Brands are overwhelming people with so much content when what they actually need are authentic connections. But running on creativity without data just misses the mark. To build authentic and lasting connections with your customers, you need to use data-driven creativity. 

Insight: Data empowers brands with the right audience insights to deliver relevant, personalised content and authentic user experiences.

Data: Businesses that have successfully integrated creativity and analytics have grown twice as fast than those that haven’t. (McKinsey)

What’s the step change: Use data-driven creativity to establish lasting connections with your customers at specific touchpoints where you can make the most impact. 

Today’s digital innovations and shifting consumer behaviour have led us to a new reality — one that thrives on authentic user experiences. Now, more than ever, we are challenged to deliver intrinsic value to our customers or get left behind. 

Source: State of the Connected Customer

Marketers predict that in 2023, both creativity and martech will be vital to developing effective marketing strategies, and some feel today’s strategies are driven by an equal mixture of both. 

If we take a closer look at where we are today, the brands that stand out in marketing are those powered by both data and creativity. Therefore, combining these two together can help brands develop a powerful strategy that will help them stand out and scale. 

Raising the Bar from Brands to Experiences

We know that it takes more than a stellar value proposition and consistent branding to market yourself effectively. Emerging technology has raised the bar significantly higher with consumers expecting content on-demand and consistent omnichannel user experiences. 

Today, not only does our content need to be compelling, it should tell a story and be tailored to our customer’s micro-moments and everyday experiences. 

But without data and audience insights to guide us, it’s difficult to identify the type of content we’ll need to attract the right customers. 

With a limited budget, not having the right insight to guide our creative strategy can end up with us wasting time, energy, and critical resources that could have been focused on something that drives better results and delivers more value. 

Fortunately, there are many audience insight tools such as Google Analytics, Buzzsumo, and Sprout Social, which are great at letting us dive deep into consumer sentiment and how our content is performing across channels and networks from clicks, page impressions, engagement, and many more. 

Facebook’s Audience Insights tool can segment our defined audience according to preferences and demographics, which is great for trying out new content offers or looking into trends and topics that our audience will most likely respond to.

We can also further narrow this down to user qualities such as age, gender, relationship status, education, work, job status, etc.

With the right audience insights, we can create powerful marketing campaigns that resonate best with our target customers. 

We simply cannot push for innovation based on creativity alone. We need data and customer insights to create personalised content that will wow our audience. 

The Need for Context-Based Storytelling 

There is no shortage of channels by which we can tell and share our stories today. But delivering these stories consistently according to the context by which these stories are viewed or read from mobile to website is crucial to a seamless user experience. According to Salesforce —

• Customers expect connected journeys and are 3.7x more likely to view seamless transitions between channels as important
• 70% of B2B customers say connected processes (such as seamless handoffs or contextualised engagement based on earlier interactions) are very important to winning their business

For effective and consistent storytelling, we must create and design content that adapts to the changing customer context. But it can be difficult to achieve this without data and audience insights, which help inform us of the kind of stories that resonate the most with our customers to make an impact. 

Creative storytelling remains to be crucial, and data will give brands the insight to explore different forms of the human experience that are relevant to the changing consumer landscape. Personalised and memorable user experiences are what drives brand loyalty. 

Empowering the Message through Predictive Analytics 

Data holds the power to inform businesses the best channels to promote their content so their target audience can see them. This ultimately maximises the results. With so much content available online, being able to create more targeted messages and ads can make all the difference — and that is where predictive analytics comes in.

Predictive analytics extracts user information from existing data sets to determine patterns and predict outcomes and trends. 

It makes use of data mining, modelling, and statistics to understand consumer behaviour and help predict the results of our marketing efforts. 

By focusing on a specific demographic, we can create precise messages and ads with purpose. With lesser irrelevant ads, we can save on costs, our marketing campaigns become more effective, and ROI increases. 

Predictive analytics informs designers with the insights they need to choose the right visual elements that will make the most impact for each target audience. 

In running ads, predictive insights help us identify the ad versions that will work best for a certain demographic — giving designers more control and the data needed to create more effective ads. 

A report shows that by using predictive analytics tools, businesses are able to achieve competitive advantage (68%), find new revenue opportunities (55%), and increase profitability (52%).

Creating Tailored and Personalised Marketing 

Today’s consumers seek personalised experiences above all else. Personalised web experiences drive sales by as much as 20%. Personalised CTAs result in a 42% higher conversion rate than generic CTAs.

Through data, we can create audience segments that help us understand customer behaviour across different touchpoints so we can tailor your marketing efforts accordingly. 

With consumers overwhelmed with so much noise, purpose- and data-driven content and experiences that anticipate user needs and are attuned to their preferences will hold more relevance.

Tying It Together 

Creativity without data will not make much of an impact to customers. In the same way, acting on data alone without a rich narrative and creativity’s emotional appeal will not be memorable or inspiring enough to stand out. 

It takes marrying both data and creativity — logic and magic —  to enhance the customer experience, build lasting connections, and create valuable content that delivers great results. 

The crucial question to ask now is this: Is data guiding your creativity? Are you already using it to put the customer experience at the core of your strategy?