<span style="font-weight: 400;">Earlier, the word ‘data’ had a simple definition - raw facts and figures. Now it's the era of data analytics, data mining and data science. A decade ago no one would have dreamt that data would steal the spotlight in the marketing arena. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Up until a few years back, all the data that companies ever cared about was sales figures. Now, with cut-throat competition on the rise, brands are on a race towards improving their customer experience and fine-tuning their marketing strategies to stay ahead in their niche. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Companies are trying their best to get into the crowd in order to understand consumer behaviour. With the advent of analytic tools, businesses make it a point to keep track of their customer demographics such as gender, age, location, interests and preferences. This aids them in targeting their products and services to the right audience.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Data has risen from just being a pile of stats and graphs you sleep on to the pivotal element in business decision making.</span>

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<span style="font-weight: 400;">The ubiquitous nature of data ensures that companies have access to bucket loads of it. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">But what good is such an enormous amount of data if it doesn't help grow your business?</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Here is why:</span>

<span style="color: #00ccff;"><b>Coherence </b></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The right data can guide you in making core decisions that could determine the fate of your business. You won't be struggling in the dark to find out what really works for your brand or what plan of action to execute next. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In contrast to working on a hunch, actions backed by data are proven to provide substantial positive results.</span>

<span style="color: #00ccff;"><b>Targeting </b></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Wonder how Ads pop up in the right place, at the right time, to the right people? Its all the work of data-backed targeting. Most of the data is collected while the user surfs the internet. Such quality customer insights aid marketers in segmenting the audience and help create personalised campaigns targeting a specific group.</span>

<span style="color: #00ccff;"><b>Customer experience</b></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Everyone likes it when something is made especially for them. We feel pampered and valued when we get that special consideration. This human nature is now being exploited by many B2Cs to strike a note with the customers.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Danon Activia’s marketing campaign is an interesting example of how insights from research can be efficiently used for emotionally appealing to the targeted demographics : </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Danon, a probiotic yoghurt company centred its marketing around self-esteem. Their advertising team came up with this idea after looking at the data from a study conducted by a research firm GlobalWebIndex. According to the study, more than a quarter of the women aged between 25 to 55 years had low self-esteem. So, Dannon came up with the ‘It starts inside’ campaign, where the main focus was around encouraging women to open up about their negative self- critical talks they give themselves. </span>

<span style="color: #00ccff;"><b>Challenges</b></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The road to incorporating data-driven strategies into your business is not going to be a smooth one. It is one paved with twists, turns and unprecedented roadblocks. Truth be told, it is going to take a lot of effort and commitment to get past that sheer volume of data and find meaning.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Integrating data from across departments will appear to be a daunting task as the data collected by different department might have contradicting goals.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Another challenge is data privacy. We all are aware of the upheaval that Facebook - Cambridge Analytica Scandal caused. Consumers are now becoming increasingly concerned about what they share on the web and how their data is collected.</span>

<span style="color: #00ccff;"><b>Predictive analysis </b></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Technology, business and customer expectation: these three are in a state of constant change and evolving day by day into unimaginable proportions. Therefore, in order for your business to gain an edge over its rivals, it is important to predict the shift in business trends and be prepared in advance.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Data is never going to get exhausted. Even customers encourage companies to collect their data in order to provide them with better-customised solutions and experience. But the game changer here is not collecting and analysing the data. What’s going to make an impact is the decisions you make based on these data. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Data-driven strategies are of utmost significance when it comes to online marketing, but its scope can reach beyond the web into offline sales promotion as well. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Rome was not built in a day. The same applies to data-driven marketing. It takes consistency and diligence to mine the gold out of the goldmine i.e, data.</span>

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