VALUE OF BIG DATA FOR MARKETING

VALUE OF BIG DATA FOR MARKETING

Big Data is often used to represent the ever-increasing volume, variety, and velocity of information. Big Data is created, stored and analyzed to gain valuable understanding which can help to support decision making and action (Alshura, Zabadi, and Abughazaleh, 2018). Big Data offers massive benefits to businesses when effectively harnessed such as improved customer services and increased operational efficiency. In contemporary times, Big Data has become increasingly vital to organizations in various industries, especially in the field of sales and marketing.

The American Marketing Association (2013) defined marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”. The rise of Big Data urged conventional marketing tools to function using a more innovative, powerful and creative approach. In most businesses, Big Data has transformed marketing as a result of advancement in its algorithms and well-enhanced analytics methods. Today, Big Data has become an essential tool in marketing, without which most companies will be running blind. For marketing firms, Big Data is seen as the inescapable outcome of the new marketing landscapes that arose from the emergence of the digital revolution globally. It is seen as the capacity to work with extra agility; creating data-driven databases that acclimatize to customers and interrelates with brands, products, and services. Customer data, financial data, and operational data are the three types of Big Data that are of value to marketers.

Big Data has generated invaluable opportunities for marketers, ranging from offering an insight into which content is the most productive at each phase of the sales cycle and how to make pricing decisions to perceptions on how investments in customer relationship management can be enhanced and how to optimize business operations and performance. Big Data has also exposed marketers to large volumes of information based on customer interactions which have made it possible for marketers to gain more knowledge about the needs and attitudes of their clients and consumers. This has also made it possible for marketers to modify their products and services to meet the expectations of a specific client and his/her inclinations. Big Data also enables marketers to leverage real-time data in cloud computing environments. Big Data analytics also provides business intelligence that leads to cost and time saving by improving marketing performance.

Other benefits and values of Big Data in marketing include enhancing production and distribution strategy; identifying new opportunities; perfecting campaign-based and digital marketing strategies; obtaining product and service insights; improved customer acquisition, brand awareness; a better understanding of competition and target audience, to mention but a few.

References

Alshura, M.S., Zabadi, A., & Abughazaleh, M. (2018). Big Data in Marketing Arena. Big Opportunity, Big Challenge, and Research Trends: An Integrated View. Management and Economics Review, 3(1), 75-84.