The use of big data analytics in the world of consumer marketing at communications service providers is about to have one of the biggest impacts on the marketing industry since it began. Does this mean that marketers are about to be replaced by a virtual, big-data-driven marketing machine?

In 1764, the ‘spinning jenny’ was invented in Stanhill, England, transforming the cotton industry and kicking off the Industrial Revolution. The world would never be the same.

Today we stand on the cusp of another revolution, as big data analytics is widely acknowledged as an innovation that will profoundly impact the global economy.

Communications service providers who adopt big data are poised to reap major benefits. They can leverage it to raise the customer experience to new levels, increase their operational efficiency, and transform how they market their products like never before. On the other hand, service providers who ignore big data stand to lose their market edge, particularly as regulation, consolidation and competition continue to erode margins.

Changing marketing forever

Many marketing departments at service providers are already using new technologies to help achieve their objectives. They have adopted SMS, MMS, the web, the mobile web, social media and the smartphone app revolution, to name just a few, and use them as complementary marketing channels for their products and services.

Like the seismic effect the spinning jenny had on the cotton weavers of the 18th Century, the use of big data analytics promises to profoundly change consumer marketing. Marketing is moving from a creative art to a precision science, and everything, including marketers themselves, needs to change.

So how – and why – is big data changing the skills required marketing today?

Know thy customer

To start with, big data gives marketers more real-time data than ever before, enabling them to understand their customer at a much more granular and intimate level. This lets them treat customers as individuals rather than members of a segment and, importantly, makes it possible for service providers to target individual customers with new offers.

Traditional marketing campaigns are based on slickly-produced ads and content pushed out across multiple channels including TV, web, retail, and out-of-doors advertising. The notion was simple: coverage and more coverage equals more success. With big data, service providers can move from this “casting a wide net” approach to one of “laser guided” marketing.

By using big data, service providers can give every customer individualised, personalised treatment, automatically targeting the right person with the most appropriate offer at the right time. The result? An enhanced customer experience and an increase in sales revenues. Marketing becomes high definition, and campaigns automated and ultra-targeted.

Clear metrics

Big data also makes marketing campaigns easier to measure than ever before. Most CMOs are charged with championing the company’s brand and driving interest in products and services, typically through large, expensive and creative campaigns. How effective these campaigns are is often open to debate. Spending £13 million ($20m) on a TV campaign featuring a Hollywood actor dancing the conga while talking about the latest price plans is all very nice, but ultimately, how much revenue did it generate?

In contrast, offer uptake analytics can measure precisely to the pound how effective any marketing expenditure has been. There’s nowhere to hide… once you can track it, return on investment becomes your ultimate KPI (key performance indicator).

So what does all this mean for marketers?

As marketing embraces new concepts like big data and moves from an art to a science, there needs to be a change in skill sets, processes, cultures and accountability. The alliance of traditional marketing artists and the new data-driven marketing scientists is what will take marketing departments to the next level.

Today, we are in a ‘New World of Customer Experience’; an era marked by the need to overcome internal system complexity to accelerate business value and deliver a differentiated customer experience. Marketers need to embrace this change and be the revolutionaries driving this change.

 

By Matt Roberts, Director of Product Marketing at Amdocs Big Data and Strategic Innovations. 

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