Regardless if you work in IT or not, you have probably heard the term “Big Data.” Big Data is the huge volume of data that deluges businesses on a day-to-day basis. Basically, data is generated from anything we do that involves a digital transaction. Think about the amount of data you generate every day yourself though online activity such as social media or online shopping. Big Data is a really big deal. According to Gartner (2015), 75% of all business are now making major investments in collecting and storing this information, both structured (customer databases, for example) or unstructured (tweets from your customers).
I was thinking about what value this data has to marketers and how they can harness this for better integrated marketing programs. Many times we conduct our own primary research to better understand and target our prospects. But there is a whole world of existing data to tap into for new insights about your audience. Marketers these days need to be a combination of creative geniuses and data scientists. Maybe we call that persona the “extroverted nerd,” a term we lovingly often used at my previous organization for those people who understood the power of data, how to analyze it and put it to great use. Here are just a few ways your “extroverted nerd” can tap into the power of Big Data to better understand your prospects and customers:
Using Google Trends Google Trends can help you show how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume, in various languages across the globe. Trends offers real-time data from more than 100-billion (yes, billion!) searches through the tool monthly to evaluate search trends during specific time periods. You can watch for spikes in search terms during events so you can determine what topics are getting people’s attention and then leverage this information for your own content creation, including key terms within your materials. For example, Unilever tapped into Google Trend data to better understand what messaging appealed to their audience. You can read more about the campaign here.
Mining the Twitter Firehose Every second, there are 6,000 tweets sent, which equals about 500 million tweets per day (Twitter Usage Statistics, n.d.). Can you really keep track about all of the topics across Twitter related to your business? You need deeper access to all of that Twitter data. There are tools that connect to the Twitter “firehose” and can pull all of that data out to analyze. Gnip is Twitter’s API (application platform interface) that allows businesses to access and unlock the power of those social conversations. A prospect’s social conversation about a topic related to your product is a key signal he or she is ready to engage. You can even go back in time, and explore historical data to better understand the buyer’s journey, such as what PayPal did.
Retargeting With retargeting you can take advantage of the data on your own website. An easy win is to include a retargeting pixel on the backend of your website to capture the information for visitors who came to the site but who did not convert into a response. A retargeting program specifically targets those that got away with your own branded ads. This is not only an awareness strategy but it takes advantage of all of that data on your site and helps you to target them at a low-cost. I found a great easy to understand example at one of my go-to marketing resource sites, Marketing Sherpa, where the use of retargeting ads led to a 278 increase in conversion for B2B offer in just 60 days.
Have you had any experience with “Big Data?” What other ways can you imagine tapping into your “extroverted nerd?”
Gartner Survey Shows More Than 75 Percent of Companies Are Investing or Planning to Invest in Big Data in the Next Two Years. (2015, September 15). Retrieved June 18, 2017, from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3130817
Gnip – Historical. (n.d.). Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://gnip.com/historical/
How Unilever’s Jif Used Data to Power YouTube Creatives. (n.d.). Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-ae/case-study/jif-case-study/
MarketingSherpa (2014, November 04). Retargeting Marketing: 278% conversion rate lift in 60 days. Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/retargeting
Twitter Usage Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved June 18, 2017, from http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/