3 Ways Big Data is Changing Marketing
Companies now have the tools to gain more insights than ever into their customers, and that presents big opportunities.
Most companies rely on some kind of marketing for accessing, maintaining and expanding their customer base. From the flashy, intricate apps and ad campaigns of large multinational retail companies such as Nike or Apple, to the minimalistic, sleek website of a small, boutique design company, or even the handmade discount cards given out by your local bookshop – communication and marketing are everywhere in the world of business.
There’s obviously a good reason for that: marketers and business owners know that engaging with customers and potential customers is absolutely essential – if not the most essential – component of any company in the business of selling things in today’s highly competitive markets.
A major component of marketing is analytical: What do your customers want? How do they want to get it? And finally, how can you get them to want what you’re selling?
Since around the turn of the 20th century, these are the big questions that advertisers and marketers have been constantly trying to figure out.
In the past, before the age of the internet, this was mostly undertaken through a psychological, trial and error approach. Market researches would hold focus groups and ask people what they want and didn’t want, etc., and would then attempt to use that information to formulate products that the broader market would (hopefully) consume.
In the last twenty years, there has been a revolution in the way marketers understand the markets they want to sell to. They don’t need to ask people what they want, or how they want to get it anymore; behavior on the internet can provide many of these answers, with a lot more clarity, and often a lot more truth.
In many cases, the data we provide through our behavior on the internet can reveal truths about our own desires and inclinations that we aren’t even aware of ourselves.
Big Data – the mass collection of information that we, as individuals, contribute through our online behavior, can be pooled together and analyzed by marketers using tools such as Google Analytics.
These large new data sets are also providing market analysts with the power to understand trends and consumer behavior on a large scale like never before, and they also allow individual companies to better comprehend their customers and markets.
Below are three of the key ways the insights from big data analysis can help companies in their marketing efforts:
Optimization number 1: Optimize Targeting
One of the most powerful uses for Big Data is for companies to use the insights it can provide to better understand their customers and target markets. By understanding what types of websites their target market visits, a company can streamline and focus their ad campaigns using the content and locations that will have the highest impact.
Optimization number 2: Boost Conversions
Google Analytics provides an impressive and ever-expanding depth of insights into the behavior of users on a website. By understanding what parts or content of a website work, and what do not, web developers and UX designers can optimize a website’s layout, organization and content to convert visitors into customers as effectively as possible.
Optimization number 3: Predict Behavior
Predictive Analytics is essentially the process of analyzing past data patterns, and using that analysis to fine tune and improve a service. It is of course not full-proof, but it can help to understand probabilities.
For marketers, predictive analytics are providing an unprecedented understanding of what types of decisions consumers are likely to make, given different circumstances. What makes them purchase one product instead of another? What is the best day of the week to announce a sale or special offer? All these kinds of questions can be answered using predictive analytics.
At Bocasay, we are continually keeping up to date with the latest developments in content marketing, web and mobile app development, and big data analytics. Get in touch to find out how we can make it all work together for you and your company.
