Do you know who you’re selling to?
Posted by Andres Aguerrevere on
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the name “Big Data”, but what is it really? The term first appeared in an IT context, as data sets so large that could not be held in storage in computers or local disks, causing more troubles than benefits and favoring the development of new data processing tools; over time the term has acquired more global meanings getting to be known as the broad range of new and massive data types that have appeared in the last decades or any collection of data sets large and complex.
It’s basically the footprint millions of people leave in the internet.
You may be asking what the fuzz is all about, is only an awful amount of data, right? Well, the potential doesn’t lie in the raw information but in what you do with it to improve your work, whether it’d be studying your sales or creating new products, it all comes to making smarter decisions. The fields of application seem endless, from Banking to Healthcare, passing through education, retailing and even government, name a niche and Big Data is there.
But let’s talk about what you are here for: Marketing. What does the Big Data tell me about my customers? Mainly:
- Who are they? Age, gender, jobs, locations, hobbies, interests, income, educational status, even the way they order their latte!
- What do they want? This might be the most important piece of information, what is people looking for and does your product/service gives it to the them? If not well what are you waiting for?
- Who are they surrounded of? This allows you to classify customers and see which ones fit with your target to further analysis.
- Where and when do they buy? Is your business in the right location for the public you’re after? do you need to change your schedule? These and more strategies can be extracted from this info.
It’s like a giant survey has been made for you. Ever wondered how Google and Facebook know exactly what you’re interested in? Now you know it.
This has revolutionized the marketing and sales, changing the way the strategies are made, for example, the pricing strategies can be done more effectively when you can compare yourself with your competitors, and what they’ve done; also, in Digital Marketing, where keeping an open channel of communication with the big public is vital, the responsiveness of customers have grown, generating a bigger insight and therefore more personal campaigns.
Now that we’ve highlighted the importance of the data use, where are you gonna find this info? There are plenty of sources that we can group in:
Web mining: Automatized tools to uncover and extract information from servers, browsers, web documents, structured and unstructured data, like extracting diamonds from a mine.
A complete site for this is Marketo, which allow you to streamline, automate, and measure tasks and workflows, also you can segment your data for easier analysis.
Search data: This tools takes its data from the search engines
An example of this is the Google app: Google Trends, here you can see search trends for volume of search, or even the global distribution of a trend, now you can find out where people talk about Game of Thrones the most.
Transaction Tracking: Data from bank activities, debts, anything that can tell you where the money goes.
Crowdsourcing: Basically info about communities, what they share to the world.
Social networks: In this case, each network establishes the relevant content.
Content Marketing and Big Data
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” – Peter Drucker
We all know the importance of a good management of content on the public face of our business, especially if we are talking of Digital Marketing alone (if you don´t, check this https://wegacha.com/blogs/wegachablog/getting-started-with-content-marketing-a-quick-guide ). You want to produce relevant content that catches the attention of the public, and for that you need to know what your public wants to see. Here are some of the benefits of combining Content Marketing with Big Data:
Improving the traffic: As your contents get better, the visits and feedback you receive will start to grow; also generating more data!
Expertise effect: Adding numbers, facts, and specific contents, makes your site look more serious and your company seems an expert of its field
Transparency: If you share cold, raw information about your own company, your credibility goes up, You have nothing to hide and your clients like it.
With all this new activities you’re having is necessary to study the response and the real relevance your business having, and there’s no better indicator of people’s real interest that social media, specially the social networks, where sometimes appear to be no filter in opinions. The social media analytics consists in gathering data to guide your marketing strategy, or reinforce if it goes in the right direction.
The strategy to follow must begin with the establishment of goal based on social activities, to double your followers, or become a trending topic, for example; linked to this there have to be indicators that tells you if the goal is being fulfilled, generally speaking we could talk of: likes, shares, replies, comments, clicks to posts and (if the advertising is your thing) external links.
To keep on track your work and development in your profiles we count with several platforms, all with pros and cons that would be determined by the field, user, and of course what you’re looking for; perhaps you have to try more than one, but don’t be afraid there`ll be one right for you. Let´s see.
Hootsuite
It´s a tool that contains many more, it`s an integrated system of different platforms in only One dashboard, so now you can multitask your networks in peace, posting, scheduling on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+ .
Hootsuite provides you with a review of your key activities in each social network (audience, engagement), reports based on the response time of the feedback, and, if you have a team this is for you, because it shows you the performance of each member.
Sysomos
Sysomos is a platform focused in the insight of the interactions, where you can listen and monitor what`s been said, find influencers, competitive analysis, find opportune moments and overall, have a competitive edge in all your networks.
Brandwatch
This site doesn’t go around the bushes, it brings you the essentials conversations you want; it also monitors interactions from all the networks.
Buffer
For all Twitter addicts, there is Buffer, here you can schedule your tweets and retweets and also of others; in the analytic side you can set and compare data ranges, that can later be exported.
Google Analytics
Of course Google couldn`t left a field without an app, in this case, the mentions to your page can be showcased in the form of an activity stream. However, doesn’t allow to post, schedule or monitoring.
Now it’s the perfect moment to hire a Chief Data Officer (CDO) to manage your data or why not becoming one! Remember Big Data is everywhere and people spend more and more time online, it´s up to you if they do it at your site or someone else’s.
