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Big data has been the subject of plenty of interest by many brands in recent times due to the benefits it provides. Big data enables businesses to garner information about their customers and performance in the market plus a host of other insights. Many brands, however, are utilizing big data for a more important reason i.e., driving their content marketing campaigns. So how does utilizing big data lead to more effective content marketing campaigns?

Brands can Understand their Target Audience Better

It is impossible to come up with a special tone or language in your content that would be perfect for your target market. One can aim for quality but a perfect formulation would be too ambitious. What businesses can do, however, is seek information which gives them a better understanding of their audience. Big data provides insights that will aid this understanding.

Big data provides information on the habits of customers which gives clues over what their needs and preferences are. A surge of social media posts complaining about a particular product or service could be quickly identified and immediate steps taken.

Brands can Create Far More Engaging Content

Modern day consumers have different standards from the ones of yesteryears with regard to how they prefer their content. Appealing content in the present day is more informative, elegantly written and accompanied by both accurate statistics and attractive visualizations. This manner of content creation has been described as data journalism.

Data journalism requires data in the form of statistics, images and information to be accurate, relevant and readily available in large volumes. Said information should also be consistently available in the long term. Big data meets all requirements and can, therefore, fuel a content marketing campaign for as long as is necessary.

Brands can Enhance Brand Loyalty

A key goal of all content marketing strategies is to turn habitual shoppers/customers into loyal consumers. One can, through big data, monitor how consumers respond to various calls-to-action. Such a move will enable a business to zero in on the group of consumers that is sitting on the fence.

It will now fall on the business to identify which aspects of its content marketing strategy aren’t having the desired effect. The aspects that work get to be retained while the others are discarded in favor of better options. The benefit for businesses is that they get to refine their content marketing strategy over time while gaining more loyal customers in the process.

Brands can Retain their Loyal Customers

Big data also enables businesses to create content marketing strategies that aid in strengthening their relationship with loyal customers. Businesses can gather all manner of important information regarding their loyal subscribers using big data. Such information will include;

• The length of time spent by subscribers on their website
• How satisfied customers are of the products/services provided by the business
• The click-rate of subscribers while browsing the site.
• The number of subscribers gained and lost in a given time period.

The information gathered can be analysed and mined for insights that will explain why some clients are being lost or gained. Steps can then be taken to remedy the practices that are contributing to the loss and mitigate the problem. Practices that are increasing subscribers will be applied more.

The Avis Budget Success Story

A remarkable example of a business that has been able to successfully retain its customers with the use of big data is Avis Budget, a car sharing network. Big data enabled Avis to ascertain the lifetime value of its customers by gathering information from both public records and those of its own. They were thus able to identify who their loyal customers were and reward them with discounts. The end result was a boost in loyalty by customers who felt appreciated.

Brands & businesses both big and small can enjoy the benefits provided by big data with regard to their content marketing. More so if their competitors are still in the dark regarding its existence, let alone its benefits.

Author: RP Singh
• 18 years in Digital Marketing across APAC & Middle East. Core expertise areas include Digital Strategy, Content Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Search Marketing, Digital Analytics, Digital Business Planning, E-Commerce, Communications Planning, Channel Strategy etc
• Chief Curator for CMS Asia, a premier ‘not-for-profit’ Content Marketing conference across Asia Pacific
• Mentored “The Curious Digital Marketer” book by afaqs! Visiting faculty at B schools