The World of Big Data and Digital Marketing in 2014
2014 is being hailed as the dawn of a new era for the digital marketing world, and rightly so. Businesses who are failing to measure their digital presence and use technology to drive insights have already been left behind.
This year we’ll see digital marketing analytics become even more influential. Research company Gartner have predicted that there will be 4.4 million big data jobs available in the next two years as more businesses seek to improve their understanding of customer data to drive sales. Big data is on the rise and shows no signs of stopping.
The UK has already seen significant contributions from the digital sector in rectifying the country’s economic state. Recent reports reveal that the size of the overall UK economy will this summer overtake the peak level it was at before the 2008 financial crisis. The era of big data will add to the impact that the digital industry has already contributed providing new jobs and commercial value to our economy.
The Generation Game
Insights are becoming more targeted and revealing of user’s activities, patterns and behaviours. Our consumer society is moving towards data whether that’s campaign data, mobile data, performance data or product data, and as Forbes’ Jason DeMers commented, we are even obsessing over ‘data about how we track our data’.
Mobile data is going to be the major influencer in determining how we reach audiences. Accessibility to mobile devices is becoming easier with smartphones and tablets decreasing in price; a mobile generation is emerging. Children are learning how to navigate their parent’s iPads before then know how to read and write.
With new technologies and opportunities for marketing managers around the world to gain consumer insights, a new wave of personalised marketing is set to emerge. This new mobile generation will grow up into a world where targeted marketing is a part of everyday life.
Whether you like it or not, big data is going to drive intelligent marketing messages at you more and more regularly throughout your life.
Data
Whether this is your online behaviour or physical behaviour in store, data is becoming smarter and incredibly valuable to businesses around the world.
What we will see moving towards the end of 2014 and into 2015, is the possibility of online and in store data being tied together so that marketers can marry their messages and content from activity on your screen, to your physical behaviour on the high street.
It will be staggering how quickly data will influence our lives as consumers, considering we are only in the infancy of the big data world. The technology that will be created over the next twenty to thirty years will completely reshape how we purchase products, be it online or in store.
Mobile Data
Technology Review reported on the work of Cornell University’s Physics and Society faculty, that data they captured from mobile phone usage across cities could determine behavioural attributes.
While this data is based on the way people make mobile phone calls, the possibility to create similar data of mobile browsing and behavioural patterns around internet use will have significant marketing weight.
Their work pointed towards the possibility of a new, quantitative classification of cities using high resolution spatio-temporal data.
Image Source: Technology Review
When we then start to think about behavioural mobile data for internet usage and accelerometer insights data, analysts will begin to have an incredible insight to users.
Accelerometer Insights
The accelerometer is a device that is able to measure the force of acceleration. This could be whether it is caused by gravity or by movement. This means that an accelerometer can actually measure the speed of movement of an object it is attached to.
The best example of this is the accelerometer in the Nike+ iPod function used in their running shoes.
New data revealing how users use a mobile website, app or service on their mobile device will feedback to marketers in how they can improve their app or mobile website.
Once the data reveals the amount of movement revealing if the user is on the move and how much so, the design such as button sizes, text, and navigation menus, can be altered and optimised to produce a better UX and this can be tied in with commercial value and marketing.
Bill Hammock of the University of Illinois reveals how a smartphone knows up from down and the technology behind it:
This new data wave for mobile devices is a very exciting proposition for marketers around the world.
iBeacon
In terms of mobile targeting, iBeacon is set to open up a whole new way of reaching audiences.
In short, iBeacon enables retailers to place small beacons around their stores, which trigger an alert or push notification to a user’s smartphone or tablet informing them of a product that they are close to.
The lengths this could extend to are endless, as iBeacon could eventually tie in with social media and web browsers to target users with personalised messages in relation to their browsing history or interests. The simple concept executed through clever technology will be rolled out across retail stores for its commercial values, however other markets and less commerce focused uses are expected to use iBeacon to engage audiences in new ways.
Cultural organisations such as galleries, museums and even tourist guides for cities and towns are set to use iBeacon to enhance visitor experiences and increase engagement with their digital worlds.
There are also commercial opportunities in this context, however, the value of iBeacon extends beyond commerce to empowering knowledge and improving experiences.
Antwerp Museum is using iBeacon technology to bring objects to life and reveal new stories and histories about exhibitions and collections.
Whatever the use of iBeacon, there are huge commercial opportunities of this new big data insight.
Even in the cultural context of the museum, the data surrounding how long a users spends at a certain object, in a particular gallery or room all tell a story about their individual interests. This can then be used to push ads or suggested museum shop items to the user before they leave the gallery.
This data can then be married with iBeacon in the museum shop allowing users to browse further information about the object or exhibition that they had just viewed to find out more information about it to encourage them to the point of purchase.
Opportunity
The opportunities for businesses to gather smarter data to create intelligent insights and marketing messages around their existing and potential customers is huge. 2014 is just the starting point where emerging technologies are becoming available to use.
Expect to see more products and more tools available for marketers over the next few years as we become able to dig deeper into consumer insights.
We’ll be announcing some news around our own analytics product soon so keen an eye out on our blog.
Which pieces of technology are you looking forward to using over the next twelve months? Give us a shout on Facebook or Twitter.