What’s the one thing that all digital marketers must know? The fact that data is king on today’s marketing landscape. Having comprehensive and accurate data is essential for making effective marketing decisions. It can help executives identify industry trends and discover potential customers, making big data analysis important for optimizing your marketing strategies.

Enterprise leaders want to monetize their digital assets, promote an information-driven culture and leverage the full potential of their big data systems. However, most marketers fail to achieve these objectives because they deploy their data scientists poorly. In addition, they don’t devote enough attention to their data-driven initiatives and cast their data science specialists in ineffective, mismatched roles.

Other executives view the innovative resource from the wrong perspective; they mistakenly believe big data projects are solely a technical, administrative organizational feature — rather than a mission-critical operational undertaking. Still, others, fail to recognize that veteran executives may be resistant to change and neglect to position their unwitting data science team for a successful big data project launch.

The Numbers Reveal the Strength of Big Data

According to management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, core offerings generate 75-percent of most enterprises’ revenues — of which marketing executives undervalue and underprice at a rate of 30-percent. To understand how this impacts overall revenues, realize that a 1-percent across-the-board price hike would generate 8.7-percent in increased gross profits with no impact on sales volume.

44-percent of enterprises use data analytics and mining to boost consumer response rates and generate insights that guide executives in developing relationship-driven strategies, according to marketing consulting firm Forrester Research. Furthermore, according to a report released by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 58-percent of chief marketing officers (CMOs) believe that search engine optimization (SEO), as well as email and mobile communications, are the areas where big data systems are having the largest impact on their organizations.

Here are six ways that big data can help enterprise leaders avoid these mistakes and position themselves to refine and improve their marketing efforts.

Use the Right Keywords With the Help of Big Data

If you don’t understand your customers’ behaviour, then how can you effectively market your products? The use of big data can help identify how visitors are finding your website and what keywords they used to get there. Understanding this information will allow you to explore related keywords and focus on the ones that drive the most traffic.

Big data can also help you optimize your website so that when potential customers arrive, they see the products that interest them most. With this in-depth understanding, you can select which products to show different segments of your consumer base and effectively optimize sales.

How Successful Was Your Last Campaign?

Big data can help you identify the success of your last marketing campaign. The online marketing landscape has changed relatively recently, and the number of businesses participating in this change has never been greater.

Each year over 5.3 trillion display ads are served to internet users. In order to stand out, your advertising initiatives need to pop. Using big data will help you to streamline your campaigns and target customers who are most likely to respond so that you can make the most out of your marketing budget.

Use Data to Load Your Content with Statistics

Content can serve as an initial touch point that funnels consumers toward a desired action. When creating content, you need to know what your customers might look for and what they might find interesting.

Using data, you can discover key insights into customer behaviour that helps you to create quality content and increase audience engagement. For instance, if your audience consists of a younger demographic, you want to use language that appeals to that generation.

Use Data Analysis to Choose Marketing Channels

Americans look at their phones an average of 47 times a day. Potential customers shop differently when they are on a mobile device rather than a desktop. Analyzing mobile user data will help refine your customer acquisition process and increase your mobile shopper conversions.

Technology and big data have changed the process of finding new customers. Business leaders who understand how to use data analysis will be able to stay on top of technological trends such as mobile marketing.

Uncover New or Potential Target Audiences

In order to grow your enterprise, you need to do more than keep your existing customers happy — you need to find new business. Big data can help you find new audiences and determine which groups are more likely to buy.

When evaluating new potential audiences, it’s important to know their intent. Understanding this will help you to develop relevant content. For example, are they using your app to relax or are they actively looking to buy a product or service? Using big data can help you to customize your content accordingly.

Real-time data is extremely valuable and can provide you with insights that further your understanding of the intent and mindset of your audience. Using tools like Quantcast can help business owners find relevant target audiences and grow that asset to create a larger customer base.

Better Analytics Lead to Optimal Design

With big data providing key insights into user preferences, business owners are now able to create optimal designs at a lower cost. This improves their ability to influence consumers.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, as well as access to volumes of data about consumer preferences now, allow you to discover how to optimize branded items, such as customized logos with colours and font styles that boost consumer engagement. With data analytics optimization you can lower design costs and increase revenues.

By utilizing these six methods, you can be sure to refine your marketing efforts and optimize your current campaigns. But don’t think that the job is done there. Once optimized, be sure to continue analyzing the data and making continual tweaks.