Benefits of Big Data in Marketing.

In the old days, the challenges for marketers was reaching many people, convincing them to buy their products and develop positive brand perceptions, all to be done within the budget allocated. Brands create an ad, broadcast through channels and hope their sales increases. If it didn't, they make a new ad. But times have changed after the digital revolution.

 Today's marketing challenges (IBM Analytics, 2013) are way more complicated than that, 

• Huge volumes of structured data from various touch-points controlled by the brand. 

• Huge volumes of unstructured data from all external sources like social media not controlled by the brand. 

• Optimizing the message for the diverse communication channels and variety of devices used by customers to interact with the brand 

• Changes in lifestyle and demographics of target customers. 

This is where Big Data comes in to help marketers tackle these challenges by providing highly valuable customer insights through information analytics by not only analyzing large volumes of data but also generates knowledge and insight strengthening the mindset for taking calculated risks through data-driven decision making. (Hertz, 2017).

Information Analytics done using a Big data platform will be using a variety of data which can be structured and unstructured such as, 

1. Competitor Analysis and Industry Insights
2. Product and Market Research Reports
3. Brand conversations in Social Media and Press Coverage
4. Customer Support Records.
5. Customer Feedback post-purchase.
6. Device Data 
7. Third-Party data (external stakeholders like re-sellers etc. or research agencies)
8. Consumer sentiment on retail sites and similar online forums
9. Transactions and Other Sales Inputs
10. Suggested Product Improvements

By analyzing the above information, brands will know exactly what the customers like and dislike about the brand, its products and services which will help them to develop innovative solutions to better deliver value. But that’s not all. Through Predictive Analytics offered by big data platforms, brands can predict which sales channels will be more effective which will, in turn, can predict which marketing channels will have better ROI at different stages of the product life cycle.  These insights are further processed to help marketers to 

Once the campaign is rolled out, big data can be used for real-time processing of various data points mentioned above to monitor the KPI’s and make necessary optimizations in content and delivery to improve conversions. (SAS Insights, 2019)

Big Data Analytics can help Marketers to 

Majority of data-savvy marketers report they were able to increase market share when they used data-driven marketing. (Arthur, 2013). As data-driven marketing increases, it has also accelerated growth in marketing automation.(Columbus, 2016). With increasing tech developments in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the majority of marketing functions will inevitably become automated in the coming decade. (Paine, 2017). 

But that doesn’t mean the role of marketers will be diminished, but rather it will increase their efficiency and productivity exponentially as it will lower the amount resources of required and the time-taken from ideation to execution will become shorter than ever.
So rest assured, exciting times ahead!

References:

• Arthur, L. (2013) Big Data Marketing: Engage Your Customers More Effectively and Drive Value. John Wiley & Sons.
• Columbus, L. (2016) Ten Ways Big Data Is Revolutionizing Marketing And Sales, Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/05/09/ten-ways-big-data-is-revolutionizing-marketing-and-sales/ (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
• Hertz, H. (2017) The Challenge of Information Analytics, NIST. Available at: https://www.nist.gov/blogs/blogrige/challenge-information-analytics (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
• Paine, J. (2017) Big Data in Marketing: 5 Use Cases, Inc.com. Available at: https://www.inc.com/james-paine/5-ways-big-data-is-changing-marketing.html (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
• SAS Insights (2019) Customer Intelligence, SAS.Com. Available at: https://www.sas.com/en_ie/solutions/customer-intelligence.html (Accessed: 18 February 2020).