Marketing & advertising & in general the entire communications industry is ever-changing. Because of this, professionals find themselves having to adapt again & again to consumer behavior. In the beginning, these two industries were one-way communication streets, but with the development of technology, this has changed. Feedbacks allowed professionals to gain valuable insight into the lives of consumers & to take advantage of this in order to become better salesmen. Data mining was the game to be played.
As time has passed, technology evolved & we have more & more advanced tools & means of collecting data. From simple names, emails, or addresses, we can gather more complex details such as shopping habits, search patterns & even face recognition software & hardware. Over the past few years, it’s been all about finding out what’s making consumers tick, collecting as much data as possible about them in order to create highly targetable & personalized marketing messages.
With the recession, marketing departments are more often than not forced into making decisions based solely on data to avoid unneeded spendings. Phrases such as Return on Investment (ROI) or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) are on everyone’s tongues & lists of KPIs. This has made marketing professionals run around after consumer data, having the belief that once they’ve accumulated enough, they’ll know exactly the WHYs, HOWs, WHENs & WHEREs of selling somebody a product or a service. When in truth all this has really accomplished is gain little analyzable data at the cost of being called intrusive.
Shifting Towards Smart Data Marketing
That being said, a slight repositioning on the same direction is necessary because data alone is no longer enough. The industry needs to shift from making data driven decisions to smart data marketing. This shift needs to be made because massive volumes of data come with a set of difficulties. Besides being too large to analyze & interpret with traditional statistical analysis, it is painstakingly hard to pinpoint exact actionable information. In other words, after hours of data analysis, you’ll be left in a sea of percentages & with no clear way in which to steer your boat in order to make them better. & smart data marketing is the answer because it offers a stronger signal for your boat to follow, savvy?
Smart data marketing is nothing more but a metamorphosis of big data into something more actionable. Furthermore, smart data marketing tops Google’s top marketing predictions for 2016, announcing it’s official arrival in the professional practice limelight. To be perfectly understood, data will still remain a priority, it’s just that “big” has turned to “smart” data. & the overwhelming amount of data gathered turns into a clearer set of data with a stronger signal, making it more easily interpretable & actionable.
Therefore, marketers need to take their focus off “collect all the customer data we can” & towards “what data will help our customers experience our brands”. & in the latest marketing trends one word has stood out more than any other, “experience”.
Application of Smart Data Marketing
Let’s look at an example. You could have a survey on a website, asking visitors a set of focused questions. Questions that are designed to reveal more need-based information, like visitor intent. The survey will reveal a clearer set of data, they will be user-led & easy to leverage, offering a more straightforward approach to data interpretation. This, in turn, gives marketers a clearer picture of what needs to be done next.
Collecting this type of data provides a stronger signal because it is the visitor who inputs the answers, & data is not submitted to interpretations that have a possibility to be wildly inaccurate. This is just one example & it is only applicable to a narrow set of situations, but the exploitation potential for qualitative data is immense. What needs to be applied in order to transform big data into smart data is context.
Considering the context when collecting data could hugely benefit not only your company as a whole, but customer experience. & we all know the benefits yielded by great customer experience. When using smart data marketing, take context into account, take data collection issues into account & follow the best practices for data analysis, data interpretation & statistics.
Gathering data is one half of the business, but it is the first half. So you have to start somewhere, build a form, publish it on your website, publish it on Facebook (we hear these ones are great) & be well on your way to successfully use smart data marketing, it’s the new thing!
Marketing & advertising & in general the entire communications industry is ever-changing. Because of this, professionals find themselves having to adapt again & again to consumer behavior. In the beginning, these two industries were one-way communication streets, but with the development of technology, this has changed. Feedbacks allowed professionals to gain valuable insight into the lives of consumers & to take advantage of this in order to become better salesmen. Data mining was the game to be played.
As time has passed, technology evolved & we have more & more advanced tools & means of collecting data. From simple names, emails, or addresses, we can gather more complex details such as shopping habits, search patterns & even face recognition software & hardware. Over the past few years, it’s been all about finding out what’s making consumers tick, collecting as much data as possible about them in order to create highly targetable & personalized marketing messages.
With the recession, marketing departments are more often than not forced into making decisions based solely on data to avoid unneeded spendings. Phrases such as Return on Investment (ROI) or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) are on everyone’s tongues & lists of KPIs. This has made marketing professionals run around after consumer data, having the belief that once they’ve accumulated enough, they’ll know exactly the WHYs, HOWs, WHENs & WHEREs of selling somebody a product or a service. When in truth all this has really accomplished is gain little analyzable data at the cost of being called intrusive.
Shifting Towards Smart Data Marketing
That being said, a slight repositioning on the same direction is necessary because data alone is no longer enough. The industry needs to shift from making data driven decisions to smart data marketing. This shift needs to be made because massive volumes of data come with a set of difficulties. Besides being too large to analyze & interpret with traditional statistical analysis, it is painstakingly hard to pinpoint exact actionable information. In other words, after hours of data analysis, you’ll be left in a sea of percentages & with no clear way in which to steer your boat in order to make them better. & smart data marketing is the answer because it offers a stronger signal for your boat to follow, savvy?
Smart data marketing is nothing more but a metamorphosis of big data into something more actionable. Furthermore, smart data marketing tops Google’s top marketing predictions for 2016, announcing it’s official arrival in the professional practice limelight. To be perfectly understood, data will still remain a priority, it’s just that “big” has turned to “smart” data. & the overwhelming amount of data gathered turns into a clearer set of data with a stronger signal, making it more easily interpretable & actionable.
Therefore, marketers need to take their focus off “collect all the customer data we can” & towards “what data will help our customers experience our brands”. & in the latest marketing trends one word has stood out more than any other, “experience”.
Application of Smart Data Marketing
Let’s look at an example. You could have a survey on a website, asking visitors a set of focused questions. Questions that are designed to reveal more need-based information, like visitor intent. The survey will reveal a clearer set of data, they will be user-led & easy to leverage, offering a more straightforward approach to data interpretation. This, in turn, gives marketers a clearer picture of what needs to be done next.
Collecting this type of data provides a stronger signal because it is the visitor who inputs the answers, & data is not submitted to interpretations that have a possibility to be wildly inaccurate. This is just one example & it is only applicable to a narrow set of situations, but the exploitation potential for qualitative data is immense. What needs to be applied in order to transform big data into smart data is context.
Considering the context when collecting data could hugely benefit not only your company as a whole, but customer experience. & we all know the benefits yielded by great customer experience. When using smart data marketing, take context into account, take data collection issues into account & follow the best practices for data analysis, data interpretation & statistics.
Gathering data is one half of the business, but it is the first half. So you have to start somewhere, build a form, publish it on your website, publish it on Facebook (we hear these ones are great) & be well on your way to successfully use smart data marketing, it’s the new thing!
Abu Murad