Using Big Data to Drive Bigger Profits: What Every Marketer Should Know

We’ve seen data start out as an added bonus to marketing campaigns to now being the catalyst to success. As consumer behaviour changes regularly, it becomes harder to precisely narrow down and target our audience.

They know how to navigate the world wide web with ease, moving as fluidly as liquid through different channels and across various platforms, adapting their experience as they go. The predictability factor is all but a distant memory, but data is changing this.

User Journeys
Big data is changing the way in which we reach and connect with our target audience, but this is an exciting prospect. Through analysing different streams of data, you’re able to paint a bigger picture of who your target persona is, how they operate online, what their communication channel preference is; you might even find out what their favourite brand of coffee is.

This picture lays the foundations for the experience you can build for them when they interact with your brand. The Economist is a great example of what you can do with data; their analytics generated over 3 million new prospects and an additional £12.7m to the value of the business. Every article, the website navigation and digital advertising were accurately tailored to create a seamless user journey for each individual.

This isn’t a one off though; a survey conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that 35% of companies with a well defined data strategy reported stronger financial performance than their competitors.

Collaboration is Key
Extracting the data and translating it into meaningful commercial insight is a skill in itself, but analysing raw event data can lead to misinterpretation, sending your marketing way off the beaten track. Although Data Scientists sounds a little sci-fi, they are a real thing, helping companies make sense of each data transaction that gives them the ability to price products in real time, tailor marketing messages and develop new products and services to meet the demand.

Collaboration is key However for smaller businesses who can’t warrant the need for a data scientist just yet, the answer lies in collaboration, ensuring your marketing team are in touch with every aspect of the business.

Providing them with a 360 degree vision of the company and the right technological tools to extract data will create a culture whereby data analysis becomes part of the furniture. It’s also crucial that your business as a whole is connected to maximise your data library and enable data sharing so that business decisions are well informed.

Data-Driven-Marketing
Putting big data at the heart of your marketing will drive innovation, new ideas and knowledge, coordinating your offering with what customers actually want and need. However it’s not something that should happen in silo; from the engineering of your website to your business operations, everything should revolve around your data strategy so you can be quick to respond to change and connect with prospects in real time.

Your marketing communications start and end with data. To find out more about data-driven marketing, have a look at our Data Video Series in which we dispel our knowledge around a data-driven marketing approach.