Data is now every firm's most valuable asset. But in many cases, it's not being utilised effectively. In fact, according to Invoca, 87 per cent of marketers say data is their most under-used resource.

Instead, many companies prefer to rely on more traditional approaches, which often use gut instinct to make decisions and result in audiences being shown more generic, impersonal messages. But in today's highly-competitive environment, this is no longer enough. Leading brands will be using in-depth data analytics to inform their strategy, refine their targeting and predict future trends before they emerge, so if you're not doing this as well, you'll quickly fall behind.

So what should marketing leaders do to ensure they're making full use of the customer information and performance metrics available to them?

The importance of a data-driven marketing strategy

The clearest illustration of the impact of data-driven marketing is on the bottom line. According to figures from Invoca, businesses that use data-driven strategies drive five to eight times more ROI than those that don’t.

This manifests in a number of ways. Key benefits of good use of data for B2B marketers include:

• Deeper understanding of customers
• Reduced costs
• More proactive responses to changing landscapes
• Identification of areas where you can gain competitive advantage
• Ability to make quick adjustments and optimisations to marketing campaigns

What's more, there are huge opportunities for brands to get ahead of competitors by utilising these assets. Research from Gartner, for instance, indicates only around half of marketing decisions (53 per cent) are influenced by data analytics - so there's lots of scope for forward-thinking companies to improve their position through the use of data.

According to Statista, the top three areas in which data-driven marketing are rated as most useful are:

• Email marketing (named by 47 per cent of professionals)
• Customer experience/journey mapping (46 per cent)
• Paid advertising (41 per cent)

The challenges of a data-driven approach

Getting data-driven marketing right is easier said than done. One of the biggest challenges for many businesses is ensuring they have the right skills and expertise on hand to analyse data and drive actionable conclusions. Data scientists are among the most highly sought-after specialists for almost all firms, as there is a significant shortage of these professionals. This can be especially hard for B2B firms, as these companies often have limited marketing budgets and may find it harder to attract the best talent in-house.

Other issues that will need to be addressed in order to make the most of this approach include:

• Ensuring data privacy in order to meet tough regulations
• Effective communications between data analytics and marketers to share insight
• Collecting the right data and ensuring it is of high quality
• Integrating information from multiple sources into a single unified view

What's needed for analytics to succeed?

There are essentially two sides to data-driven marketing. The first is building a deeper understanding of your customer in order to ensure you're delivering a more relevant, targeted message. The second is reviewing data from previous campaigns and wider trends to assess what elements of your activities are working well, where any gaps lie and where there is room for optimisation and improvement.

This means that data analytics is a discipline that must be integrated throughout the marketing process. It's not enough to simply include a customer or keyword research stage during the planning phase - referring back to the data must be an ongoing process. This in turn requires strong collaboration between marketing and data science teams.

Knowing what metrics to measure and what results will constitute success is also important. A common strategy for this is to set what are known as 'SMART' goals for marketing campaigns. This stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Once you have objectives that meet these criteria, you'll be able to more easily identify which metrics you can use to track performance.