How Does Real-Time Data Influence Marketing Decisions for Marketing Technologists?

Adapted to SERP Changes

For years, we had a specific search term that was driving us 10-15 leads per month, but we noticed that even though we held position #1, our leads dropped to 2-3 per month. This issue was caused by how Google shows SERP results. This forced us to look at other keywords that Google would be less likely to interrupt with other options at the top of the page. It's working very well for us, and we now have five additional lead-driving search terms on page 1 of Google.

Informed by Local Incident Data

Our marketing team reviews traffic, accident, and injury reports from local government websites to determine if a marketing budget is needed for specific terms. For example, during COVID-19, our client, a personal injury law firm, thought accidents would be on the decline, but after reviewing recent statistics, we could see that was not the case. This helped prove to the client that they still needed to allocate a marketing budget to this area.

Mobile Optimization Based on Regional Data

Real-time data from Google Analytics played a pivotal role in shaping a recent marketing decision. By delving into the GA4 report, I was able to see that the client's website was predominantly accessed via mobile devices and had a concentrated user base in a specific U.S. region. This thorough examination across different time spans—real-time, past seven days, and past 28 days—consistently reinforced these findings.

Utilizing this data, I recommended and implemented strategic adjustments for my client's marketing approach. This included prioritizing mobile-user experience enhancements (which had been neglected) and optimizing the paid advertising strategy to target the specific geographic regions where the majority of their audience was concentrated.

Thanks to these insights, we were able to allocate resources to areas of impact for the business and did so with confidence.

Product Usage Data Guides Marketing

At my SaaS company, we monitor real-time data to see how our customers are using our product. We can see how many times they've logged in, how many times they've used a specific feature, and how long they've spent on each feature. This allows us to see which features are the most popular and which ones we should focus on improving. We can also see how many customers are using the product and how many are churning. This helps us to understand if we need to make any changes to our marketing strategy.

For example, if we see that our churn rate is increasing, we may need to change our messaging or target a different audience. Similarly, if we see that our customer base is growing, we may want to invest more in marketing to reach a larger audience.

Hyper-Personalization Through Real-Time Analytics

We've actually been using real-time analytics to hyper-personalize our marketing. Nowadays, I believe personalization is a must for the best digital experiences in marketing. A lot of companies do personalization based on groups or audiences, using stuff like age groups, how many people come to their website, where people are from, and things like that. It can work okay, but it's not really personalizing for each individual.

But for us, we're all about what's called the 'Next-best action.' This means we use real-time data and insights from our marketing, sales, customer service, and other areas to figure out what we should do next for each customer. We take all the info from every time we've talked to a customer, no matter which department it was, and then we use machine learning and AI to really get what kind of content, message, or offer a customer might want or need after that. We've done this with our pricing, our email marketing, and our social media. We use real-time analytics for all of it to create campaigns that are hyper-personalized, attract leads, and get conversions!

Real-Time Data Directs Investor Targeting

I own a real estate marketing agency, and our main portfolio is connecting real estate developers to prospective investors. Real-time data plays a crucial part in the early stages of our sales and marketing activity.

We are working with clients at the moment who target HNWIs in different parts of the world, so having the most accurate data about these individuals is one of the most important parts of our efforts. Without real-time information about these individuals' behaviors and contact details, we wouldn't be able to run a successful campaign.

Recently, these data helped the team advise the client on which forums they should participate in so that they could connect with the right type of investors. The construction is still ongoing, and we only have 10% of the units available for purchase.