Why Big Data matters to your yearly marketing goals

Why is big data important for marketing? Combining the information from colossal databanks with marketing goals allows you to plan strategies most likely to meet success. It doesn’t just tell you who your customers are, but it digs deeper into where they spend their time, what they want and personal insights you don’t gain from one-off bits of information. 

We have crossed a threshold where we can’t possibly sort through all the data out there, which is where machine learning and AI comes into play. According to IDC’s Data Age 2025 study, a massive 163 trillion gigabytes of data is on the horizon. Every second of every day, people create more of it. The advantage for marketers is the ability to harness information into a powerhouse of facts driving your growth strategy.

Big data matters to your yearly marketing goals. Here are some ways marketers use the facts out there, analyze them and come up with a plan.

1. Personalize customer experiences

Part of marketing should be differentiating your brand from others. A powerful form of reaching people is personalizing their experience. Amazon is a prime example of how to customize a shopping experience. It uses big data to track not only what you’ve bought in the past but also browsing history. It then offers suggestions based on what seems to interest you. This type of transactional marketing focuses on one sale at a time. 

In addition to paying attention to your habits, Amazon pulls data from its system about what other people bought. If you add a new coffee pot to your shopping cart, you’ll see a section stating people also bought filters and a grinder, for example. Use your internal data to figure out what your customers want.

2. Gain valuable insight

People who regularly use big data in marketing point to the layers of information hidden in years of facts about customer behavior. You might start by learning the demographics of your average customer. However, you also have access to customer complaints, reasons for returns and even years of survey results. Combine each bit of data for a new layer to your customers. 

Once you have exhausted your research, get the information to your marketing team. It’s much easier to write an ad campaign geared to a buyer persona when you understand what makes the typical customer tick. 

3. Gain an edge over the competition

Whether you’re coming up with a local marketing campaign or you just want to see the areas a competitor serves, using data to create business mapping insights helps you get a step ahead of other companies in your industry. If you want to offer a special sale to people in a particular area, mapping allows you to see how interested a segment of your audience might be. 

4. Retain current customers

Your customer retention rates can make or break your business. While growth occurs from new business, it can’t happen if you don’t keep the clients you already have. You’ll simply be treading water if you constantly lose people only to gain new ones. Some studies show a regular customer also spends more per transaction, so it benefits you in multiple ways to keep customers happy.

Big data systems track your customers and their buying habits. You can run reports showing when someone is likely to reorder. You can even use business intelligence software and send out an automated email when it’s close to the time for them to buy again. The message reminds them you’re there and ready to help them. Suggest a few products they might be interested in or touch base with a hello. Communication is key to excellent customer retention. 

5. Know your objectives

Big data is so huge it can seem overwhelming to run reports and decipher the results. You can gain insight from nearly any part of your business imaginable and even pull in data from the public cloud and utilize it. 

If you want to utilize big data to your best advantage, know the reasons you’re using it. From a marketing standpoint, you might want to create campaigns with a higher clickthrough rate. You would look specifically at past campaigns and analyze which ones people clicked on and look for patterns. Make a list of two or three main objects for big data and marketing within your company to keep your focus. 

6. Team up with other departments

When you place everything in an extensive database and allow relevant departments to pull information from the reports, you create a seamless experience. For example, if marketing decides to run a big ad campaign promoting 20% off for summer, the sales department needs to know not only about it but also who you sent the offer to.

Sharing information across different departments allows everyone to prepare for an increase in sales on a particular product. Imagine a highly successful marketing push on Facebook. People begin ordering the newest gadget, and thousands of transactions come in. Unfortunately, inventory control was unaware of the upcoming push for the product and didn’t order extra. The shipping department didn’t have a chance to hire additional staff to fill orders. Now, customers have to wait for weeks to get their items. 

Use big data to improve all the processes in your company and not just your marketing efforts. 

Big Data improves marketing

Using big data in marketing improves customer communication and helps specialists better understand the needs of clients. Narrowing your efforts to just a few aspects isn’t easy. Choose a few goals and stick to them for the best results. With a little extra effort, the information at your fingertips will drive your promotional methods and improve your conversions.