With the growing shift away from third-party identifying data, organizations must implement a solid primary data strategy. Primary data has tremendous power because it is unique to your business, data that you direct, collect, and own. Unfortunately, despite significant benefits, most organizations are not yet fully utilizing the power of first-party data.
This article will discuss the best sources of primary data that you may not have considered, how to obtain and manage this data, and how to use this data to improve your customers’ experiences and grow your business.
The Best Primary Data Sources
Primary data is gathered from your customers and prospects as a result of their interactions with your company. Data shared by customers via your websites, applications, landing pages, lead response forms, and in response to communications such as marketing initiatives via email, events, and webinars are examples. This data is far superior because it is derived from your direct relationship with your customers, which aids in the development of familiarity and the creation of authentic conversations.
Before your organization begins collecting data, you should establish a clear strategy for determining which data should be collected in the first place. Your overall business strategy must drive your approach, be rooted in the customer experience, and differentiate between necessary and discretionary data. For example, one of your company’s objectives could be to acquire new customers by directing them to a thought leadership funnel. To achieve this goal, you develop a robust content strategy that includes webinars and demonstrations, all of which are designed to attract new customers looking for solutions. As you use this program to provide personalized content, target high-priority customer segments, and create forums for knowledge creation, you would use this as your focused primary data source. All of this will generate valuable data points for your organization and increase engagement with its products and services. Your primary data collection plan should be built with measurable objectives to guide which data will help you achieve your business goals, where your organization should invest in gathering this data, and how these points of intersection may impact the customer experience. Data acquisition has costs that must be considered, such as risking the customer experience, data privacy compliance, data governance and security, and the impact on your organization’s reputation. When these costs are weighed against your goals, they can help you prioritize your data collection efforts.
Strategies for Obtaining Primary Data That Benefit Everyone
People want to know how their information will be used and why it is being requested. There is also a lingering resentment that they must give up some aspects of their data in order to interact with a business. Customers are more likely to share their information if they receive something in return, such as promotions, contests, or access to information. Customers are also more willing to give up their information if they believe the company will handle it responsibly. To demonstrate to customers that your organization has strong data governance and processes in place to ensure data integrity and minimize data breaches, for example.
In addition to your processes, ensuring you have the right technology is critical to ensuring your collection and storage practices are on point. To properly leverage your primary data strategy, your digital marketing practice must be mature. Unfortunately, many organisations attempt to do this in-house while also accelerating their primary data strategy, so identifying capability and technology gaps is critical.
Using Data to Improve Customer Experience
You are now ready to put this data to work to improve your customer’s experience, having a clear understanding of what data is most important for your business strategy and how this data will be collected and managed. One-to-one personalization is the holy grail of customer experience, a difficult task that is dependent on your initial data collection and management techniques. One blunder in your personalization (for example, using your last name instead of your first name) can jeopardise your credibility.
Using Data to Enhance the Customer Experience
You are now prepared to use this data to improve your customers’ experiences, having a clear understanding of what data is most important for your business strategy and how this data will be collected and managed. The holy grail of customer experience is one-to-one personalization, a difficult task that is dependent on your initial data collection and management techniques. One mistake in your personalization (such as using your last name instead of your first name) can jeopardise your credibility.
Measure for Outcomes
After activating, it’s time to measure and restart! Measuring the effectiveness of your organization’s data strategy can also help you develop a better overall business strategy. For example, a SaaS company used events as its primary source of data and lead generation, but when the results were measured, the leads were not actionable. As a result, the company started using segmented landing pages with targeted webinar content for each segment. This strategy immediately yielded more qualified and actionable leads, allowing the company to focus its efforts on a smaller audience and achieve more significant results.
Primary data enables closer connections with our customers, resulting in better experiences for your clients and, ultimately, faster growth. The first step in primary data governance is to ensure that data is used responsibly in order to ensure trust and longevity.
Learn more from Marketing and read How to Protect Your Business data.
