Guide to big data marketing and better consumer insights

Big data is a powerful marketing tool for data-driven marketing strategies. But with the complexity of multiple sources and formats, processing and analysis, and myriad compliance requirements, harnessing this valuable information can be daunting.

Fortunately, the basics of big data marketing are easy to understand and obtaining user consent is simpler with the right tools in place. We’ll explore what big data is, how it can improve your marketing activities, and how you can leverage it while remaining focused on privacy, consent and ethics.

What is big data in marketing?

In marketing, big data refers to large volumes of customer information collected from various sources, such as digital platforms, websites, and apps, about customer behavior, interactions, and preferences.

Big data includes structured data like demographic information and purchase histories, and unstructured data like social media interactions and customer service transcripts.

Marketers can analyze these extensive datasets to gain insights into customer demographics, behaviors, and preferences. This enables businesses to meet evolving audience needs and interests and devise targeted strategies that drive engagement to maximize campaign performance. The three “Vs” describe key characteristics of big data in marketing.

Volume

Volume in big data marketing refers to the massive quantities of customer data that can be collected. Vast amounts of information can be collected from billions of interactions. These can include purchase behavior, customers interacting with brands on social media, and use of internet-connected devices like smart watches.

Having access to more data gives marketers greater potential for drawing deeper insights and performing thoughtful analyses that can better resonate with customers and prospects to help catapult marketing strategies and campaigns to success.

Just note that bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, and having large sets of third-party data isn’t likely to  give you the same quality of insights as zero-party data you get directly from your users. It can also come with issues like a lack of data subject consent for its collection and use. 

To effectively use data they obtained from users and their activity, marketers need to use tools that help reliably and ethically process and analyze large datasets. Plus, they need to update for the industry shift toward zero-party and first-party data.

Variety

Large volumes of data also tends to mean more diversity in data. Variety in big data marketing relates to the types of data, the sources from which marketers can collect it, and the formats it’s collected and stored in. This includes everything from structured data in sales records to unstructured data in customer reviews or social media posts.

Diverse data gives a broad view of customer behavior. When you dig deeper into it, marketers can unlock insights to help them craft tailored campaigns that capture audiences’ attention.

Velocity

Velocity refers to the speed at which data is generated, collected, and processed within the marketing landscape. People quickly and easily communicate and interact through technology at speed all the time, every day, which means data is collected in real time.

Marketers need to quickly and accurately process this information to make decisions and launch marketing activities. The internet has a notoriously short attention span, which means trends don’t last long, and capturing and maintaining people’s attention and interest becomes ever more difficult.

Speedy data analysis enables businesses to remain agile and make real-time decisions and adjustments. This helps you respond quickly to emerging trends and customer feedback, and optimize your marketing strategies.

Benefits of using big data analytics in marketing

Let’s take a closer look at the potential benefits that big data analytics offers marketers and the business outcomes it can drive.

Making predictions

You can use big data in predictive analytics, which enables marketers to more accurately anticipate customer behavior and market trends. Historical data can show marketing teams patterns that can help you predict future events and outcomes, for example, customer purchasing decisions or seasonal demand spikes.

This predictive power enables marketing teams to proactively adjust strategies and campaigns. But it can also help the business to make more informed decisions about products and product development, inventory, and other aspects of the business, which could save resources, drive operational efficiency, and increase ROI.

Harnessing market trends

Businesses can harness big data to monitor emerging trends in real time. When you analyze data as it comes in from various sources, you can quickly spot and respond to market changes, whether to boost growth or navigate a slow-down. 

This gives businesses the ability to capitalize on opportunities, stay ahead of competitors, and mitigate risks quickly. When customer preferences and needs change fast, you are better positioned to meet them.

Data-driven decision making

When you analyze big data effectively, you have solid information for decision-making that reduces guesswork and enhances precision in marketing personalization, budget allocation, and customer engagement strategies. Big data-driven decisions help increase your speed with less time and fewer resources wasted on missteps. They also help to optimize marketing activities, increase ROI, and improve business performance.

Personalization

Big data powers personalization in marketing. You can gain a deep understanding of customer preferences and behaviors to create unique buyer personas and tailored customer journeys.

Marketers can leverage detailed insights from big data to tailor interactions and offerings to meet the unique needs of each customer. Combined with consent management, you can develop powerful strategies to optimize your customer relationships.

Increased customer engagement

Modern customers are digitally savvy and have higher expectations for how they engage with brands. The predictive power and personalization that big data analytics allows can boost customer engagement over the long term.

Marketing campaigns tailored to individual preferences and behaviors capture attention more successfully, and personalized buyer journeys can increase conversions.

More relevant marketing can make customers feel valued and understood, which has the potential to significantly boost engagement. When you meet customers’ expectations, customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty increase.

Challenges of implementing big data in marketing campaigns

Big data brings big benefits for marketing teams, but there are also challenges. With multiple data privacy regulations reshaping the marketing landscape, data security and the quality of big datasets are pressing issues.

Data security

Ensuring data stays safe and secure is a major challenge with using big data in marketing. With the vast volumes of customer information that businesses collect, store, and analyze, protecting it against data leaks is crucial, both for maintaining customer trust and for regulatory compliance.

Peltea explains: “Handling large amounts of customer data raises privacy and security concerns. Marketers must ensure compliance with data protection regulations like the GDPR, and build trust with customers by protecting their data, which has ongoing resource and expertise requirements.”

It’s essential that businesses implement strong security measures and protocols, which includes access to customer data by third-party vendors and other business partners. Using a robust consent management platform (CMP) like Usercentrics CMP can help to ensure that only customer data for which explicit consent has been obtained is shared in line with the relevant data privacy laws.

Data quality

Data drives decision-making, but low quality data leads to false findings. Inaccurate, inconsistent, and incomplete data sets compromise analytics and have the potential to steer marketing strategies in the wrong direction.

This is a major concern for marketers making use of big datasets, many of which contain third-party data instead of zero-party and first-party data, which are typically more reliable and of better quality.

“Prioritize data cleansing and validation processes to maintain high data quality,” says Peltea. “Accurate and reliable data is crucial for generating meaningful insights, and maintaining these standards is a regulatory requirement under many privacy laws.”

This is critical for providing a strong data foundation from which to build accurate buyer personas and audience analytics that enable effective decision making. But you also need to ensure you have the right skills for data analysis.

“Implementing big data analytics requires specialized skills and knowledge in data science, which marketing teams might lack. Hiring and training the right talent can be a significant hurdle, but a significant benefit in the long run,” explains Peltea.

How marketers can use big data in their marketing efforts

Big data opens the door to plenty of new marketing opportunities. To make the most of these, businesses must be sure to gather consent for marketing purposes to stay in line with data privacy regulations and maintain customer trust.

Find new market opportunities

Big data enables marketers to analyze large amounts of customer information like trends, purchasing behaviors, and customer feedback, and uncover behavior patterns. You can use this information to identify opportunities for growth in existing markets, and underserved niches or emerging demands.

The detailed insights that big data can drive give businesses the ability to innovate or adjust their offerings to meet newly discovered needs. For example, you could find that customers are looking for more eco-friendly products or better features through sentiment analysis of social media comments or online reviews. You could find an unexpected link that provides opportunities for cross-selling.

Big data also enables improved market segmentation. This makes it possible to tailor marketing messages to create more targeted campaigns.

Optimize marketing strategies

Big data provides marketing teams with a rich and detailed understanding of consumer behavior and market dynamics. You can harness this information to refine and transform your marketing strategies.

For example, data-driven insights from past campaigns can reveal which marketing channels drive the most engagement or sales, or which copy and imagery garner the most attention. Using this information, teams can allocate budgets for the most effective improvements.

Big data also opens the opportunity for predictive modeling that can help marketers forecast future trends and potential consumer behaviors. This foresight enables teams to move away from reactionary tactics and shift to anticipating market needs and developing innovative strategies.

Using insights to create loyalty programs

Incentivizing repeat business with exclusive offers, discounts, or other benefits can significantly boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. Loyalty programs are a key tool for retaining customers and enhancing their lifetime value.

Big data can provide deep insights into what customers want, how they behave, and what drives their decisions, which is essential for designing effective loyalty programs. Analyzing data from customer interactions can help marketers uncover purchasing patterns, preferences, and satisfaction levels. This enables you to offer rewards with genuine value and potential to improve retention.

Preference management is one way you can gather essential customer data. It empowers customers to control what data they share and how it’s used.

Usercentrics Preference Manager provides users with full control over their marketing permissions and preferences, enabling businesses to collect the zero-party and first-party data they need to create effective loyalty programs while building customer trust.

Usercentrics for marketing data analytics and reporting

Big data plays diverse and significant roles in marketing. From enabling increased customer engagement to equipping marketers to discover new opportunities, these datasets provide access to insights that can significantly influence business outcomes.

While it opens the door to promising strategies, big data requires a robust framework for collecting, analyzing, and securely storing extensive customer data.

Usercentrics CMP helps businesses navigate the complexities of customer consent. This enables you to obtain the necessary permissions to collect, manage, and store user consent data in line with major data privacy laws.

Usercentrics also offers detailed user data and reporting tools so you can analyze your consent rates, as well as powerful A/B testing tools to try out new strategies.

Usercentrics does not provide legal advice, and information is provided for educational purposes only. We always recommend engaging qualified legal counsel or privacy specialists regarding data privacy and protection issues and operations.