Customer Data Strategy
A company’s own customer data will not only be the cornerstone of marketing going forward but also a crucial tool for building unique competitive advantage. A customer data strategy answers the questions of what data is collected, why, and how customer data is transformed into real business capital. The customer data strategy forms the backbone for automations, segmentation, and data collection.
What is the business value of your own customer data?
The business benefits of customer data are diverse.
Customer data creates a unique competitive advantage.
Own customer data creates a competitive advantage for a company only when the company has strategically considered what data to collect, how to process the data, and how the data translates into profitability—whether through additional revenue, efficiency, or superior customer experience. The customer data strategy addresses all of this.
Marketing doesn’t work without your own customer data.
Marketing is no longer competitive without your own customer data. Targeting options on Meta and Google have significantly narrowed since the 2010s, and the only way to get real value from your media budget is to leverage your own customer data. We have seen our clients achieve 30 to 40 percent lower costs on these platforms when using their own customer data.
Naturally, having your own customer data also allows you to verify segments, understand how different messages resonate with various segments, and optimize practically every aspect of your marketing.
Optimize acquisitions with properly collected data.
When you know your customers, you make more accurate acquisitions and improve your profit margins. Optimizing your product portfolio using your own customer data can be done in countless ways, but it all starts with enriched customer data. To use data for decision-making, it must contain meaningful variables. Purchase history alone may not be enough to get very far.
Build engaging retail media.
Retail media is a growing market that affects most retailers. Brands increasingly want better returns on their partnerships and marketing budgets. More and more retailers are making significant investments in their own customer data specifically because of retail media. If you want to keep your retail media competitive, you need your own customer data to support it.
If a customer data strategy focuses only on technology or data, half of the strategy remains unaddressed. Without properly considering the nature of the business, as well as processes and resources, technologies and data are likely to go underutilized.
Example phases of strategy work
STRATEGY MODULE 1 AUDIT
The audit phase involves examining the company’s current capabilities to collect and process data. Depending on the scope of the project and the company’s focus, the emphasis may be more on a technical audit or more comprehensive, covering processes, resources, and data.
STRATEGY MODULE 2 MEASUREMENT AND TARGET STATE
Defining metrics and goals is part of the strategy work. Customer data should be measured as part of both the business’s strategic metrics and marketing’s more tactical metrics. 70/30 Digital has developed its own approach to measurement that clarifies the role of customer data within business and marketing.
STRATEGY MODULE 3 GAP ANALYSIS
Progress toward goals can be visualized, for example, through a gap analysis. The most important thing is to identify which issues are priorities for the organization right now and which can be addressed later. Which areas can be influenced immediately through process or marketing improvements, and which require more extensive technical development.
STRATEGY MODULE 4 ROADMAP AND BACKLOG
70/30 Digital’s self-developed and proven method for implementing strategy in a fully transparent way. A process description and ready-to-execute rollout aligned with goals, praised by many of our clients. In our clients’ own words: “I haven’t seen such a transparent and robust process from other agencies.