These days, customers are hardly opting for traditional means of content consumption like Magazines, periodicals and newspapers. Rather, with the technological advancements, they have moved on to digital screens and are consuming content via digital channels like mobile apps, and website blogs. Now, in order to reach these consumers, businesses need to be present where these consumers are i.e. on digital platforms. Thus, businesses have transformed themselves and most of them have an online presence. Even their advertising and marketing strategies have gone digital and brands are constantly moving the ad budgets to digital. The steady rise in the global digital ad spends is a testimony to the same. As per a report by eMarketer, global digital ad spending will rise by 17.1% to reach $327.28 billion in 2019.
After the deciding to go digital, the next big question that arises is how to leverage this channel to get optimized returns and channelize the digital advertising budgets to get the most out of ad spends. Data is the key here. Data about the customers helps in understanding their requirements and pain points better. Thus, brands can provide a better offering that meet the exact needs. Customer data also plays a pivotal role in guiding them to transform their digital marketing strategies. The good news is, most companies have access to this customer data real-time. All they need to do is start leveraging it the right way, by deriving key customer insights.
Machine Learning is the perfect solution to this. It mines through tons of data and uncovers keen patterns and insights about the customers’ behaviours. It helps brands to reach the right customers at the right moment and on the right platforms. It helps them to utilize their ad budgets in an optimum manner and get more from their ad spends. This technology is provided by many advertising platforms. Brands can partner with platforms fueled by Machine Learning and experience the benefits first-hand.
Use the “real-time” data to make “real-life” decisions:
Today, with all the tracking software, webpage analytic tools, and real-time campaign reports available easily, brands can easily get data on their customers’ online behaviour. They can know things like exactly who the visitors are, how long are they staying, which products/services do they find the most interesting, what elements are they engaging with, why are they leaving and so on. Currently, this data is being used to design the landing pages and take future campaign decisions. However, there’s more to it. This data can be used to make bigger decisions about the overall marketing and business strategies, to build smarter solutions and more relevant offerings. It can also be used to build a more holistic customer-profile and offer communication accordingly to pull them further down the sales funnel.
Better predictions and optimization:
Machine Learning enables marketers to speed up their A/B tests and to allocate ad budgets in real-time only for those campaigns to which customers actually respond in a positive way. The machine learning algorithms are fed huge volumes of past campaign data. This helps in simplifying predictions and forecasts campaign results and plan the campaign accordingly. In addition to factoring in data from various historical campaigns, the machine learning algorithm also uses new sources to create smarter, better, and more robust insights.
Helps to create better content with help of data:
One cannot stress enough the importance of content for marketing. However, brands need to ensure that the content resonates with the readers and viewers. Merely hiring the best cop-writers and bloggers won’t help until the content finds relevance with the audience. It still works if the content connects with a particular part of the audience at one time, and not the entire spectrum of the brand’s audience segment. The data crunching capabilities of machine learning help brands to understand what content will connect well with their audience. In addition, it also provides insights on which channels and platforms to use for delivering this content to the desired audience and what is the best and the most convenient time for them to consume the content.
As Sir Francis Bacon rightly said, “Knowledge is power”. Data is brands’ gateway to gaining this knowledge about their customers. And, machine learning is a tool that will empower brands to leverage this knowledge and drive better results.
