How Does Big Data Benefit Marketing
The connections between marketing and Big Data are easy to see. GPS tracking devices provide the location of people who use certain smartphone apps. Facebook and Twitter are huge databases of people’s behaviors and attitudes and search engines record people’s daily needs.
In 1992, global networks carried around 100 GB of traffic per day; ten years later, the global web traffic amounted to 100 GB per second and today, the global internet traffic reached more than 20,000 GB per second.The digital world is already huge, and it’s about to get even bigger – according to Cisco’s forecast, the global IP traffic will reach 1.1 zettabytes by the end of the year, and 2.3 zettabytes by the end of the decade.
Despite the large volumes of data, companies still don’t know what to do with all of that information. In fact, according to IBM, less than 25% of organizations have an enterprise-wide big data strategy. However, marketers and sales professionals are slowly embracing the concept of big data, with its ever-increasing challenges.
The connections between marketing and Big Data are easy to see. GPS tracking devices provide the location of people who use certain smartphone apps. Facebook and Twitter are huge databases of people’s behaviors and attitudes and search engines record people’s daily needs.
All this data can yield product insights, allowing companies to create products that their target demographic wants. It can also help them understand how to effectively communicate the value of these products, optimize their distribution strategies and determine the right price to ensure a healthy profit. All in all, the more data you have, the more informed decisions you can make.
Data-Driven Strategies
According to Forbes, customer analytics are by far (48%) the most popular use cases in marketing and it is not hard to see why. Modern customer analytics tools enable marketers to segment their customers into micro-targeted groups based on behavior, not just gender, age and interest demographics. Combining such metrics as sentiment analytics from social media with CRM data, marketers can create a more holistic view of a customer’s lifetime value and then improve up-sell opportunities.
IDC reports that the predictive analytics technology market will grow to 3.4 billion dollars by 2018, and thanks to recent technological developments, even the smallest businesses have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of big data. With an advanced BI software, both micro-companies and large enterprises are able to plan and execute their marketing strategies and improve the operational efficiency of their organization.
Real-Time Personalization
In today’s competitive environment, companies have to invest more in customer experience in order to keep up with the competition. According to Aspect, around 60% of marketers agree that CX has become much more significant in recent years, and what’s more, Call Center IQ reports that in the last two years, almost 70% of businesses have increased their customer support spending.
The concept of customer personalization has been around for more than a decade by this point. In spite of this, only recently have marketers been able to offer an authentic personalized experience to consumers, based on interests, preferences, and real-time behavior. Thanks to big data, marketers now can deliver relevant content to their website visitors, based on where they clicked and where they came from.
The Future of Marketing
The data we have today goes unused; according to Technology Review, less than 0.5% of is properly processed and analyzed. So just why are not all marketers jumping on board the big data train? According to a recent Adobe Digital survey, more than 60% of marketers said that they are comfortable adopting new technology once it is mainstream.
Waiting for others to adopt new technological solutions, however, is not the right way to go – marketers that decide to wait will definitely miss countless benefits, relationships, and incremental revenue sources. Big Data isn’t going anywhere; in fact, it is only going to become more integrated into marketing strategies over the coming years.
Fortunately, things are seemingly changing, and companies are slowly beginning to realize the potential of all of this information they have at hand; Gartner reports that nearly 75% of organizations have invested or plan future investments in Big Data.