Very often marketers get scared of the term ‘big data’. It sounds overwhelming and scary to them, especially to those who don’t have a clear understanding of how to capture and make use of such data.
It’s all about going back to the basics – data essentially enables companies to understand their customers more precisely. Instead of taking the traditional path of making assumptions about what the consumer wants, data helps them make more focused predictions regarding the consumer.
Data-driven marketing
Data-enabled marketing makes sure that you know when your consumers are the most receptive, which mode of communication they would prefer the most and what products or categories they have been buying (to predict what they’re most likely to buy in the future). We’re in the consumer’s age today, and the consumers don’t take brand promotions to be the ultimate truth as they have access to more information and tools to verify claims, compare brands and make a decision. It’s important to actually understand them to have a meaningful connection.
With an increasing number of marketers trying to woo the consumer’s attention, it becomes much more important to focus energies on retaining your customers, which takes consistent effort and commitment. Data can help automate some parts of this process, for instance, systems can be set up for doing automated follow-ups or for providing real-time recommendations.
Where marketing is currently moving, two factors have gained significant prominence – relevancy, and location. If you can get these two variables to work for your brand, half the battle is won. Relevancy refers to the value that the product or service in question can deliver to your customer and how closely they address their pain points. A message that doesn’t associate with a need is most likely to be ignored, forget about building a following or loyalty. Companies that get this fit right witness the highest responses to their calls to action. Location refers to accessibility to your products or services and as ‘place’ is one of the primary elements of the traditional 4 Ps marketing model, its something that companies can’t afford to ignore.
Brands are increasingly moving towards personalization as they’ve come to realize that the erstwhile approach of mass messages doesn’t work any more. It has been taken over by direct, personalized and highly relevant messages that can grab the attention of the consumer. A consistent pattern in such communication also makes sure that once you’ve got their attention, you also keep them intrigued and interested in your brands and products.
At the core of any successful marketing strategy is the ability to differentiate by providing value in a focused and relevant manner. Equally important is to communicate through a medium where the consumer is present, is most receptive and thus the most likely to respond (which data can help identify). So if a brand can communicate that value to its consumers in a more personal manner, in a medium that they prefer, as opposed to bombarding the same messages to everyone and adding to the marketing clutter, it can reap real benefits in terms of consumer loyalty and increased bottom lines.
We can’t anticipate data from social media or sensory data to be meaningful unless we feed the resulting insights into marketing efforts. In a data-driven world, companies ignoring the power of data can risk letting go of a crucial aspect of their competitive strategy.
– See more at: https://blog.promptcloud.com/2013/10/why-smarter-companies-are-leveraging-data-driven-marketing.html#sthash.vwhcwGAP.dpuf
