What is Big Data in Digital Marketing?

Relying on predictions and ‘gut feeling’ to take business decisions is now a thing of the past. With AI in place, businesses are moving towards more of a data-driven approach. This is where big data in digital marketing comes into the picture. 

Undoubtedly, we agree with the fact that “Data is king”. However, the bigger challenge is to analyze this much amount of data to draw conclusions from it. Doing so requires methods that not only help manage data but also perform analysis on it and extract measurable results that help marketers in some way.  And big data does that and much more. 

Big data extends its benefits to all the industries dealing with lots of data that needs to be analyzed. In this article, we will not only understand its importance in digital marketing but how can you use it to boost sales. 

So without any further ado, let’s get straight to it.

Importance of Big Data in Digital Marketing

Well, so far we know big data plays a significant role in digital marketing. Along with giving information about the lows and highs of the business, it gives deeper insights into customers’ behavior which helps make businesses better decisions. Also, data is simple zeroes and ones without extracting meaning out of it. 

Below listed are a few areas where big data plays an important role in digital marketing:

Does sentiment analysis 

What if a tool can tell you the underlying emotional tone? Well, it will get easier for you to know your customer and you will be able to make better business decisions. 

As the name suggests, with the help of sentiment analysis, marketers can actually know how the customers feel about their brand. These tools help you analyze social media posts, search queries, reviews, etc, and find the meaning behind them. If you’ve ever wondered how to retain your customers, then sentiment analysis is your answer to it. 

Targets the right audience 

How many times have you trashed or unsubscribed those brands that bombard you with emails? You don’t want to be on that list. 

Big data not only helps you identify the way people use their services or products but also segments a group of people based on their demographic and social factors. This lets marketers enhance and personalize the marketing campaigns. If you send emails or messages that resonate with the audience, you will most likely not be found in a customer’s trash folder.

Does predictive analysis 

Big data analytics help in analyzing the past data so that it can forecast potential future demands of the customers. Marketers can then work on enhancing their production of goods depending on the analysis. Back in the day, businesses used to follow customer trends without a reliable set of data. Now, with big data, you can make more informed and accurate predictions about customers’ buying trends.

Increases sales 

Your end goal after all is to convert a viewer into a customer, right? All these above factors will eventually help you boost conversion rates and thus, increase revenue.

How to Use Big Data in Digital Marketing 

You now know the significance of big data, especially in today’s world. However, how do you use it in real-time – this is still the question. So, let us see five ways how you can implement big data in digital marketing and boost your conversion rates. 

Let us understand each of the above-mentioned points in detail. 

Have accurate data 

Can you make the right marketing decisions if you do not have accurate data? Certainly not. Also, it might come as a surprise to you, but having too much data could actually deter your marketing strategy if you do not know how to use it effectively. We do know that big data helps in analyzing unstructured data but there should be a tangible way to do so, right?

Here’s when the concept of Key Performance Indicators(KPIs) comes in. KPIs are values that help you measure a campaign’s performance. Some examples of KPIs include the number of visitors on your page, number of clicks, clicks to CTAs, email collections, etc. No matter your goal, your KPIs help you actually make performance measurable for you. 

Increase brand perception 

Brand perception is simply how a customer feels about your brand. It is a combination of brand awareness and brand reputation. Building brand reputation is a consistent process and big data helps you in doing so by enhancing your marketing efforts. After all, brand reputation increases with better customer acquisition and experience. 

Enhance customer experience 

As mentioned earlier, through semantic analysis, big data helps you know how a customer thinks and feels about your brand. So in a way, increasing brand perception is directly linked to enhancing customer experience. Once you know this, you can then create CTAs that appeal to their requirements. This is how you will retain customers.  

A classic example of retaining customers comes from Netflix. It saves up to a billion per year on customer retention simply by using advanced data analytics. It analyzes the preferences of each user and suggests TV shows and movies similar to those that they’ve already consumed. 

Optimize your marketing campaigns and website

This is one of the most important ways of using big data. In fact, optimizing your website is where SEO and big data together can generate greater results. With big data in place, you can study the performance of your past campaigns and exactly pinpoint what worked and what did not. 

For instance, if you notice that your Google ads are doing better than Facebook ads, it could mean that you should allocate your budget more to Google. Plus, with these insights, you can target a different pool of people depending on their location, gender, age, etc. This way you can optimize your website, campaigns, and products and personalize them. 

Save your marketing spend 

With digital marketing, you can use data that exactly depicts how their spending is affecting your business and whether it is having some effect on profit. For example, if you want to know which channel is drawing the most traffic, you can simply add a few parameters to URLs to relocate digital spending. 

After all, stakeholders would want to know if their marketing spend is working or not. And if used correctly, data can help you drive better marketing campaigns. Moreover, it can help reduce ad spending, help deliver more successful marketing campaigns, and reduce the supply chain for just-in-time delivery leading to business growth. 

Wrapping Up Big Data in Digital Marketing

Hopefully, you now know big data a tad bit better and ways you can use it to enhance your marketing campaigns. However, before you think of applying the big data concepts to your marketing, see whether you have sufficient data. 

If you are a small business, you should focus on building your online presence first and then think about big data. While if you have an established business up and running and you have noticed a few glitches in your marketing campaigns, it is wise to consider implementing big data to enhance your campaigns and get the results.