of becoming your customers. This is of utmost significance as it offers you a direction to optimize your marketing campaigns.

6. Cross-Selling & Up-Selling

Data increases your opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling by providing insights to help you move prospective customers through the sales funnel quickly and more cost-efficiently. Data also helps you see untapped opportunities, that you may not have noticed before, for cross-selling throughout the sales funnel.

Even after the purchase, data gives you insights and ideas to keep your customers engaged post-sale. This post-sale relationship can lead to loyal customers who make more, future purchases. Data-based marketing offers a pleasant buyer’s journey experience that can also sway converting customers to be more willing to upgrade or be upsold.

7. Better Decisions

Data is a major influencing factor when it comes to making smarter decisions, such as:

• Finding new customers
• Better managing marketing efforts
• Increasing customer retention
• Tracking social media interaction
• Predicting sales trends
• Improving customer service

8. Solves Problems and Understands Performance

Tracking and reviewing data from your business processes helps you uncover performance breakdowns. This way you can better understand each part of the process and know which steps need to be fixed and which are performing well.

The Closing Lines

Data services in marketing assists marketers in the data management process. They help build and maintain a database that is rich with information. In this way, they can provide valuable insights to clients that can be used to generate leads.