How To Produce Great Marketing Results Using Big Data

Every marketer tries to identify a customer problem, and provide a solution to that problem. The Internet can provide a marketer with Big Data- millions of bits of information about customers. Finding the best data to use for marketing, however, is a huge challenge. Use these tips to find the data you need to solve customer problems and increase sales.

1. Protecting your data

The first step in using data is to protect it. Securing your data is important for several reasons :

• Competitors: The data you collect about the buying behavior of your clients is critical. You use that information to beat your competitors. It�s vital that the data remains confidential.
• Ongoing business: If you lose your client data, it may set back your business operations for months. You can�t do business without your client contact information and buying history. Consider inventory as an example: How would you know what inventory to stock if you lost all of your sales history?
• Regulatory, legal issues: Perhaps most important, regulators and government entities require you to protect customer data, such as credit and debt card information.

You can retain a firm to install malware controls, virus protection and provide online backup. Many companies can provide this service, so you don�t need to hire an onsite IT department.

2. Focusing on your ideal customer

Most of your marketing efforts should focus on your ideal customer. The ideal customer is the set of characteristics that your best clients have in common. If you can meet the needs of people with these traits, you�ll use your marketing efforts to maximize your sales.

Say, for example, that you sell expensive hiking boots. You decide to track data about your customers. You find out that you best customers are males between the age of 25 and 45 years old. The ideal customer lives in the Western US, and is an upper income earner. He buys hiking boots for weekend trips and vacation hiking. Those are the traits that make up your ideal customer.

3. Finding useful data about your customers

The amount of tweets, You Tube video posts and email messages you can access is overwhelming. To avoid spinning your wheels, you need to have a strategy to find the data that is most useful.

The Content Marketing Institute explains that you need to decide on your marketing goal. If you know what your goal is, you�ll know what data is useful. Here are few examples :

• Building awareness: Your marketing goal may be to simply increase people�s awareness of your product or service. If they�re more aware of your product, they might consider buying from you. To assess brand awareness, you can analyze your website traffic and social media followers. As you market, you can determine if your efforts are increasing brand awareness.
• Driving conversions: Conversion refers to the process of moving your clients toward a buying decision. A prospect, for example, may view your website, then click on a button to opt-in and receive your electronic newsletter. The newsletter allows the client to download a coupon- which can be used to make a purchase on your website. All of this activity can be analyzed. You can use the data to make changes and increase sales.
• Retaining customers: Developing repeat business is the key to profitability. A marketer can use data to assess customer satisfaction. You can ask clients to complete a survey on your website, for example. Use the results of the survey to make changes to your business- and keep customers coming back.

Use these tips to market effectively. Big data should be part of your strategy to solve problems for your clients.


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