Shopify review: Arguably the best e-commerce platform on the market

Shopify is an eCommerce platform that caters equally well to both beginners and experienced website builders, bringing together all the tools a business owner needs to create an online shop. It has an easy-to-use backend, a variety of payment processing solutions, and a wide assortment of themes you can use to customise your store. Shopify even comes with Liquid, its own templating language, ideal for those who love tinkering with code to ensure their store totally represents their brand and conveys their message.

Shopify is hosted on the company’s own servers, meaning you don’t need to install software or buy any separate hosting packages to use it. You just build your online store using your web browser, and there are even mobile apps to manage it on the go. You can also expand your store’s functionality by adding apps from the Shopify marketplace.

Shopify: key features

  • CSS and HTML options for those confident in coding
  • Online editor enabling you to customise your store with ease
  • Built-in email solutions for reaching out to customers direct
  • App for Android and iOS for managing your store wherever you are
  • Vouchers and discount codes to maximise your odds of making a sale
  • Abandoned cart recovery to boost your chances of converting customers
  • Range of mobile-responsive themes, including both free and paid options
  • SEO capabilities including control over your redirects, metadata and sitemap URLs
  • Git integration for more advanced developers to manage workflow and version control
  • One-click theme duplication, allowing you to update and preview pages before they go live
  • Blog where you can develop your inbound marketing strategy and showcase your thought leadership
  • Social media integration to seamlessly meld your public-facing platforms with your online store
  • Reporting and analytics covering sales, customer behaviours, search data, marketing insights and abandoned cart stats
  • Global selling options, including both direct and wholesale transactions and the ability to sell in person through point-of-sale integrations using a dedicated app
  • Shipping functionality, enabling you to offer overnight delivery, package pickups, shipping insurance, shipment tracking, international shipping and discounts on shipping costs
  • Marketing tools enabling you to nurture customers over time, including audience insights, customer segmentation and chat functionality, through which customers can contact you direct with their queries
  • Secure checkout where you can accept orders and take payments where you sell online—in fact, Spotify is the market leader in this area to the point that WordPress plugin developers are now replicating it for WooCommerce
  • Shopify Payments, which accepts a range of credit cards, has its own fraud protection capabilities, and can be connected to the payment processing on your other channels both online and off- if you wish to expand your store’s potential

Shopify: pros and cons

Pros

  • Dozens of apps
  • Point-of-sale tools
  • Easy management
  • Product categories
  • Tax calculation tools
  • Multi-currency selling
  • Multi-language hosting
  • Shopify Shipping service
  • Plans for every kind of store
  • Email marketing capabilities
  • Variety of payment gateways
  • Abandoned cart functionality
  • Accessible layout for beginners
  • Seamless drag-and-drop builder
  • Responsive and flexible templates
  • Shopify-managed hosting and security

Cons

  • Relatively high transaction fees on cheaper plans
  • Rudimentary reporting and analytics on cheaper plans
  • Only a handful of free themes compared to other builders
  • Some store functionalities only improved by installing apps
  • Custom changes require some knowledge of its templating language Liquid

Shopify: user experience

Ease of use
Shopify is clean, sleek and intuitive, built specifically for beginners but just as useful to experienced website builders confident in producing a modern and dynamic online store from scratch. It’s also easy to merge your store with your omnichannel sales environment through accelerated payments, buy buttons for social media and Facebook and Instagram integrations. Linking out to other places like eBay, Etsy, Pinterest and Amazon does require third-party apps, but it’s still relatively straightforward.

Online store design
The Shopify interface has become increasingly user-friendly in recent years, and now its Online Store 2.0 solution gives you access to a convenient drag-and-drop builder whereby you can add and move blocks and sections around in seconds. If you’re looking for a more advanced design solution, it’s worth reaching out to an experienced developer or established agency, as the page builders provided by some of Shopify’s competitors like Wix and Squarespace are poor for eCommerce. That being said, the fact your online store can be created entirely without code makes Shopify an obvious choice for beginners who just want to get their shop up and running.

Product management
You can sell both physical and digital goods with Shopify, adding products one at a time or using a CSV file to upload data in bulk. Add photos and videos to your product pages, alt text for your images to enhance your SEO ranking, and even 3D models depending on your theme. Shopify doesn’t crop images on your behalf, so be sure to either upload your media in the right size or use the built-in photo editor to adjust them before publishing.

Inventory management
Shopify supports multichannel selling across every plan, and it’s easy to manage stock and orders no matter which channel you’re using. Track and transfer inventory across locations, and sync everything within your store. Just be aware that you may be limited in the scope of your inventory management unless you integrate additional apps. For example, you won’t be able to manage dropshipping orders unless you install an app.

Help and support

Shopify has a comprehensive approach to customer support. The Shopify Support team are available 24/7 via phone, email and live chat, and there’s an abundance of FAQs and resource articles in over 20 languages to explore, although they don’t include many visual insights into how to use your admin interface. That being said, you can sign up for Shopify courses to access a more thorough education in using the platform.

For supported themes, Shopify Support can actually make code updates and customisations—for free! What’s more, most popular apps have automatic installation and free installation support courtesy of the app developers, so you don’t need to worry about development costs when scaling your business. And finally, don’t underestimate the power of the community forums—they’re inhabited by experts ready and willing to help out anyone who’s run into a problem with their online store. You can even hire a certified Shopify Expert through the website!

No matter your industry or expertise, Shopify’s got you covered

Shopify is endlessly flexible and adaptable, empowering business owners around the world to sell both physical and digital goods and grow their companies, often with unprecedented ease. Of course that’s not to say Shopify doesn’t have a few downsides—unlocking some of its functionalities can be expensive, especially when you account for the additional transaction fees on some of its plans—but it’s intuitive, comprehensive, and rich in features. And what kind of price can you put on that accessibility and peace of mind?

WooCommerce review: The DIYer’s e-commerce platform

WooCommerce is an eCommerce platform that gives business owners a lot of freedom to customise their online stores. A free plugin on WordPress, it’s not ideal for beginners because users need to be able to handle the technical side of the site—but if you’re a confident website builder then WooCommerce brings a raft of benefits!

WooCommerce: key features

    • Stock level control
    • Hundreds of plugins
    • WordPress integration
    • Total control over data
    • Mobile-friendly structure
    • Adjustable taxes and shipping rates
    • Unlimited products and product categories
    • Free extension for Facebook Ads and Facebook Shops
    • Built-in WooCommerce Payments—and you can easily integrate other gateways like Stripe and PayPal via free plugins

WooCommerce: user experience

Ease of use
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, not a subscription-based solution like Shopify. That means you’ll need some experience in setting up a web server, redirecting a domain to that server, and installing WordPress and ensuring it’s operational. And you’ll need to complete a few simple tasks before you can starting building your online store with it:

  • Get a domain name
  • Install WordPress
  • Sign up for a hosting account
  • Find and install a WordPress theme

Then you can install the WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress website and get building!

To make things easier if you’re not an expert but still feel confident enough to give WooCommerce a go, consider bringing on board a specialised WordPress hosting company to take care of the domain and installation, leaving you to focus solely on WooCommerce.

It’s also important to note that WooCommerce doesn’t come with any ‘design’ as such—it’s all handled via a WordPress theme of your choice. That being said, it’s still relatively easy because WooCommerce works with pretty much all themes on the market. All you need to do is find one that suits your brand and install it on the site.

As soon as you install and activate the WooCommerce plugin you’ll see the onscreen setup wizard, which guides you through each element in turn. It enables you to define the parameters of your store and get everything neatly configured, so tax, shipping, inventory, currency and payment gateways are ready when you go live.

Payment processing
With WooCommerce you can embed Stripe and PayPal in your online store, then process transactions conveniently without directing shoppers to a third-party checkout page. Both payment processors are reliable and efficient, and most WooCommerce stores run smoothly with those alone. You don’t even need a merchant bank account to get things up and running. But if you would like to try out a different service, you can integrate a plethora of other alternative payment processing solutions, most of which are simple plugins. It’s even possible to go beyond online selling, by leveraging the WooCommerce POS plugin for in-store transactions. This accommodates a range of providers offering in-person card-processing functionalities.

Once you’ve identified the gateway that’s right for you, simply install its add-on and connect the service to your merchant bank account. Now you can handle transactions on your online store without having to pay WooCommerce a penny, although note that the payment processors will charge you. The fees differ from one provider to another.

SEO
WooCommerce takes full advantage of the fact that WordPress is primarily a content creation platform, renowned by SEO experts for giving business owners the best chance to rank well for keywords. WooCommerce provides more SEO-specific options than other eCommerce platforms simply because it’s built on top of WordPress.

Security
Technically there aren’t any security measures included with the WooCommerce plugin. As it runs on WordPress, most of the responsibility for security falls to you. For example, you need to ensure your hosting company has secure servers, and configure your site’s security plugins and two-factor authentication. You also need to source your own SSL certificate, although you can usually get this through your hosting provider, sometimes even for free.

 

Help and support

Since WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin, you can get a lot of support simply by exploring the latter’s community forums. But there’s also a dedicated WooCommerce team who will do their best to answer your queries and solve your problems.

Enjoy full control of your eCommerce store with WooCommerce

WooCommerce gives business owners access to thousands of site designs, as well as thousands of plugins which enable them to extend their stores’ functionality. As long as you don’t mind investing half a day into setting up your site, and you’re confident in handling most or all of it solo (unless you’ve brought an expert or specialist company on board to do it for you), WooCommerce is a fabulous and flexible platform that can open up a whole world of eCommerce possibilities, and empower you to grow your business like never before!

Google Analytics 4 is here—but are you ready?

Google Analytics 4 represents a fundamentally different way of collecting data, and signals the increasing overlap between web and mobile app content and development. Businesses that haven’t yet installed GA4 need to get conversant with it fast—there’s just a month to go before Google deprecates Universal Analytics and GA4 becomes the only data analytics service available on the platform.

On July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics (UA) accounts will stop collecting data, and a year later on July 1, 2024, Google Analytics 360 (GA360) accounts will also stop. They’re being replaced by Google Analytics 4 (GA4), a new Google product enabling users to collect web and app data separately or in one continuous property.

GA4 marks a major milestone in the tracking of web and app properties. Formerly called App + Web when announced in its beta stage in October 2020, GA4 builds on the foundation of cross-device unified measurement which Google introduced in July 2019. GA4 eliminates the need for manual stitching and workarounds between platforms, and ultimately quenches marketers’ thirst for unified data.

But if you haven’t implemented GA4 yet, read on and get ready—you don’t have long!

Have you seen the latest TikTok de-influencer trend?

This is basically where social media influencers slander a hyped up viral product and tells you exactly why you DON’T need it.

Is this going to be the death of influencing or another clever ploy to encourage you to buy a product. The double bluff?

What is Google Analytics 4?

GA4 isn’t a simple redesign of UA. It’s a whole new product, which until July 1, 2023 can be installed alongside your existing UA profile.

If you’re new to Analytics, however, GA4 is the default Google Analytics platform. It superseded UA in October 2020.

Google Analytics used to be divided between web properties—what we might think of as ‘traditional’ analytics—and Analytics for Firebase, which caters specifically to app needs.

GA4 unifies users’ data, and most importantly gives them flexible and powerful analytics tools within the bounds of cookieless tracking and consent management.

Universal Analytics vs Google Analytics 4: what’s changing?

Implementing GA4 doesn’t mean you have to get rid of your existing Analytics setup. For now you should keep that in place—its valuable historical data will be available for a further 6 months, and will complement the insights gathered from GA4. But as of July 1 next year, GA4 will become Google’s sole analytics platform.

If you’re setting up Analytics for the first time you can get started with GA4 right away, no need to create a separate UA profile. But if you’re transitioning from UA to GA4, a variety of changes are coming in the wake of growing data privacy restrictions.

Google Signals regionality
Launched in 2018, Signals is a Google product that collects data from users who’ve opted in to ad personalisation. The data is anonymised and made available to integrate into reporting and audience building. Signals can be disabled for specific countries and included for others. This level of control can be vital for political or socioeconomic reasons, because while not necessarily a GDPR requirement, it enables whole regions to be excluded from intake.

IP address logging
Google has deprecated IP logging; all processing for locations will now be passed through to GA. This meets GDPR requirements and mitigates any compliance issues that could arise during the transfer of personally identifiable information (PII).

Granular location and device data collection
Several data points are no longer default, including city, device information and browser versioning. Some companies may choose not to collect these data points for the sake of making sure they’re fully compliant with GDPR. Those data points that are no longer default can still be collected according to specified regions.

EU data
EU data was being moved to the US for processing, but this practice has been deprecated. EU data is now processed within the EU to comply with GDPR.

What new features does Google Analytics bring?

With GA4, a variety of metrics that users of UA are accustomed to have changed, deprecated, or been replaced.

From pageviews to views
GA4 prioritises views over pageviews because it unifies web and app properties: views encompasses screenviews and pageviews. But as was previously the case, repeated views of the same content are counted individually.

Identity Spaces
GA4 comes with four distinct identity methods, which together produce a unified view of cross-device user journeys:

  • user ID
  • device ID
  • modelling
  • Google Signals.

All data associated with the same user—that is to say, associated with the same identity—is assigned to the same identity space. Identity spaces are used across all GA4 reporting, enabling brands and advertisers to deduplicate their list of users and gain a richer understanding of their relationship and interactions with their businesses.

From average session duration to average engagement time
While the two metrics are calculated differently, average engagement time reports on what average session duration was always attempting to encapsulate: user focus on web- or screenpages.

New metrics
Goodbye outdated user behavioural measurements like bounce rate and average session duration. With GA4, new metrics for understanding behaviour include engaged sessions and engagement rates, which are both more impactful than the old metrics.

From goals to conversions
This change is mainly just semantic. It’s come about because of the deprecation of the category–action–label hierarchy of previous events. That being said, it’s still important to note that GA4 will count every instance of a conversion event, even if it occurs multiple times in the same session. For example, if the same user fills out a form three times in one session, that conversion is counted three times.

Multipurpose audience lists
When you create an audience in GA4, it’s automatically imported and becomes available for remarketing in Google Ads on YouTube and the Google Search and Display Networks. By contrast, advertisers using UA have to recreate audiences in Google Ads they’ve already created in Analytics.

From session to session start
GA4 slightly changes the definition of when a session is said to have been created. It’s now determined when a session start is triggered. This generates a session ID which is appended to each event that occurs within the session. Sessions end after 30 minutes or the defined timeout period. They can no longer restart at midnight or when new campaign parameters are encountered.

A different data display
UA’s data model is hit-based, characterised by sessions and pageviews. The latter are the starting point of data collection in UA, whereas in GA4 the key metric is events.

 

What are the business benefits of Google Analytics 4?

By leveraging AI and machine learning components for the near-cookieless future, GA4 is a step in the right direction in terms of giving businesses the insights they actually need.

Simplified and organised reporting
GA4 introduced several new reporting tools of interest to marketers and web analysts, and the existing web and app reports have been reorganised in the platform UI. The standout benefit from these changes is the unified user view between app and website, but it’s also worth noting that Google has revamped its custom reporting tool as an ‘analysis hub’. This offers more flexibility, with custom and ad hoc reporting.

Unified metric and dimension scopes
GA4 brings together the view between app and web, which is probably the single biggest advantage it brings. Previous iterations of Analytics required separate tagging and properties, which sometimes led to inconsistent metrics and dimensions. Just remember when you start out with GA4 that you won’t have any historical or 24-hour data, but you’ll soon start to see that populate.

New privacy-conscious data controls
Unified reporting and the user journey across platforms has been a perennial challenge since the dawn of app and web development. GA4 represents an acknowledgement of these needs and the fact that they’re growing increasingly complex in the face of exponentially more stringent data regulations. As privacy advocates criticise third-party data collection, Google is now ready to embrace anonymised first-party data instead, along with consented tracking. By unifying properties and collection scopes (and announcing significant server-side capabilities), Google is moving away from client-side dependencies.

 

 

What will my operations look like using Google Analytics 4?

Over the last few years we’ve seen users and sessions switch places in Analytics, a nod to a future in which analysts track users over session-by-session data. GA4 manifests this shift in full. Event-based tracking over hit-based tracking produces a degree of granularity in data that simply wasn’t possible before.

Meanwhile, old categories like action and label have been deprecated, and all interactions with a website are now ingested at the same level of granularity. A pageview happens at the same level of detail as a link click. This precise level-setting enables flexibility that would have been otherwise more limited. The question now is less “What happened in the session?”, more “How did the user behave in the session?” Fundamentally, data points are being translated into human actions.

 

 

How do I track my marketing data and create reports in Google Analytics 4?

You can set up a default attribution model for your reporting needs in Property Settings. You can also specify a lookback window, whose default is the last 30 days. This marks a stark evolution from UA, whose default was Last non-direct click, which couldn’t be changed across the account—different models were comparable only in a specific tab.

With GA4’s attribution models, direct visits are excluded from receiving attribution credit on all attribution models unless the conversion path was direct visits only. The models have been and will continue to be introduced on different dates, with their data available only from their start dates. If you select data outside the available window, you’ll only see some of it.

Analytics’ attribution reporting previously looked at how a website had acquired a user’s session, but GA4’s will focus instead on how the user was acquired in the first place, as well as how their subsequent sessions were acquired.

There’s also an exciting range of metrics exclusive to GA4:

  • event count: number of hits or triggered events
  • active users: number of users active in a 28-day period
  • engagement rate: percentage of total sessions that were engaged sessions
  • average engagement time: calculated summation of user engagement durations per active user
  • engaged sessions: number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds and had a conversion event or at least 2 views.

How do I migrate to Google Analytics 4?

GA4 is a new product unto itself. You can’t just hit an Update button in your existing UA or GA360 property—you must create an entirely new property for GA4, and your site will need the appropriate tagging to start collecting data.

While Google is providing a mirroring service to translate UA tags to GA4, you shouldn’t rely on it—indeed Google itself recommends that you don’t. The inherent differences in data structure will likely confuse your setup, and any issues or errors from your old setup may get carried forward into your GA4. Much better to start afresh with GA4, and prime your business for success as we hail a new era in analytics.

3 simple questions to ask before implementing Google Analytics 4:

  • Should I migrate to server-side tracking?
  • Is my app running the latest version of the Firebase SDK?
  • Is my existing tag Tag Manager or gtag integration collecting all the data it should be?

Finally, remember that to have YoY data available in GA4 before the deprecation of UA and GA360, you’ll need to have fully implemented GA4 by July 1, 2023, the deprecation data for UA. Otherwise your GA4 will have gaps, and this will complicate your 2023 YoY reviews.

 

What if I don’t have time right now to learn how to use Google Analytics 4?

GA4 data is forward-facing from the date of installation—the sooner you get it, the more historical data you’ll have. For that reason you should add GA4 to your website ASAP.

Business owners are rushed off their feet—we get it. So even if you don’t have time right now to familiarise yourself with GA4, try to at least install it, as data capture will begin immediately. Leave it ticking along in the background. When you’re finally ready to learn how to use it, you’ll have a wealth of statistically significant information ready to go.

It may take a little time to get your head around GA4’s newly available insights. Historically, Analytics data has been driven by pageviews, providing metrics now familiar to us like bounce rate, the numbers of users and new users, and the number of sessions and their average duration. By contrast, GA4’s data is more oriented toward understanding the customer lifecycle, so includes information about retention, acquisition, engagement and monetisation.

Is it worth making the switch to Google Analytics 4?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: hell yes!

If you still have two profiles—GA4 along with UA or GA360—it’s best to use them both individually and in tandem, with a view to seeing which metrics are related or influence one another. You’ll soon start connecting the dots. Moving forward, the understanding you’ll glean of how A impacts B and B impacts C will be invaluable.

Come the deprecation of UA we’ll see site owners who haven’t yet installed GA4 scramble to get it set up. There’s no sadder sight than a scrambling site owner. (Try saying that after you’ve had a few.) So start preparing as soon as possible. Export and maintain hard copies of historical data for your records—it won’t be transferrable from your UA or GA360 because of the differences in their data models and how their definitions function and operate.

Take all the time you can to get to grips with GA4. After all, ultimately you execute most of your business decisions according to Analytics, right? The data you work with moving forward must be as accurate as possible.

This is a seriously exciting time in analytics. Because GA4 introduces a whole new way of looking at your data. Of course that can feel daunting, especially if you’ve been accustomed to UA or GA360 for years—but once you see the myriad possibilities open up before you, you’ll wonder how you ever went without.

If you need some help or advice, whether with exporting your data from UA or GA360, or familiarising yourself with GA4’s interface and methodology, or understanding how to leverage its insights, reach out to us. We’ve been running countless clients’ GA4 accounts since the platform superseded UA as Google’s default back in October 2020, and we’d be delighted to help you as well.

How does data-driven marketing inform marketers’ approach to their campaigns?

You can’t know what’s working in your business if you can’t put some black-and-white figures on it. Only with defined metrics can you define success.

Some companies used to take the ‘spray and pray’ approach to marketing. But as customers demand ever more personalised experiences, data-driven marketing has come to the fore and revealed the enormity of its potential.

As long ago as 2013, a study by Janrain demonstrated that 74% of online customers felt frustrated when content appeared that didn’t align with their interests. And in 2016 OneSpot showed that almost half of customers wouldn’t read or even engage with content if it was irrelevant to them. So we can only imagine how much more pronounced these effects must be today, after a decade’s worth of data-driven marketing has exponentially increased customers’ expectations of bespoke online experiences. If businesses are to have any shot at competing in this incredibly competitive marketplace, they must therefore focus more on generating, analysing and applying data to their marketing campaigns.

What is data-driven marketing?

Marketing campaigns generate data in more ways than most people can imagine, so it makes sense to then draw on those insights and leverage them next time around. That’s data-driven marketing: using data to inform all marketing decisions. It prioritises customers’ data above all other kinds to ensure marketing efforts are relevant to their interests and behaviours.

Data-driven marketing makes it so much easier to get everything in place: your budget, your products, your creative team. Without customer data, your marketing campaigns will always be at least something of a shot in the dark. But with the right data-driven marketing strategies, you can start developing and releasing campaigns that speak directly to your target audience, resonate with their wants and aspirations, and build precious trust and loyalty among your customer base.

What are data-driven marketing best practices?

No matter your business, product or campaign, there are certain tried and tested ways to get the most out of your customer data when incorporating it into your marketing efforts.

Manage your data

Data-driven marketing is an iterative process. That means it’s always evolving, its scope always expanding. You therefore need not only excellent data collection, but also high-quality data management. This is critical to the success of your data-driven marketing efforts because it provides crucial customer insights, highlights new marketing and acquisition opportunities, and saves you both time and money.

Know your audience

The success of your data-driven marketing campaigns depends on the accuracy of your customer data. You could have the most advanced data collection in place, but it would count for nothing if the data didn’t actually reflect your target audience. So before you start applying data-driven marketing strategies to your business, make sure you’re exceptionally familiar with your customers. Research your ideal customers, build your buyer personas, and educate your teams on these profiles. Moreover, reach out to current customers to better understand who’s actually buying your products. You could even hold focus groups to question a live audience and receive raw and unedited feedback.

Stay compliant

Your data is worthless if it doesn’t comply with the law by respecting your customers’ privacy. In recent times organisations and entire countries have cracked down on how businesses can use their customer data, reflected in laws like GDPR and the CCPA. These protect customer data and therefore customers, and hold companies accountable. Complying with these laws therefore makes your marketing more transparent, trustworthy and effective.

What strategies does data-driven marketing involve?

Today, personalised marketing goes quite a bit further than just greeting a customer by name via email. Now it’s all about delivering the right message at the right time—and on the right channel. This is where data-driven marketing is simply unbeatable in its efficacy.

But it can be a little overwhelming trying to work out how to start, and visualise where data-driven marketing actually fits in with your broader marketing efforts. So let’s check out some surefire ways to effectively leverage your customer data—and without compromising on audience engagement. It should be noted, of course, that these methods complement one another, and when implemented in tandem can produce results greater than the sum of their parts. So consider combining a few as part of your bid to personalise your marketing efforts.

Retarget your advertising

Retargeting, sometimes called remarketing, is an imperative for all marketers, but especially those operating across multiple channels. It enables you to keep your brand front-of-mind among individuals who have expressed interest or in some way engaged with your products or services. If someone browses a specific product on your site, their customer data means you can then resurface that product to that individual through such strategies as social media advertising and abandoned cart email marketing.

Segment your audience

Different customer groups exist within your wider target audience, so it’s up to you to delineate those boundaries. Targeted and personalised messaging goes a lot further than a general broadcast, and segmentation helps you reach the right people at the right time with the right message. If your store sells both men’s and women’s clothes, you’d need two respective sets of messages. And if your store has multiple geographies, you’d then need men’s and women’s messaging for each location.

There’s really no end to how granular you make your segmentation, because of course your target audience differs not only by their demographics but also by their preferences and pain points, not to mention where they are in the buyer journey. Data-driven marketing empowers you to precisely segment your audience, as well as automate your segmentation efforts. You’ll find this especially useful for email and social media marketing.

Align your teams

Customer data has so many more uses than just those of your marketing team—it can be leveraged by your sales and support teams, too. Moreover, its versatility can actually help you bridge the gaps between these teams, aligning their efforts and solidifying an overarching company-wide strategy. For example, you might invest in a customer data platform (CDP), which aggregates customer data to create individual customer profiles to use across the business, which negate the risks of disparate teams working with siloed customer information. By centring your marketing, sales and support teams around a CDP, you ensure your entire organisation is working with the same data, and thereby presenting a logical, consistent and cohesive customer experience.

Optimise your content

Without customer data, your content creation processes remain largely guesswork. Data-driven marketing provides that all-important context for your content, helping you understand and serve your audience through your advertising and the content you publish. Whether your data is demographic or psychographic, it provides valuable insights into how to best craft your content such that it addresses customers’ questions, pain points and goals.

Delight your customers!

Shoppers are browsing on multiple platforms, multiple devices—but they don’t want to be treated as multiple customers based on these behaviours. They yearn for a seamless experience no matter the channel. Data-driven marketing means you can accurately identify these customers no matter which device they’re browsing on, and provide them with a superlative omnichannel experience. This doesn’t just save you time and resources, but also refines the customer experience beyond anything many shoppers will have known before, and demonstrates to your audience that you’re paying attention to their needs and recognising their behaviours.

What are some great data-driven marketing tools to get started?

If you’re not sure where to begin with your data-driven marketing, the following tools are renowned for being easy to use as you learn how to track, manage and apply your customer data.

Google Analytics

Analytics is a leading tool for tracking and reporting on website user behaviour, empowering you with a greater understanding of your traffic, visitor sessions, bounce rates and customer demographics. Run reports on your conversions, acquisitions and user behaviour flows, and connect it to your Google Ads account to track and report on your ad performance. Best of all? It’s free!

Hubspot Marketing Hub

Whether you want to start out with the free version or go all the way with the premium, Marketing Hub is a brilliant tool for businesses looking to take a deep dive into the world of data-driven marketing. It connects to Hubspot CRM so you can track, analyse and deploy your customer data all from one place. Create optimised content, monitor social media activity, run retargeting ad campaigns, and launch segmented email campaigns.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a paid-for tool that enables you to track your digital brand performance, optimise your web content, and better understand the competition. Leveraging your customer data, Buzzsumo researches leading keywords, content types and published content to throw light on trends that could inform your content strategy. You can even track key metrics around your competitors’ content to see how it compares to yours.

Are you ready to put your data in the driving seat?

Your customer data has the power to transform generic broadcast-based marketing into poignant and personalised messaging that truly resonates with your audience. As cofounder of Pixated, a performance marketing and web design agency, I know that understanding your customers not only allows you to grab their attention and provide myriad solutions for their needs, but also boosts your revenue and unites your teams like never before. In that way you give ambitious brands the tools they need to build sustainable and scalable growth, enhance their visibility, and revolutionise their sales and lead gen. It’s a seriously rewarding endeavour!