It is the “Digital” age and we are all wired in. Today, smart phones, tablets, hundreds of online portals, thousands of user-friendly apps, social media, and online shopping are part of our everyday routine. Life would just not be the same if any of these elements go missing; “technologically handicapped” is what we will be called if we don’t adhere to this.
Before the revolution of the Digital era, not too long ago, marketers emphasized on creating gripping ads for the Sunday circulars, spellbinding television commercials and perhaps even some killer art or creative for a billboard or two. The tasks of the marketer has quickly evolved to keep up with technology and marketers are now munching statistics, focusing on individuals versus the masses, and trying to traverse through thousands of channels to reach their target audience.
Top Uses for Big Data in Digital Marketing:
According to a recent survey by 2nd Watch, 86% of a survey interviewees said their organizations are either using or planning to use Big Data to support their digital marketing efforts. Additionally, close to three-quarters of those using big data to support digital marketing said their efforts have either been “quite” or “extremely” effective, and 83% said it’s likely that they will increase the use of big data to support the on-going marketing campaigns.
The research also claims that the significant uses for Big Data in digital marketing include:
29% to better understand customer insights
18% to improve the supply chain
16% to power campaigns and promotions
To understand the minute details of marketing using Big Data, one has to understand its different sources. Web mining is an important source involving automated extraction of information from web documents and servers, as well as the content of the site. Data available as a result of browser activity tracking search and intent behavior rightly called as “search information” is also another important source. Social comments, shares and check-ins are vital sources of information for a digital marketer. Information is also collated from surveys, polls, forums and other online communities. Mobile usage statistics and usage of mobile applications in the background are driving the largest rise in data volume.
Digital marketing in 2015 was impacted by these evolving technologies in varied ways such as retargeting, custom dimensions and marketing persona. With technology and analytics, businesses have discovered new ways of retargeting by profiling their customers and targeting them during site visits. Custom dimensions is a feature available in google analytics, that enables a marketer to get information about age, gender and relationship status of the customers with a provision to even customize categories to a particular business type. Marketing personas have also been created which not only enables a marketer to target by keyword but also by individual customer-type.
With a huge bounty of evolving information available at the marketer’s fingertips, 2016 can only wait with bated breath for new innovation in this dynamic technology that the digital world can effectively utilize.
