According to the Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report for 2019, marketers are spending big bucks on advertising. UK ad spend rose 4.2% to reach £6bn in Q1 of 2019, with growth coming from all areas including search, online display, TV VOD, online radio, and cinema.

The advertising industry should be proud – it has continued to innovate and offer high growth, high potential avenues for marketing that are swiftly modernising.

But from a marketer’s point of view, it’s starting to feel as if advertising expenditure has become a bit of a competition, with companies looking to exceed their competitor’s level of investment over and above creating a defined, coherent strategy.

When it comes to any marketing practices, but particularly advertising, increasing your budget simply to play catch up is a waste of time and money. The focus needs to be on targeting your customers where they are, rather than targeting the platforms your competitors think their customers are.

The key to adopting this more methodical approach lies in the use of customer data, something most businesses already have plenty of.

Here are the three areas to look at when assessing the data you already have, in order to get the most ROI out of your marketing strategies.

1. Customer behaviour

Your customer’s behaviour should be the driving force behind your advertising campaigns. And the good news is that, whether you realise it or not, the systems you already have in place will already have data that shows their buying patterns and behaviours.

The information you already have from your website, email subscribers and electronic point of sale (EPOS) systems should already be collecting data on when, where, how and what your customers are buying.

From this data, you should already know who your customers are, how they interact with your brand, what they’re interested in and what’s causing them to convert (or not).

Put that data in a logical format, and you can create a picture of their buying behaviours, and tailor your advertising strategy to that by targeting them at the right place and on the right platform. And you’ll save a lot of money in the process.

2. Increase focus on loyalty rather than new business

The objective of digital advertising campaigns is to maximise conversions and ROI, which makes sense. But it misses another crucial element for business growth – customer retention. Long term customers that make repeat purchases are just as valuable as several new customers, even if the instant uptick in sales seem more appealing.

Improving customer retention means you’ll need to improve your loyalty schemes. You want to reinforce your ties with existing customers so that they have no reason to leave, and entice customers you’ve lost to come back and ask why they left in the first place.

Of course, it’s important to gain new customers, but not at the expense of your existing ones. Invest time in them and improve your loyalty schemes to keep them coming back.

3. Focus on quality, not quantity

If you cover all platforms at all times, you’ll increase your chance of targeting timewasters. This is where a lot of people go wrong and is probably the biggest reason that they don’t see greater ROI from their advertising.

#If you want to maximise ROI, you need to prioritise your truly valuable customers. By segmenting data, highlighting the customers that you want (and are genuinely interested in your offering) and tailoring your strategy to target them specifically, you’ll get more mileage out of your advertising budget.

Being more strategic about your advertising budget will get you better results. A big budget is only useful if you’re spending it wisely. Use the data that you already have, and you’ll be able to tailor it accordingly and get worthwhile results.

Jason Lark is managing director at Celerity