How to Use Big Data to Improve Your Digital Marketing

With the ability of digital marketing strategies to adapt content directly to the user’s preferences and specifications, personalization is the new standard by which all e-commerce and online marketing will be held. An Epsilon survey found that 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a company that offers a personalized experience. So where does big data come in?

Personalization and targeted marketing strategies could not exist without the use of big data. This information, spawned from every online interaction between a customer and your businesses’ various platforms, represents a world of information about your customers and your audience. To craft the perfect marketing strategy, you need the information that big data provides.

Through the accumulation of vast amounts of customer data, you can analyze, segment, and target the acquired information to build a near-flawless marketing strategy. Here’s what you need to know.

Analyzing

Before you can gather and analyze big data, you must first understand what it is.

Big data is the raw information generated by customer interactions. Marketers use this data to understand their audiences and customers better, but first, it must be organized and structured. Only then can data be analyzed to provide useful insights.

Analytics can be as simple or complex as you need it to be. Helpful tools that utilize AI technology can scan through and sort massive amounts of data, helping data analysts categorize and explain the information they have.

In healthcare, for example, the use of large amounts of data can help medical professionals link symptoms and risk-groups for improved treatment and diagnosis. In marketing, information such as demographics and behaviors can illustrate how to effectively craft your messaging to potential customers on an online platform.

Many useful digital marketing trends can be accomplished through data analysis for SEO. Here are just some of the ways you can use big data analytics for success:

• Use of keyword research for optimized SEO and search strategies.
• Responsive ads that respond to user history and are personalized appropriately.
• Creation of super-niche content based on audience needs.
• Video and multimedia content that appeals to your specific audience.

You need data analysis to make all of these marketing approaches happen, generating a broader audience with compelling content. Analysis means understanding, and without it, your whole marketing strategy amounts to a shot in the dark.

Segmenting

Another chief marketing strategy made possible by big data is the use of segmentation to cultivate your messaging. Segmentation is the grouping of your customers into marketable demographics that then allow you to create highly targeted and specific content for your digital marketing strategy.

Perhaps a portion of your audience is at-home users, while another is office workers looking to improve their situation. The marketing you create will change depending on these two different customer segments and their separate needs.

Makers of computers like Microsoft and Apple understand how different needs make for different marketing strategies. When looking through their products online, the categorization is as evident as the messaging.

Most companies deal with less distinct customer demographics and needs, but regardless, big data can help you find exactly who your customers are and how you can best group them.

Here are just some of the common groupings in online marketing segmentation:

• * Demographic segmentation — sorting your audience by age, industry, profession, and so much more.
• * Geographic segmentation — sorting your audience by physical location.
• * Behavioral segmentation — sorting your audience by the way they shop and transition through the conversion funnel.
• * Needs segmentation — sorting your audience by the challenges they face and the specific product needs that can address these challenges.

With effective segmentation, you are in a better position to craft content you can specifically target and personalize for your customer base. This can help you increase sales and build revenue.

Targeting

Now that you have analyzed your big data enough to break it down into marketable segments, you can target your marketing strategy.

Targeting allows for a personalized approach that users will respond to. Whether you use your targeting strategy to reach out through personalized email marketing, provide product recommendations, or devise ad content, this method of advertising can be highly effective.

Target marketing is essential because it allows you to:

• * Craft messaging for an audience at a personal level.
• * Attract and convert leads.
• * Secure customer loyalty.
• * Better your products and services.

To achieve these results, you must craft a persona for your buyers based on the data you have accumulated and analyzed. Your segments will come in handy here. Use them to create a narrative around your customers that explains who they are and why they need your product. Then, you can communicate that message across automated advertisements that will be personalized based on the customer’s data.

This personalization improves the ability of companies to convert potential customers into buyers, banking profits for businesses. BCG reported that brands that personalize a customer experience through targeted digital technology show an increase in revenues of 6-10%. Investing in data software for the ability to personalize messaging could end up paying for itself in little time.

Target marketing is all about specificity. By crafting a strategy from the metadata within your website all the way to the specific content that your customers see, you will build a brand designed to meet your customers where they are — online.

Using Big Data for Better Marketing

The uses of big data in marketing are many. First, you must understand and gather that data through customer interaction. Then, you can understand your audience through analysis. This allows you to group your customers by a host of demographics that can help you devise personalized content and target your marketing to greater effect.

Big data is the trend of business across every industry. The insights and profits this data generates will help you gain an edge over your competitors with a strong foothold in the digital world. All you need to do is apply that data in a marketing strategy that analyzes, segments, and targets customer data.