Big Data, Analytics, and the necessity of a global marketing strategy

Today, the aver­age con­sumer goes through a min­i­mum of five touch points with a busi­ness before con­vert­ing. And this is just the begin­ning of the trend, as the num­ber of inter­act­ing plat­forms between com­pa­nies and clients keeps on increasing. These touch points can be very dif­fer­ent, from a Google search to a vis­it to a company’s store, the down­load of a brand­ed app for their mobile phone, or a phone call to get more infor­ma­tion about a product.

In order to be able to devel­op bet­ter mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, improve cur­rent per­for­mances and sales, and plan the future of a com­pa­ny, it is then absolute­ly essen­tial to obtain a glob­al vision of these touch points, both online and offline. This can be done through mul­ti­chan­nel ana­lyt­ics.

Over­com­ing the tra­di­tion­al divi­sion between online and offline

How­ev­er, at the moment, many com­pa­nies see data as a dig­i­tal tool, while using ana­lyt­ics almost only as a site-cen­tric tool, most­ly for data like page views, bounce rate or vis­it dura­tion. The prob­lem is that, in com­pa­nies which have exist­ed for decades, there is quite often a clear divi­sion between dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and his­tor­i­cal mar­ket­ing activities.

Many com­pa­nies will have a dis­tinc­tion between online activ­i­ties and offline activ­i­ties, where each depart­ment will be total­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the oth­er one, and peo­ple won’t be able to dis­cuss any glob­al strat­e­gy. For instance, it is still quite com­mon for the Dig­i­tal Direc­tor of a com­pa­ny not to be part of the Mar­ket­ing team! This is real­ly absurd, as in the end, the web sim­ply rep­re­sent new com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels, where mar­ket­ing prac­tices of yes­ter­day are still relevant.

The rise of pre­dic­tive analytics

Cre­at­ing too many silos is a mas­sive issue, as it pre­vents the com­pa­ny from build­ing a glob­al vision, and also cre­ates many missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. Using the data col­lect­ed from the web­site and the online chan­nels can, for instance, be extreme­ly use­ful to deter­mine pat­terns and pre­dict future out­comes and trends, in what is called pre­dic­tive analytics.

Let’s look at the case study of one of the biggest French retail­er. When the PlaySta­tion 4 was launched, in Decem­ber 2013, they took advan­tage of the data col­lect­ed through their Ana­lyt­ics tool to pre­dict the demand for the home video game con­sole across all French ter­ri­to­ry, both online and offline. They were able to do so by analysing every search made on their web­site and using the geo­graph­ic local­i­sa­tion of cus­tomers to detect which areas had the most inter­est. And it worked, as they were the only French retail­er who didn’t end up out of stock for the PlaySta­tion 4! This is then a great exam­ple of how a glob­al vision, over­tak­ing the clas­sic silo divi­sion, can pro­duce great results, and improve the over­all per­for­mance of a company.

A glob­al mar­ket­ing vision is a necessity

Today, the gap between offline and online mar­ket­ing keeps on get­ting reduced, as we watch TV shows online, and print­ed ads often have inter­ac­tive fea­tures like QR codes that can be acti­vat­ed with a smart­phone. More than ever, it is then essen­tial for a brand to have a glob­al strat­e­gy, using all chan­nels avail­able in order to estab­lish a seam­less brand pres­ence that engages the largest num­ber of peo­ple. Nowa­days, inte­grat­ing online and offline togeth­er is the best way to stay ahead of com­pe­ti­tion and build an even more con­vinc­ing brand presence.

What about you, does your com­pa­ny has a glob­al mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy which inte­grates both online and offline mar­ket­ing? Do not hes­i­tate to let us know what you think!