Marketing Tip of the Trade:

Use Customer Data Insights to

Grow Revenue

For modern marketers, the era of blasting generic messages is long gone – and clinging to outdated tactics is only inflating your marketing budget and likely alienating your audience. Sustainable growth comes from forging genuine connections and deeply understanding your customers’ needs and meeting them where they are to help them in solving their problem. By adapting messaging (and your product, more on that later) over time, you can create a loyal community of raving fans who value your attentiveness, attunement and offering.
To start, Review your ideal customer profile, don’t have one? Here, use this, save it and bookmark it. You will likely create more than 1.
Getting there is a process and means leveraging relevant data, abiding by privacy limitations, to gain meaningful insights into your ideal customers needs and questions. From their initial search to their final purchase, data-driven decisions will sharpen your ability to help your audience, connect with them and stay in mind when they have a need that your solve. This also is proven to attract the right customers, improve retention and improve efficiency through streamlined processes catered to ideal customer use cases ultimately maximizing your overall impact and using your marketing dollars more effectively.

Ethical Customer Tracking

Now, to address the elephant in the room: customer data. It’s a sensitive topic, no doubt. Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA have significantly reshaped the digital experience and how businesses can connect with their potential customers. But here’s the deal: even in this privacy-first world, customer data remains invaluable. Tools like Google Analytics and a number of other compliant and anonymized data tools allow for you to understand how to help your customers, improve your product and be the go-to expert for those customers. Used appropriately the data empowers us to create tailored experiences that resonate, boosting satisfaction, driving conversions, and building loyalty with the right audience.

Personalized Ads & Targeting

In the age of and rising privacy concerns, how can you strike the balance between personalization and respecting customer boundaries? It’s a question that’s keeping many of us up at night especially when many of us cringe at another thinly veiled Sales pitch.
Let’s talk about personalized ads. It’s a hot-button issue, and frankly, I have a few strong opinions. Here’s the thing: nobody enjoys being bombarded with irrelevant marketing messages. While we might dream of an ad-free world (wouldn’t that be nice?), that’s not realistic. As marketers and business owners, we can leverage data responsibly—in a way that’s compliant with privacy laws—to authentically help our customers. Understanding who our product or service truly serves is the starting point for building a genuine connection with your ideal audience.

Marketing Do’s:

  • Know Your Customer: Get into the minds of your ideal customers. What are their pain points, motivations, and aspirations? Map out their buyer’s journey to understand their needs at each stage and help them before they need you.
    • Paid Ad | Tip of the Trade: Measure, iterate message and audience targeting and repeat until your ad Click Through Rate is > 3%-5%
    • Personalization is key (but keep it ethical and provide value)
      • For my DIY Marketers:
        • Check out my on this process to do it yourself with a step-by-step guide. What you need to get started.
  • Provide Value First: Focus on delivering value at every touchpoint, without any immediate expectation of a sale. Think helpful content, free resources, and genuine engagement.
  • Track Your Progress: Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console asap(at a minimum!) to get a baseline understanding of your website traffic and user behavior. Knowledge is power.
  • Embrace Experimentation: Marketing isn’t magic; it’s a blend of art and science. Adopt an experimentation mindset, test different approaches, and learn from every campaign. Remember, what works in one industry, time period, persona, product, etc. might not work in another.
    • For my DIY Marketers:
      • Check out my

Marketing Don’ts:

  • Blast Generic Messages: Generic ads are a lot of effort and wasted spend. The remedy is to understand your ideal buyer and tailor your message to resonate with specific segments of your audience.
  • Neglect the Buyer’s Journey: Don’t treat all customers the same. Understand the different stages of the buyer’s journey and tailor your messaging accordingly.
  • Ignore Data Privacy: Respect your customers’ privacy. Be transparent about how you collect and use their data by working with a legal team on terms and conditions, privacy policy and cookie consent options to ensure compliance with and ensure you’re complying with all relevant regulations.
  • Overlook the “Why”: Don’t just tell people what you offer; explain why it matters to them. Clearly articulate how your product or service solves their problems or fulfills their needs.
  • Assume Marketing is Magic: Marketing requires both creativity and analytical thinking. Don’t rely on hunches or guesswork. Track your results, analyze the data, and continuously refine your approach.
  • Underestimate the Power of Connection: In a world of automation and algorithms, human connection still matters. Don’t just focus on transactions; build relationships with your audience.

Marketing is about connecting with people. But somewhere along the way, we got obsessed with “viral moments” and forgot about actual humans. It’s time to ditch the aggressive sales tactics and build real relationships. Share valuable content, be generous with your expertise, and treat your customers like friends, not just numbers on a spreadsheet. That’s how you build a loyal following and a business that lasts. Forget the quick wins and focus on the long game. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Polished Takeaways:

  • Shift from Transactional to Transformational: Move beyond simply pushing products. Instead, cultivate genuine human connection. Focus on building relationships, not just closing deals.
  • Value Exchange is Key: Remember the power of freely sharing valuable information and resources. Generosity builds trust and loyalty far more effectively than constant sales pitches.
  • Sustainable Growth Over Short-Term Gains: Resist the pressure of unrealistic growth targets. Avoid the “always-be-closing” mentality that burns bridges and damages your reputation. Sustainable success comes from a steady, human-centered approach.
  • Content is King, Connection is Queen: Create and share content that genuinely helps your audience. Provide value, address their needs, and build a community around your brand. This fosters authentic connections that lead to long-term loyalty.

Key Marketing Nuggets Extracted:

  • Human Connection is Paramount: In a world of automation, genuine human interaction sets you apart.
  • Value-Driven Content Builds Trust: Sharing valuable content establishes you as an authority and fosters trust with your audience.
  • Sustainable Growth is Essential: Avoid short-sighted strategies that sacrifice long-term success for quick wins.