Benefits & Challenges of Using Customer Data for Marketing Author Rory Dignam
Data is fundamental to organise a strategy and obtain marketing results but the use of customer data for understanding the needs and wants of a travel-based business comes with a set of benefits and challenges. Some of the most common ones are the challenges and benefits outlined here below:
BENEFITS
- Market understanding - collecting the customer data can help a company understand the market trends and wants and adapt accordingly This allows the company to adapt their product and services to the market.
- Persona identification - through the collection and analysis of customer data is possible to build customer personas, understand who the ideal customers, the platforms where to reach them and the products/services they are interested in
- Knowing the path to purchase - marketers using customer data can recreate the path/journey of the customers on their site and improve the overall user experience
- Message personalisation - it has been proven that a personalised message resonates better with a target audience. The collection of customer data enables the creation of personalised messages that can results in better campaign outcomes.
CHALLENGES
- The amount of data - sometimes the amount of data collected by a business can be overwhelming and it can be difficult to organise
- Data meaning - even if a business is collecting data, it doesn't necessarily know how to read it so it is important to have marketers working closely with IT professionals to overcome possible challenges
- Capture the right data - sometimes the data collection process is not tracking the correct parameters and it can be difficult to assess the success of the marketing efforts
- Marketers skills - in small and medium business there is often a small team of people that is responsible for sales, marketing and more. In this case there might be a lack of skills (and possibly time) for a full analysis of the data available.
In conclusion, organising and understanding data can be challenging but the benefits outweigh the challenges. A data-driven marketing strategy would definitely benefit any business and it is essential to maintain the competitiveness of a business
Author
Rory Dignam
Hey Rory, enjoyed your blog on challenges and benefits of using customer date for marketing in the travel space. Your title image tells the whole story, though ice bergs may look massive from the outside, they are only a fraction of the part that is underneath and not visible to the eye. Indeed data is like that and I agree it takes lot of skill to interpret and use it to the maximum advantage. I agree with the benefits you have mentioned from market understanding to customised offering and the whole customer journey. On the flip side are the challenges and responsibilities that come with data, requires both skill and duty to adhere and use it in the right prospective. Organizations and businesses which are transparent and use the data in the right manner will be the long time winners. Well done...Comment By - Sultan Nazir
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog, the information is clearly and structured. I agree with you that the amount of data that businesses have collected is truly overwhelming and can be challenging. Therefore, collaboration with other industries, for example with IT specialists, is very important to overcome possible problems. I also liked that in conclusion you noted that the benefits still outweigh the problems, because indeed, if you develop a competent strategy and be able to analyze and process customer data in a quality manner, knowing your goals, you can have a huge advantage in the market among competitors. Thank you Rory!
ReplyDeleteKsenija Karpezo
Hi Rory I have really enjoyed your blog post, as usual. Again you have shown a great understanding of the given topic, and you have nicely simplified the Benefits and Challenges of using Customer Data in Marketing. In particular, really liked your notes of its challenges. The amount of the collected data can indeed be overwhelming, if not managed and analysed properly. It can create potential problems if not generated properly. So to conclude, businesses that undertake and collect customer data need to be aware of this and similar problems, and they need to have enough staff personnel to look after these things and to manage them appropriately. Thanks. Ivan B.
ReplyDeleteGreat image Rory. Really informative read. Well done 👏🏼
ReplyDeleteHi Rory, I really enjoy your use of images in your blogs, how you edit them and personalise them for each blog. It makes your images stand out. As you say data in the travel industry is all about knowing your customer in order to convert sales at the end of the day. Making things personal for the customer, in order to help the user experience. Tracking how the consumer interacts with your website, which is enjoyable to see in heatmaps on analytics. As great it is to collect data it can be overwhelming to an organisation as you mention on how and where to store this information safely and so that the information collected is used in a beneficial manner to the organisation. As you mention it could be difficult for a small business to handle their data correctly so perhaps this could be outsourced shortterm til they learn might be an idea for your readers. Tks for a great blog Diane
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