Marketers and media houses test new solutions every year, applying Hybrid Strategy according to the learning by doing principle, combining various activities in the 70+20+10 model. In short, they spend 70% of budgets on traditional activities with proven effectiveness, 20% they allocate to growth activities, and 10% to the most innovative technologies in order to develop, learn about them and test them in terms of effectiveness and metrics such as ROI.
Most marketers are perfectly familiar with the term Big Data and Content Marketing campaigns, and 72% of their audiences and customers, according to e-Marketer reports, speak positively about this type of campaign as one of the best opportunities to learn about new products or services combined with a reasonable dose of knowledge.
One of the newest solutions in the world are platforms combining data with content marketing campaigns, which appeared last year in the USA, and this year also on the Polish market.
BigDataCMP is a platform that may soon shake up the approach to content marketing activities. Enriching them with Big Data technology means marketers gain significantly more possibilities. To find out exactly what this is about, I asked Jakub Dymitrowicz, who works as Product Owner at BigDataCMP.
P.N.: What exactly is this Big Data Content Marketing Platform?
J.D.: It is a platform for marketers, brand managers, content managers and all those who use content, articles and expert materials in their communication strategies to interest the widest possible group of valuable audiences in a given brand. Thanks to Big Data technology, the platform has a number of applications in this area. It is no longer only about strictly image-related activities. The platform helps in selecting content distribution venues - I mean blogs, horizontal and vertical (thematic) portals, and that is a significant convenience. It also allows for more effective allocation of the marketing budget, because the entire undertaking is based on hard data and machine learning, rather than an intuitive approach determined by the ordinary metric of unique users visiting a specific website within a month.
P.N.: How does it work?
From the client's perspective, the scheme of operation is simple, because much more happens inside the entire system. However, I will focus on what is visible. BigDataCMP, based on initial information from the client, proposes publisher data sites where native content created by our team in accordance with the client's guidelines is then published. For each piece of material, the platform generates a tracking code whose task is to collect data from cookies. On this basis, we generate a behavioral profile of potential audiences to whom we can then direct retargeting activities.
P.N.: You mentioned machine learning? Can you expand on that thought?
J.D.: We collect historical data as well as data from current campaigns. During automatic analysis of various metrics, the system, so to speak, learns the paths that allow better results to be achieved. It is no great feat to publish on a service with huge reach when, in fact, the level of reception of our content is negligible, not to mention clicks and obtaining valuable traffic on the brand's website. We want to choose publishers where content will actually fulfill its role. These may therefore also include those with seemingly smaller reach, but equally effective, or even more so.
P.N.: Okay, you mentioned convenience, more optimal budget allocation, but is that all when it comes to benefits? I ask because, putting myself in the role of marketers, the winners of our competition, I wonder what I could actually do with this?
J.D.: Using traditional content marketing, we are primarily focused on image-related activity; we solve specific problems faced by internet users. Various studies show that people react positively to content marketing. According to Demand Metrics, 68% of people who have become familiar with native content related to a specific brand are later more strongly interested in it. Another example - 80% of people reached by such communication appreciate the way the brand or product is presented.
Now it is worth considering how much can be measured, checked and optimized using dedicated content based on information we read from data. Data that is the fuel of the modern economy of the 21st century and of marketing activities. The more of it there is, the better. By choosing Big Data Content Marketing, marketers can verify whether the target group they assumed actually reacts to this communication. When introducing a completely new product in their offer, they can check and identify which characteristics of people will allow them to create a profile with potentially their largest group of customers.
Content can also be used to build a retargeting database. The collected anonymized - and therefore GDPR-compliant - data is used to prepare a behavioral profile of the user showing the greatest purchasing potential. On this basis, we match profiles of similar internet users, the so-called look-alike, who did not necessarily come across the published content, but may also be interested in a given product or service.
P.N.: What competencies do you think a marketing director who wants to succeed in today's reality should have? List the TOP 3.
J.D.: In my opinion, a combination of soft and hard competencies is very important. The ability to tell stories in such a way as to put the audience in the right mood, arouse in them a feeling of desire or respond to a need.
Storytelling is a powerful marketing tool because we - people - perceive our lives as a story with plot twists, joys and sorrows. Then come analytical skills, working with the data we talk about so much here. The ability to verify their quality and draw accurate conclusions, and then adapt to a dynamically changing situation.
Last but not least, I will mention knowledge of e-marketing tools such as marketing automation, monitoring content in social media, verifying the potential of keywords, conducting A/B tests, etc.
