Why customer's data are a windfall for marketers (Benefits and Challenges).

It's a secret for nobody: Knowledge is power. The more you know about a situation, the more you will be able to answer properly to a problem and achieve your goals.

And it applies perfectly to marketing. It's the golden area for marketers, having the possibility to access habits, trends, behaviors and more about their consumers.

Different types of customer data are collected such as descriptive, quantitative, identity, qualitative.

Data visualization is also a key tool in order to understand each customer more efficiently.
Using the data available to create data points unable companies to get a bigger, clearer picture of each of them and eventually craft an always better customer journey.

______________________________________________

Benefits:

- Efficiency

- Personalization and Loyalty: by getting valuable data about each customer and understand the needs of each individual, companies are able to propose a more single and unique offer and experience to them. They improve their communication and be more relevant. Rather it's a short, or long term strategy.

- Better strategy and decision making

- Increase credibility and brand perception

- Value

- Driving customers


Challenges:

- Privacy and Ethics

- Data quality: Again here, marketers have to ensure the quality of the data in order to make their campaigns and else more effective and efficient.

- Tools that blocks access to data (Ad Blockers, Walled Gardens like Facebook or Google).

- Creativity

- Security and protection against external attacks

- Maintain trust from customers: since the Cambridge Analytica case with Facebook, people started to be aware of the fact that their data were being traded. Consequences: customers started to get even paranoid and being suspicious regarding the companies they gave information to.



The arrival and use of AI in data marketing and customer data had one major consequence: the beginning of the end for mass marketing, and the explosion of niche marketing. More suitable, more effective, and more cost-effective. But we'll treat this topic in the next article.


Sources:

Saab, C. (2016). The New Age of Customer Loyalty. [online] Leo Burnett. 
Available at: https://leoburnett.com/articles/thinking/the-new-age-of-customer-loyalty/ 

Medium. (2019). The Perfect Consumer (Data) Journey. [online] 
Available at: https://medium.com/@CaratGlobal/the-perfect-consumer-data-journey-54725a1921f9

Kim, L. (2016). You Won't Believe All the Personal Data Facebook Has Collected on You. [online] Inc.com. Available at: https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/you-wont-believe-all-the-personal-data-facebook-has-collected-on-you.html

Medium. (2019). The Case for Sharing Data: Consumers, Quality and Better Brand Decisions. [online] Available at: https://medium.com/ama-marketing-news/the-case-for-sharing-data-consumers-quality-and-better-brand-decisions-fc723ffc923e