Content vs Data: What’s Most Important?

Here we’re going to talk about how to get the most out of your marketing campaigns, with particular reference to the relationship between content and data – two critical components of any successful campaign.

Without relevant, quality content, you won’t influence your audience to do what you want them to do – such as book a consultation or buy your product. And without the right data even the world’s best content will fall on deaf ears.

So, both matter. A lot.

Let’s look into this some more and explore what else you can do to get the most from your marketing campaigns.

Define your target audience

First of all you need to understand in detail who you’re trying to reach with your campaign. Not just which type of companies, but the individuals within those companies. Once you know the sector and the job title you need to create your key messaging around how you solve the problems of the company AND the individual.

Create content that will resonate

If your content doesn’t resonate with the individual you won’t get any further than that. Remember, as much as some products can be game-changing for companies, they can also cause headaches for the individuals who will be using them. You need to show how you make your target individual’s life better or job easier in addition to the core benefits. Your first piece of content has to grab the attention of the right people in the right way.

Get your data

That’s where data comes in. You could have defined your audience, perfected your message, and created compelling content around it, but you now need to make sure your audience actually gets the message. You need to target them directly, not just hope they see your social media posts or Google you.

You need reliable, legal and effective data. And it has to be the right data, don’t just send it to your contacts because that’s what’s in front of you. It’s important to invest in the data that you need and then use it to conduct email marketing campaigns, direct mail campaigns and telemarketing campaigns.

Compelling content coupled with effective data yields results.

Adopt a multi-channel approach

You need to market across multiple channels to give you the best chance of success. Again, you need to get your content in front of your target audience, and by all means possible.

Support your direct marketing campaigns by using all available channels, such as all relevant social media platforms and your website’s blog.

Change up your content

Every platform/channel requires you to vary your content so that it’s optimised for each platform. You also need to use different types of content to keep your audience engaged. Be creative with how you use written word, images, audio and video. Remember to make sure you’ve always got your audience in mind and you’re not just creating content that you want to make.

When running email marketing campaigns keep changing the format between plain text and HTML to see what gets the best traction.

Remember, it’s all about results

A lot of businesses make the mistake of focusing too narrowly on perfecting their content and not putting enough resource into defining their target audience and acquiring that data.

Award-winning content doesn’t necessarily equate to increased revenues or a successful campaign.

As we’ve said, getting the creative right is of course important, but you only make your money if the right people see it.

So, what’s more important, content or data?

Hopefully we’ve shown you here that they’re both extremely important if you want to drive engagement, grow your pipeline and boost sales.

Data however is what’s going to generate you the results, so that needs to be your primary focus and where you invest most of your budget.

If you send average content to the right people you can still generate prospects, customers and new revenues. But if you send well-crafted content to the wrong people you won’t get anything from the campaign.

For example, you wouldn’t create the world’s greatest lawnmower and go door-to-door selling in a block of flats. You wouldn’t sell any. Yet if you created an average lawnmower some people with lawns would still buy it. That’s why your audience, your data, is more important than your content.

Don’t neglect data if you want any of your future marketing campaigns to have maximum impact. To help, we’re now offering a free account for 30 days. You can sign up here today. For more information please call the team on 01252 367400.

For more marketing tips have a look at Our Top 10 Tips for a Successful Marketing Campaign.