You do not stand a chance in this digital age if you operate your marketing campaign through traditional platforms. If you still roll out mass and untargeted marketing material, you will certainly not be effective. The technological advancements have left no excuse for brands to justify the lack of customer data collection. This data, in return, enables them to carve out specialized marketing campaigns targeting the right audience. Now marketers can capture data at almost every stage of the buying decision. It is this data that has revolutionized marketing.
There was a time in the 60s and 70s when marketing revolved around direct mail and advertising. With the advent of computers, traditional marketing adapted technology, and we saw a rise in email marketing. However, once Apple launched the first iPhone in 2007, it marked the most notable paradigm shift for marketers. Customers became more and more involved in their smartphones.
Now we have more than three billion smartphone users with a smartphone penetration rate of 45.5%. Each of these three billion individuals has a treasure box of data in their pocket. This data has become the main driver of the global marketing industry. Therefore, no one can ensure a successful marketing campaign without incorporating the proper applications of big data.
Big data has enabled brands to target customers through geo-fencing. Instead of making traditional promotion magazines, they can create eBook online to demonstrate their product portfolio. It allows them to follow a targeted customer approach. In short, big data has revamped the entire marketing landscape.
If you are looking forward to exploring more about the role of big data in marketing, then you have come to the right place. This article discusses five areas to highlight why big data is essential for successful marketing.
1. Producing an Omnichannel Customer Experience
Omnichannel marketing is the next big thing in the modern corporate world. It integrates all customer touchpoints from the initial ones until the last, where the customer performs a purchase. It means that all the marketing channels collectively create a holistic image for your brand. You can cover the customer at every possible touchpoint. From their smartphone screen to the emails they receive, brands need to maintain a coherent theme throughout these channels.
Big data has provided the right tools to marketers to ensure a well-designed omnichannel customer experience. The most commonly used tool is Customer Value Analytics (CVA). CVA helps marketers to understand what, when, and how the customer values something. Marketers can plan their marketing propositions accordingly. CVA begins with collecting data at the right instances when a customer makes the purchase decision. It provides necessary data-driven insights to marketers to understand which touchpoint results in realizing actual sales.
2. Ensuring dynamic pricing for brands
In today’s market, there is nothing expensive or affordable. It is all about highlighting the suitable characteristics to the right buyer. Value-based selling has become the market norm. Pricing revolves around the value a customer can perceive for a product. Therefore, more and more brands are starting to adopt dynamic pricing strategies and changing their products’ prices accordingly. However, it demands a comprehensive understanding of the markets and the target customers.
According to McKinsey, every 1% price increase can increase the operating profit by 8.7% for most companies. Still, 30% of the total pricing decisions do not offer the best price to the customer. It means enormous losses in revenue. Big data has produced effective results for companies to devise the right pricing strategies and optimize profits. Big data helps companies to identify the correct customer-product level pricing by identifying customers’ willingness to pay. That is how companies realize the potential sales that they could lose if they had flat pricing structures.
3. Uplifting customer relationship to new levels
Customers are the main drivers of a business. Every company is smart enough to identify that. However, not everyone is smart enough to recognize big data’s role in marketing by maintaining a good relationship with customers. Big data has upscaled the entire Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. These systems traditionally used to rely on first-hand customer feedback; now, they have become data-driven.
From likes and dislikes to product preferences, CRMs hold substantial data sets that companies can use to flourish customer relationships. According to a study by Forrester, 44% of global B2C marketers utilize big data analytics to devise better relationship-driven marketing strategies. Data dictates what a customer likes when he likes it and through which channel he prefers it. Companies can incorporate this data in their different customer interactions and deliver their offerings in the right way. Moreover, the increasing trend of customization in modern-day purchase decisions augments the importance of big data even further.
4. Personalizing your marketing campaigns
According to Forbes Insights, market leaders in ten different industries plan to use big data to gain customer loyalty through personalized marketing efforts. Personalized marketing has produced excellent results for companies. The most prominent outcomes are in the domain of Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). Big data helps marketers to maximize CLTV by providing personalized content for every target audience. It would be impossible to track millions of prospective customers without big data analytics.
Increased customer loyalty means increased ROI on all the marketing investments a company makes. However, companies need big data yet again to gauge this ROI. It helps you to understand customer purchase decisions. Companies gain insights about which promotional activity generated the best results for them. Then they can personalize the upcoming marketing campaigns accordingly.
5. Empowers you to implement Next Best Action (NBA) marketing
Marketers always have their treasure box ready to bombard customers with offerings. However, neither does every offer appear attractive to the customers nor does it convert into actual sales. The key to success here is Next Best Action (NBA) marketing. It determines which offer will be the best in the sequence of customer interactions. It makes your marketing efforts increasingly customer-centric. It further helps in reducing customer acquisition costs and creates long-term customer trust.
Big data serves as the cornerstone for NBA marketing. Artificial intelligence determines the next best option through analyzing historical data sets. It is nearly impossible to study customers’ needs and interests without the clerical support of AI and big data. The entire system incorporates real-time decision-making algorithms utilizing the data previously collected at different customer touchpoints. NBA marketing is a blend of advanced data analytics and business rules. The duo mainly helps marketers to gauge the propensity of customers to accept a particular offer. It produces subsequent options accordingly.
Big Data is Crucial for Modern Marketing
Big data has become increasingly prevalent in different business domains over time. Moreover, the widespread COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent restrictions imposed on businesses have further increased big data significance. The global big data market currently stands at a whopping $70.5 billion. It is also growing at a CAGR of 19.4%. These are the signs that predict an even more significant role of big data in the future. Customer-dependent business functions will rely more on big data. Without a doubt, marketing is indeed the most customer-centric business function of any corporate structure. Therefore, the role of big data is inevitable in marketing. Big data applications will drive future marketing campaigns and ensure whether marketing generates successful results or not.