3 Ways Big Data Can Help In Local Marketing

In this digital era, businesses are changing their mindset by becoming more metric-focused to succeed in their business plans. Large volumes of data are being generated every minute and each data holds vital information about the business, the product, consumer behavior and so on. Companies have started to take advantage of data science to make better-informed decisions and rework on their marketing strategies. Data science helps organizations get better insights into the generated data that can be used by the marketing team to deliver better marketing strategies. Companies get a clear picture of the customer needs and helps them deliver content that will improve the reach among the audience and the influence of the marketing campaigns.

Among the different business areas, big data plays a huge role in the marketing and sales department. The digital age has thrust a change in the perspective of the marketing department and forced them to take advantage of data science to help them build their marketing strategy. The marketing team no longer sit and work on creating catchy advertisements and jingles for television and print media. Marketing campaigns are executed with the help of big data and these prove more beneficial for organizations than plain random advertising methods. Statista reports that the global big data market is forecasted to grow to 103 billion U.S. dollars by 2027.

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Big Data and Local Marketing

Big data also transforms local marketing. Local marketing helps companies to target customers within the immediate vicinity of their business area. In this digital era where customers have access to the internet and smartphones, it’s important that every business is visible and can be found out easily. Through local marketing, businesses can target promotional messages and special offers for the local masses rather than the whole city. Local marketing is best suited for small businesses such as restaurants and retail stores with outlets in specific areas in the city. Let’s take a look at the 3 different ways big data can help businesses with local marketing –

1.  Better and refined user experience

Local businesses that offer location services use the local data to locate them on a map. The local data refers to the city, or zip code of the business. There is another type of local data known as “hyper-local data” which is a subset of local data at a more granular level. For example, street name, block name are the hyper-local data.

How cool would it be if your phone beeps with a special offer message as you cross a supermarket on your street? That’s the power of marketing using hyper-local data. Hyper-local data provide businesses the advantage to market their business in a more dynamically and in a strategic way.

Say, a new restaurant has opened up in Brockwell lane. With the help of hyper-local data, the restaurant can easily target customers in Brockwell lane as well as nearby lanes with attractive offers. This helps businesses target customers making use of the “Near Me” Google Maps feature on their mobile. In 2018, Uberall released a statistical data from the Near Me Shopping Report which showed that about 82% of the people used the “near me” searches, out of which over 90% were by Millennials. The survey even pointed out that users were most likely to click on the first set of “near me” results.

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2.  Improved reviews on Google

Being the most popular search engine and the preferred choice of most internet users, Google Reviews play a vital role in the success of most businesses. Displaying the Google Reviews and ratings next to your business adds significant value and boosts the credibility of your business. This brings more traffic to your business website as well as drives customers to your business location.

In the survey conducted by Uberall on “How valuable are Online Customer Reviews to Shoppers”, more than 51 percent of the online consumers look at Google Reviews before making a decision. Almost 45 percent of the consumers leave a review after their shopping or dining experience. What’s more interesting is that people in the age group between 18 and 34 claims they take Google Reviews very seriously.

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Google Reviews also significantly help in ranking the websites during a Google search. The algorithms scan every single review and ensures the quality of the review based on specific keywords that will impact a user decision. For example, a restaurant has a rating of 4.6 with 45 reviews. The algorithm checks for reviews that contain the positive sentiment words such as “Excellent, best hotel, service, clean, etc.,” and automatically position the restaurant details in the search results.

Things keep changing every now and then. As Google continues to improve the processes at their end, there will be a lot of changes that can be expected with Google Reviews and ratings. Therefore, local businesses have to be ready to change and adjust their business strategies to stay on top.

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3.  Understand trends and consumer patterns

Businesses need to be on top of the current trend to stay afloat amidst the competition. Keeping a track of search volumes provide an indicator for the growing trend – be it for any product or a brand. The more the number of times users start searching for something on Google, it’s important for the business to make them seen in the market delivering the customers' needs. The company can start targeting awareness-based ads to build curiosity and take customers to the next phase of buying the product.

With all the rich consumer data that is available, businesses must try to correlate their consumers’ demographic and behavioral trends and filter out the customers based on the value they add to the business. In an effort to boost sales (and a marketing strategy), the business can offer their premier customers additional discounts to encourage them to continue their loyalty.

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Examples of businesses using Big Data in Local Marketing

Here are some real-world examples of businesses who have taken big data very seriously and driven their success by creating a favorable business model with improved revenues.

1.  Starbucks, the American coffeehouse chain, with their presence in over 28,000+ retail locations during Q12018 keeps expanding their footprint by opening new stores. In some cities, there is a Starbucks outlet within close proximity to other. While practically it is not a recommended solution to have two business locations in close proximity with each other, Starbucks sees this as an opportunity to increase their revenue and footprint in the city.

With the help of demographic data, location-based information, customer preferences, they can track the success rate of each store. For example, the store can send out a mailer or an SMS with an irresistible offer for people passing the store. This helps to increase the number of footfalls and create awareness amongst the customers. This is the driving force for Starbucks to take a bold step towards maximizing their revenue rather than worrying about the risks associated with each store.

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2.  Hungry Howies, a franchise pizza chain in the United States with over 550 locations, uses big data to perform a location-based text marketing campaign. As part of the campaign, they target a location based on the weather and power outages with attractive offers.

For instance, in case of a snowstorm when the weather is cold and there is a power outage, a text-based marketing campaign message is sent to all subscribers with attractive offers for their pizzas and other meal options. It’s obvious that people either prepare for the worst and pick up orders in advance or they call up the store requesting a home delivery. Hungry Howie’s sees a 20% response rate for this location-based campaign from the information they had previously collected from their customers. Additional data also revealed that during bad weather, the tips for home deliveries were on the rise. During one of the snowstorms in 2015, the percentage of tips increased by almost 9%.

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Wrapping Up

We live in a world where there is so much data at disposal. Large and small businesses rely on big data to improve their marketing, make better-informed decisions and build a strong customer base. This shows the power of the data and the results that can be achieved when used correctly. At the end of the day, it’s evident that companies can benefit greatly through data collection and analysis.

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