3 Fortune 500 Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses

Leverage Third-Party Data Using These 3 Fortune 500 Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses

Did you know that Fortune 500 marketing secrets can be leveraged in easy-to-implement marketing strategies for small businesses? Big corporations use thousands of data points to build in-depth profiles for their customers and prospects. Using third-party data, Fortune 500 companies customize the creative messaging and channels they use in their marketing to cater to a specific audience. Small businesses can use these same tactics to reach people online and offline creating an efficient small business marketing strategy.  Third-party data is any information that is collected about an individual online by a separate entity that does not have a direct relationship to them. Companies can then aggregate this information and sell it for use in marketing strategy. “These businesses all have very large, very substantial marketing data sides of their businesses where they aggregate all of this disparate information tied to individuals, and then sell it to analytics groups and companies, or the marketer, who’s actually doing the advertising,” Jessica Velletri Akinwale, co-founder of TRAK Data Inc., said during a #BizHackLive webinar. How do companies around the world use this data on their customers to their advantage? How can small businesses implement this strategy into their marketing initiatives? Use these three tried-and-true marketing strategies for small businesses in the direct-to-consumer sphere who are looking to leverage third-party data to its full potential.

TL;DR: Leverage Third-Party Data With These Fortune 500 Marketing Strategies For Your Small Business Campaigns

When small businesses harness the power of third-party data, they are given numerous opportunities to put new digital marketing campaign strategies into practice. Use these small business marketing strategies to get a better idea of who your customers are and how you can best market to them.
  • Analyze the data you gather on your current customers so that you can better understand who your customers are and what their lives look like. 
  • Target a specific group within your list of prospects based on which individuals scientifically have the best chances of converting. 
  • Activate the information you’ve collected to find your best prospects across channels and create customized messaging that appeals to them. 
With these techniques, you increase your chances of developing marketing campaigns that are likely to convert prospects into loyal customers. 

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Analyze Third-Party Data To Understand Who Your Current Customers Are

Velletri suggested that small business owners begin implementing the power of third-party data by analyzing who their current customers are. This marketing strategy for small businesses can be leveraged using access to a Customer Profile Report, which outlines the numerous data points that are assigned to a specific individual by third-party data companies.  “Because they have so much data on each person, tied to the individual level, they go ahead and segment that out for marketers,” Velletri said. “They create segments of similar consumers so that we can get a better understanding as to what their actual personality is, what their lifestyle preferences are and what they do on the weekend.” These profiles give marketers insights into the age, gender, careers, families, household income, lifestyle choices, and the many other defining characteristics of their customers.  “Each customer is all of a sudden enriched with thousands of data points, describing who they are,” Velletri said. These data points help small businesses gain a better understanding of the people they are marketing to. Once marketers have access to these reports, they can execute a series of steps that help them use this information to its full capacity. 
    1. Match your small business’ customer data file to the third party data. By doing this, you can see where your current customers overlap with other online consumers and what characteristics and interests they share. 
  • Analyze key data variables and aggregate the information. Take time to examine the data and evaluate larger trends that are created by the consumer base. 
  • Identify over or under indexing data within the data set compared to the general population. When there is an above average proportion of customers in the data file who identify with a specific characteristic compared to the general population, you have a predictive variable. This variable gives small businesses insight into specific populations of people who are drawn to their products and indicates that they should focus on marketing to them. 
By implementing these marketing strategies for small businesses, you can achieve a variety of benefits. These include:
  • Learning how to better communicate with both your current and prospective customers.
  • Learning where your current and prospective customers prefer to receive information, whether it be social media, email, or direct mail. 
  • Identifying new opportunities to exercise creative marketing campaigns.
The better a small business knows its customers and how they relate to their prospects, the easier it is to construct effective marketing strategies that will garner attention and revenue. 

Use The Information You Gather About Current Customers To Target A New Audience Of Prospects

In the second part of Velletri’s marketing strategy for small businesses, marketers can identify which portions of their prospective customers provide the best opportunity to generate new business. Small business owners can generate this metric by leveraging the data they collected through the Customer Profile Reports and using a series of simple steps. 
  • Apply what you learned from the Customer Profile Report to your social media targeting strategy. Once you have identified key populations that will benefit from your product, you can begin to create social media content and advertising that targets this group. 
  • Apply general trends from third-party customer data to create an offline prospect file. This file will outline people who you can target using a direct mail or email list. 
  • Create a custom model offline prospect file. One of the main purposes of third-party data for marketers is to improve prospect targeting. By using artificial intelligence to create a predictive model of who your potential customers are, you can identify specific individuals who you want to receive advertising material through their mail or email.
“What a model will do is go beyond the data and the profile report, it will go beyond anything that you and I or the client could guess about their prospect,” Velletri said. Creating a predictive model using third-party data aims to take the uncertainty out of marketing and create a methodical strategy to conduct campaigns that target specific people, Velletri said. The goal of these steps is to progressively narrow down the population targeted by your marketing. “The key theme here is no more spray and pray, which is essentially throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks,” Velletri said. These marketing strategies for small businesses can lead to:
  • Applying what you’ve learned about your customers to existing social media campaigns. 
  • Improving targeting initiatives to generate a higher percentage of prospective customers that will likely convert. 
  • Creating new lists of prospects using the third-party data you’ve acquired and filtering these lists to create custom audiences. 
As a result of better targeting, your small business will begin to witness more qualified prospect exposure, which leads to a higher conversion rate and return on investment. 

Activate The Trends You Identify To Find Your Best Prospects Anywhere

Once you have collected information about both your current and prospective customers using third-party data, small businesses owners can leverage this information to reach their ideal customers anywhere, online or offline. Marketers can use a tactic called omni-channel marketing, which includes targeting a prospect across all channels— social media, email, and direct mail. “Instead of targeting within Facebook, then separately targeting for your Google AdWords campaign, then separately targeting for a postcard direct to home, do all of your targeting once you identify your best prospects using the techniques that we talked about,” Velletri said. Third-party data allows users to link and track targeted audiences across different channels using 1:1 direct matching. Small businesses can access lists that match social media accounts to email addresses and mobile phone numbers. This gives marketers insight into how well their campaigns are doing with specific populations. The more a small business can engage with a customer, the better, Velletri said.  “We’ve seen directly and through industry benchmarks an average 35% lift when you integrate channels in a single campaign,” Velletri said. “Don’t just do a Facebook campaign. Don’t just do a direct mail campaign. By doing multiple touches at the same time, you will see a significant improvement in responses.” As you continue to target your ideal prospect, you can also begin to implement numerous different marketing strategies.
  • You can conduct targeted outreach to individuals who would most likely respond to your marketing campaign.
  • You can match prospects across multiple online and offline channels, including social media platforms and direct mail. 
  • You can execute multi-channel campaigns that target prospects across numerous different social media platforms and marketing mediums. 
“Even if your campaign gets bigger, if a higher percentage of people who you’re targeting are people who are most likely to positively engage and respond, you will see increased revenue,” Velletri said.  This marketing strategy for small businesses can be customized to fit wherever your business is financially. If you keep your marketing budget the same, you will still generate the same or a small number of impressions. However, these impressions will be focused on a specific target of qualified prospects, thus increasing your return on investment.  Conversely, if you increase your marketing budget, you have the opportunity to garner more impressions alongside more targeted, qualified prospects. This strategy leads to growth on a more efficient scale, while significantly increasing revenue.  Regardless of the size of your business, these Fortune 500 marketing strategies for small businesses are innovative and effective in improving your company’s marketing initiatives and messaging. How are you going to use third-party data to your advantage?

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