It is a constant battle for brands to remain relevant in today’s market with the need to keep up with fast-changing customer demands and new innovations. Fortunately, there are quite a few avenues for big brands to explore in order to beat the competition, including new Big Data technologies. The use of Big Data analytics can help your brand adapt and keep up with ever-evolving market trends and tailor your products to suit your customer base.
Placing data analytics at the heart of your business strategy can help you understand your customer base and their preferences. Companies using Big Data effectively can boost their popularity in the market by shaping their products and services to suit their target audience accordingly.
Read on to understand how small and big companies are using Big Data to significantly improve their market position. The accompanying case studies showing Big Data examples can also offer you a context of Big Data utilization in Canadian businesses.
Using Big Data for generating marketing insights
Businesses lose huge amounts of revenue each year due to unsuccessful marketing campaigns which fail to connect with or even reach audiences across the world. Bypassing market research during the strategy process is one of the primary reasons behind failed marketing campaigns.
Big Data methods can allow you to run a more sophisticated analysis of customer data which has a huge impact on advertisements and marketing approaches. An accurate analysis can result in more targeted and personalized campaigns instead of a one-size-fits-all policy.
Let’s look at the following case study to get a better understanding of marketing insights.
Case study 1: Mackenzie Health Foundation
The Mackenzie Health Foundation is a Canadian non-profit organization that has raised more than 142 million Candian dollars since it was established in 1977. Their revenue goes towards improving the medical equipment, technology, education and career opportunities for the Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital.
The foundation’s relatively undefined marketing strategy started suffering in 2011, leading to a sharp fall in its donor base by 35%. The organization consequently decided it wanted to re-invent its marketing strategies by gaining a more in-depth understanding of their customer base in order to attract more wealthy donors.
They used a data segmentation system backed by artificial intelligence which helped them to gain a deeper understanding of their donor demographics. The system allowed them to develop target groups and remove overlapping entries from multiple databases. The data analysis subsequently revealed that direct emails and online e-blasts were more effective than door-to-door or telemarketing campaigns as forms of communication channels.
Once the new communication channels were in place, the annual response rates from donors increased by 62%. There was also a 45% improvement in overall direct mail revenue along with lower operational costs.
Using Big Data to drive innovations in product or service development
Big Data is also used by companies to analyze the previously collected data and understand the potential of demand for their upcoming products or services. This helps them in launching new products or redesigning the existing products.
Big Data uses in businesses can help understand how a product can best meet customer expectations and desires. It can also help businesses identify the best way to capitalize on their newly found insights and enhance the product development journey.
The case study below will illustrate this point further.
Case study 2: Walmart Canada
The grocery retail giant, Walmart opened its Canada division in 1994 and has since then expanded to more than 400 stores, serving 1.2 million customers each day. As the company continued to grow to become one of the largest brands in Canada, it decided to launch a nationwide online grocery service, using AI to gain a better understanding of shoppers’ preferences.
Adopting Big Data analytical solutions allowed the company to observe customer behaviour in test markets over the period of eight months. A unique machine learning model was also developed to identify different variables, such as purchase categories or levels of loyalty. The model proved to be effective in accurately predicting the demographic profiles of the most loyal and frequent online shoppers.
The Big Data utilization led to Walmart Canada’s online grocery service becoming a financial success. The annual sales exceeded the company goals by 40% and helped the company optimize their day-to-day marketing.
Training yourself in analytical and visualization techniques in Big Data can make you a valuable asset for companies looking to enhance their business growth through data analytics.
Toronto School of Management (TSoM) offers a one-year Diploma in Data Analytics Co-op in association with AWS Educate and Tableau. The program provides you with expert knowledge in business intelligence and analytics positions which can be applied to any industry. It can also familiarize you with the latest Big Data industry trends.
Click here to get a comprehensive view of the program at TSoM.
