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Eight Media’s Guide To Data Marketing

Eight Media's Guide to Data Marketing

What is Data Marketing, and how does it benefit a business? Learn how it evolved into a game-changer in the current marketing landscape, here in the Philippines and around the world. 

Data is today’s most growth-driving commodity for any type of business anywhere in the world. From blue-chip companies to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the power of data marketing has become not only undeniable but more so essential. 

Globally, data marketing’s expected growth is well into a $274.3 billion market by next year. Google Philippines projects that data-centered digital transformation in the country will reach the ₱5 trillion mark by 2030 in terms of annual economic value—and that’s just accounting for the 26 percent of MSMEs who are aware of its potential benefits.

Based on these numbers, one can safely deduce that leveraging the power of data-driven marketing will lead to more opportunities for businesses of any scale, and as a digital marketing agency running on a data-first mindset, we couldn’t agree more.

Eight Media data-driven marketing produces real results quantified by numbers

With this simplified data-driven marketing guide, you’ll gain critical points not only to improve your marketing strategy but also to help you learn the key elements to look for in a partner agency. We’ve got it all covered and simplified—from the basic data marketing tactics, the evolution of the industry, and down to the current trends.


  1. What is Data Marketing?
  2. Data Marketing in the Philippines
  3. How Vital is Data Marketing Today?
  4. The Benefits of Taking a Data Marketing Approach
  5. How to Effectively Use Data for Brand Storytelling
  6. Moving Forward with a Data Marketing Partner

What is Data Marketing?

data-driven marketing is gathering valuable data and analyzing them to develop more effective marketing strategies

Even if you have a fair idea of how data marketing (or data-driven marketing) works, you’d still need a legitimate marketing partner by your side. It’s nearly impossible for any business to track every update from all the marketing platforms and channels out there. Adopting a ‘trial-and-error’ approach will only eat away at your time, resources, and budget. Still, it helps to cover the basics.  

In the simplest terms, data-driven marketing is the process of gathering a hodgepodge of data than analyzing them to develop more effective marketing strategies. 

Imagine tearing open a three-in-one instant coffee packet. Data-driven marketing is like separating the sugar, coffee, and cream in order to determine how you can repurpose them for better profits. It works by allowing you to target specific demographics and audiences to push more efficient marketing strategies. We all know that preaching to the right choir is always essential in any trade. 

Further analysis of the data and information you get gives you more insights into your target market’s behavior. These insights can increase brand awareness through online traffic, as well as your leads and conversions. Given that the data you gather comes straight from online consumer interactions, you get a more lucid picture of your target market’s pain points. From there, you can then provide the proper solutions for better marketing that traditional tactics can offer. 

Elite third-party data marketing vendors understand and can organize all of these complex data. After all, deploying the right marketing tools is a science in itself. Your data marketing partner should analyze the insights they discover and turn them into results-driven strategies. 

However, suppose your partner is not all that familiar with the evolution of the data industry in the country. In that case, you might encounter more speed bumps than you’d like. 

Data Marketing in the Philippines

Data marketing in the Philippines is still in its infancy due to a high level of reluctance

Compared to other developed countries, data-driven marketing is still in its infancy here in the Philippines. Somehow, there remains a high level of reluctance among MSMEs to hire data marketing partners—that’s despite having a whopping sales turnover of $3 billion in Philippine eCommerce back in 2019.  

While eCommerce trajectories are about to cross the $12 billion mark by 2025, internet access among Metro Manila households is at a low of 32 percent. Worse, the average is at 5 percent in rural yet semi-commercialized provinces like Bicol. 

Perhaps businesses feel that their target markets are not yet open to eCommerce, so they give a hard pass at fully migrating online. After all, traditional marketing—billboards, press releases, and print ads—still work.

However, if the numbers dictate the current digital marketing landscape, a whopping total of 73.9 million Filipinos on the internet can be your potential online market if you do decide to go digital. Fingers crossed, this data-driven marketing guide can hopefully encourage more businesses to make the shift.  

How Big Data Broke Ground

BPO were the first industries to reap the benefits of data-driven marketing

Even before the pandemic, the data revolution in the country has long started. It was a gradual development in its early days, but recent years have finally revealed its unparalleled growth. This is why having a data marketing partner with the knowledge of how the industry has evolved proves to be important when accelerating digital adoption.  

Business process outsourcing firms (BPOs) during the ’90s were the first ones to see the early benefits of data-driven marketing. Utilizing cross-border data flows and protection enabled them to broaden their reach to overseas markets. 

Soon, data science and business analytics started manifesting tremendous progress across MSMEs as well. Local eCommerce and financial technology (FinTech) startups quickly adopted predictive analytics and data automation techniques. 

Brands with an active online presence began looking at how they can assess future economic conditions and avoid risks. With cloud-based technologies available today, 50 percent of local companies started setting up their IT infrastructures via cloud migration for lower costs.

However, training staff to understand and handle data-driven marketing remains a challenge for most MSMEs. Futile attempts to do things on their own resulted in delayed market opportunities and more business disruptions.

the pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation and this introduced more data-driven marketing solutions

The Tipping Point in Local Data Marketing

Fast-forward to 2020, and the pandemic prompted a nationwide digital transformation that introduced more data-driven marketing solutions for business continuity in the country.

More businesses began enlisting the help of third-party agencies with the right tools to achieve the best possible results for growth at an, especially trying time. Fortunately, most of these emerging data-driven startups exist to help MSMEs scale their marketing campaigns without breaking the bank.

Though the ‘new normal’ created disruptions in how people worked during the pandemic, data-driven marketing remained in full swing. Struggling businesses kept afloat with the help of third-party marketing partners that we’re able to predict economic trajectories and volatility. Of course, elite data marketers also upgraded their services in terms of compliance and security matters to mitigate potential risks.

Nevertheless, from the consumers’ perspective, more challenges came to light. The Philippines has one of the lowest download speeds in the Southeast Asian region, with an average of 16.76 megabytes per second. There’s no question that more digital infrastructure enhancements are necessary for businesses to achieve the full potential of their digital marketing efforts. 

Thankfully, some solutions still made it possible for brands to reach their target markets: 

  • Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies make for faster page visibility and higher website traffic;
  • Predictive analytics churn out insights for future economic events; and,
  • Data automation creates more personalized content and seamless experiences for users. 

The gig economy has also become more robust since the pandemic. Due to furloughing hurdles, more companies became open to hiring freelancers. At present, the freelance industry enjoys a 35 percent growth in earnings last year. Combining the number of freelancers, startups, and MSMEs that shifted towards data-driven marketing, the trend quickly took place at the forefront of local businesses. 

More companies and ‘solopreneurs’ can now offer products and services that can make a huge impact online through data analysis. Marketing funnel campaigns ranging from awareness to conversion objectives are generating positive results through proper data management.     

As the data revolution further gains ground in the country, digitalization has become every company’s strong point in terms of marketing. Data-driven marketing, predictive analytics, and data automation have finally become today’s new buzzwords for every business.  

How Vital is Data Marketing Today?

data marketing allows for personalization which is key in today's marketing strategies

Data, content, and marketing channels are all crucial factors in your marketing strategies. Optimizing each of these elements can help you develop better user experiences for your identified market segments. 

With that, you’ll require a microscopic focus on your buyer personas’ trends and behaviors by doing some A/B testing. Aligning the insights you discover with your content production helps you create more appealing content for the right audiences. Parallel to this is identifying which social media platforms work best to lead higher online traffic to your web pages.

If you’ve just scratched your head while reading all that, then you need a data-driven marketing partner indeed. 

That’s because the name of today’s data marketing game is personalization. In other words, the data your business gathers is essential if you plan to offer more customized experiences and expect better conversion outcomes. 

Current trends tend to lead marketers into the rabbit hole that is personalized user experience wherein data plays an important role. This data-driven marketing guide aims to decode that very complex facet.  

It’s important to note that marketing platforms like Google continually works to provide each user the convenience of hitting exact matches on its search engine results pages (SERPs). Companies want to rank higher on SERPs by optimizing their websites with relevant content and matching keywords for better traffic. Therefore, the best third-party data marketing firm is always the one that knows how every platform’s algorithm works by heart. 

Aside from that, they should also know the power of various marketing and ad formats. Your partner should effectively produce creatives and determine which channels they should land, whether these are static images, GIFs, carousels, or videos. Remember, you should always anchor every aspect of your creative and personalization processes on data. 

The Benefits of Taking a Data-driven Marketing Approach

there are more benefits of taking a data-driven marketing approach

Personalization is just the tip of the data marketing iceberg. With that, let’s discuss more benefits that today’s elite marketers can offer your business.

First, data-driven marketing allows for faster filtering of critical information that determines which content pieces are relevant to your audiences. Google frequently updates its SEO and filtering algorithms to be more search-efficient for the user. Data-driven approaches save you time and make what you offer more straightforward for your target markets. 

Another convenient thing that it offers is reliable segmentation within your marketing funnel. Different folks require different strokes—in this case, this applies to your messaging. Properly segmenting your potential customers and presenting personalized content help you create more intimate connections with them. 

Of course, where there’s personalization, customer experience is not far behind. The data you gather will be your basis for customer insights which can help you improve what you offer your market. For this, your marketing partner can resort to feedback forms or surveys to find out what your customers need. Since data gives you excellent insights on your target market, you can also use them to improve your products and services while reducing risks and product failures.

Lastly, big data also allows you to expand your marketing reach and penetrate multiple online channels. Knowing your insights can make it easier for you to create ad sets that work and manage your content more efficiently. 

The bottom line is that having the right data marketing partner can significantly increase your productivity. By streamlining all your work marketing processes via automation, you get to focus on more important business aspects. There’ll be more time for other work while you wait for your leads and conversions to shoot up through the roof!

How to Effectively Use Data for Brand Storytelling

personalization and the right marketing strategy can bring great results to your business

You may wonder: Will the integration of voluminous data with your creatives result in the same ‘tug-of-war’ marriage as that of art and business? Will there be conflicts in how you want to establish your brand, and which direction your marketing partner takes you? The short answer is no.

Complex data may somehow tweak how your marketing partner will produce your brand assets. However, you’ll need to align the creative production to how you want to tell your story. Managing the use of your brand assets such as logos, images, and messaging is the key. So, make sure your partner knows their creative tenets.     

To better understand how telling your brand story through personalization works, here’s an example: By banking on influencer content and email marketing strategies, Eight Media was able to generate greater appeal for a client’s online content. The client, having successfully relayed its core messages to the right audiences, enjoyed a 20-percent increase in revenue, a 15-percent increase in sign-ups, and a 40-percent decrease in ad spend. This type of data-driven approach identified more potential leads for the client that had higher confidence towards conversion.

Data helps your marketing partner identify target markets, what they need, and how you can address them. But a reliable partner enables you to determine which brand storytelling strategies will work and how you can further improve your messaging. 

Moving Forward with a Data Marketing Partner

data marketing is the way to go. finding the right partner to do that with you should be crucial

Since the birth of a modern business landscape, every entrepreneur has relied on metrics to advance their strategies. In this age of data, marketers are measuring various facets to improve business. From the time spent visiting websites, their purchase histories, to the number of likes on social media, enterprises have the potential to be closer to their customers more than ever.   

Learning how data-driven marketing works and how swiftly it has evolved shows its necessity in business nowadays. Today’s generation of consumers prefers more personalized and experiential approaches, which companies can gain through buyer intent data.

A decade ago, 74 percent of online consumers frowned upon websites that turn up on SERPS but are unrelated to their search entries. What more today? There’s no question that data-driven marketing is an ever-evolving monster best left at the hands of dragon slayers.  

Hiring the best data marketing partner entails detailed scrutiny of what they offer. So, don’t be afraid to ask the crucial questions: 

  • How can they improve your user experience? 
  • How can they help produce various appealing content for your brand? 
  • How can they improve lead generation and conversion both near-term and long-term? 
  • How well do they know platform algorithms by heart?
Eight Media's digital marketing helped businesses grow their brands digitally

Try to gauge how well they know and understand how the industry has evolved through this data-driven marketing guide. Understanding the benefits that elite marketers can offer amid an ever-changing industry like data marketing is winning half the battle. 

Establishing a data-driven marketing strategy that’s tailor-fit for your business is just one click away! Learn more about how Eight Media can help you towards better business growth in the digital age. 

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