The increasing fuss about Big Data shows that it’s not a phenomenon that’s going anywhere soon – it will be tossed around and leveraged in various ways for a very long time.
It’s a smart one that more companies are beginning to jump on it and are getting more actively involved in the usage and gathering of Big Data. However, the question that remains is, how exactly do they monetize the big data they have access to? Do they just sit on a huge pile of data?
If they’re monetizing at all, how many different ways are they tapping into the opportunities Big Data presents for adding to the company’s bottom line?
The most important thing to note when it comes to the issue of monetizing data is that the right way to monetize data is up to you and the goals and objectives of your organization.
However, here are 4 practical ways to monetize the Big Data in your company’s possession:
1. Targeted Offers
This seems obvious – or what would be the whole essence of big data? But still worthy of mention.
The essence of Big Data is to allow companies make smarter marketing decisions on ‘who to offer what’ based on actual data and avoid guesswork completely – not just for regulatory reporting purposes.
In case you’re not already using the data you’re collecting, the number one way to monetize your Big Data is to segment your audience, present or create better offers (plus upsells and cross-sells) and present them to high-probability prospects based on their demographics, interest, buying pattern, browsing behavior, and so on.
2.Retargeting
I dare to say one of the biggest data assets a company can boast of is data captured of its web visitors.
A person that visits your website already shows great interest in what you do, and is therefore more likely to convert than someone meeting you for the first time.
In fact, research has shown that buyers must have been influenced by brands at multiple ‘touch points’ before finally making a buying decision – or becoming loyal to that brand.
Retargeting is a great way to engrave your brand into the heart of your prospect, and nothing is more valuable than the various IDs captured on your own site.
3.Advanced Analytics
Sometimes Big Data is not effectively utilized simply because companies fail at analyzing them the best way – to extract all the useful data they need from within the billions available.
One feature that makes Big Data ‘big’ (and new) is that it cannot be analyzed using traditional methods. Advanced analytics are needed to extract and optimize Big Data. You should always remember volume goes with velocity (speed) in Big Data; the size is only as useful as your speed in processing and extracting useful data.
Companies should see it this way: the more advanced your analytics skills and tools are, the more money you can make off your Big Data. For instance, a search engine like Google makes over $100 million in advertising revenues daily, thanks to its advanced analytics tools. Even industry-focused catalogues like solicitors.guru have the potential to install advanced analytics tools that match volume with velocity.
4.Get Closer. With the data you have, you can now determine precisely where your customers are. There’s a huge difference between getting a customer and keeping them.
While Big Data is good for enlarging your customer base, it’s also great for retaining your customers. You get to know what exactly they want and how to present it to them, even before they ask for it.
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves” – Steve Jobs.
You should know your customers that well!
A great way of getting closer to your customers is being reachable. Even if you don’t have an office in every part of the world that constitutes your customer location demography, you can at least have virtual addresses in some key countries, and you can easily get that from mail forwarding services.
There are other ways to monetize your Big Data, like trading it to partners for shared benefits, and selling the data product. But when it comes to monetizing and maximizing the full potentials of your data sets internally, the above ways are more than sufficient.
Now you can use Big Data to transform the way you do business, improve your customer experience, meet regulatory requirements more effectively, and become more profitable or innovative.