What's next? Big Data and Chatbots are the hottest trends in Digital Marketing

Companies are racing against each other to take control of consumer insights in the game called Big Data. This article will tell you why you need to know about this "tech" thing in order to stay in business!

Many people say we are lucky to live in this era of technological advances that improve our life quality and make everything easier. This statement has an element of truth because we can find technological applications in almost every field, from production lines to the corporate world. More and more businesses are catching up with the high-tech trend and apply technology to their marketing and communication strategies. This article explores the technological applications of personalization in digital marketing through the use of big data and chatbots and discusses implications for marketers to look forward and improve their communication efforts.

Big Data and Chatbots are among the hottest trends in Digital Marketing in 2019

Big data is one of the most prominent trends among technological applications in marketing and advertising because it helps companies understand their consumers and refine their targeting strategies. The term “big data” refers to the collection of customer data and the ways in which marketers use it to their advantage in a wide range of areas (Marr, 2018). This data includes everything from voluntarily contributed data, like email addresses, to digital trails that we hardly notice, such as browser history and GPS locations. Big data sounds like an unrelated term to the field of communication; however, companies utilize this technology to improve their businesses and marketing strategies in various ways. Nowadays, communicators emphasize a personal and consumer-centered approach to create and maintain long-term relationships with consumers. According to a Forrester study, 44% of business-to-consumer marketers use big data and analytics, and 36% actively use this tool to gain insights into their customer base (Columbus, 2016). By using big data, companies can learn about consumers’ purchase behaviors and predict patterns to personalize their marketing messages. For example, by using customers’ digital trails on its website, a company can see which devices its customers use to visit the website and can tailor website layouts or advertisements according to the most popular platforms. Based on customer data, such as age, gender, location, and interest, advertising servers can filter advertisements to best fit specific customer needs. Big data also plays an essential role in target segmentation and digital marketing. 58% of chief marketing officers say that big data has the largest impact on their marketing strategies in search engine optimization, email, and SMS marketing. Approximately 49% of marketers acknowledge the technology’s importance in customer segmentation (Columbus, 2016). Therefore, big data mining has become a race to acquire customer information in the business world, especially between the leaders, including Google with a 437 billion-dollar market share, Amazon with 224 billion, and Facebook with 262 billion (Wilson, 2018).

So, what does big data mean to communicators and marketers? Is big data a death sentence for traditional target segmentation and market research methods in advertising? Although big data provides reports about customers’ demographics, content preferences, past purchases and other factual information, it does not give marketers a comprehensive view of customers’ motivations, future intentions, or competitive perceptions (Slessareva, 2016). Big data does not provide the critical thinking process of account planners in market research who search for the “why” factor behind customers’ decisions. However, market researchers do not base their recommendations on a comprehensive assessment of all customers’ data but on account planners’ opinions from a very limited sample of customers (Wilson, 2018). Therefore, advertisers and marketers should combine big data and traditional market research. By synthesizing these two approaches, advertisers can humanize their data, produce meaningful insights and more comprehensive target segmentation results, and ultimately, more personalized marketing messages to their audiences.

Another huge trend in digital marketing in recent years is the use of chatbots to interact with consumers in an interpersonal manner. Chatbots are the product of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and natural language processing (NLP) software which enable them to identify consumers’ language usage and behaviors to produce relevant interactions (Newlands, 2017). This application of A.I. technology has existed since 1966 when robot Eliza first conversed with a human. Since the early 2010s, we have witnessed the rise of A.I. personal assistants, such as Alexa and Siri (Alford, 2018). After the revolutionary launch of Siri, chatbots entered the A.I competition, but are simpler versions of these virtual assistants because they rely on keywords for responses. These chatbots offer customer support and never need sleep, keep customers wait, or get upset (Alford, 2018). Chatbots can provide 24/24 customer service that gives any customer who requests assistance a quick response. By setting up chatbots, small businesses with limited human resources not only offer their audience a personalized experience (individual responses according to requests) but also accommodate a larger customer base. Chatbots exist predominantly on social media messaging platforms, and companies can integrate them across multiple messaging applications, which make chatbots able to reach and help more customers (Newlands, 2017b). Big players in customer services, such as Domino’s Pizza, Starbucks, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, use chatbots to process customers’ orders and to maintain customers’ engagement through various ways, such as sending relevant notifications and answering customers’ questions (Faggella, 2018).

Advertisers and marketers can utilize chatbots to learn more about their customers, efficiently serve a wider range of audiences, and create personalized interactive brand experiences. Although chatbots seem technologically complex, advertisers and marketers can create free chatbots on messaging apps without having to code on chatbot platforms, such as ChattyPeople, Meokay, Facebook Messenger Platform, and Telegram Bots (Rampton, 2017). However, marketers should go beyond setting up chatbots as automatic answering machines. As communicators, our job is to improve chatbots’ performances by reviewing and updating the keyword scripts according to customer feedback to help customers have better experiences when they interact with chatbots. Despite technological advances, machines can still make mistakes, and therefore, advertisers need to be aware of this fact to correct the mistakes and improve customers’ experiences (Newlands, 2017a). Advertisers also need to be creative in using chatbots to create or reinforce their brands. They can integrate certain personalities or storylines to their chatbots so that customers feel more engaged in their interactions. For example, in 2017, National Geographic created a “Einstein” Facebook Messenger chatbot to promote their show “Genius” which followed the professional and personal life of Albert Einstein. Messenger users could “chat” with “Einstein” about all kinds of subjects, from physics to his private life, which generated great buzz and excitement for National Geographic (Alford, 2018). Therefore, marketers and advertisers have many opportunities to utilize chatbots to create interpersonal communications with their audiences and interactive advertising campaigns which embody their brands’ values and personalities.

During the last two summers, I had internships with an affiliate and digital marketing company in Vietnam. Vietnam is a rising economy in Southeast Asia, which means that the market has a growing demand for better and more diverse goods and services. Therefore, advertising and marketing companies need to come up with solutions that are most efficient and affordable to be competitive in an almost saturated advertising market. Hence, I got to witness how a small department of ten people utilized big data, chatbots, and other technological advances in every part of its services to clients and personalized advertising messages to thousands of customers. Based on what I have learned during my internship, I conclude that the trend of using high-tech applications in marketing and advertising will continue. This new technology, however, relates strongly to the perennial desire of marketers to create personal advertisements. Communicators must be aware of the trends, educate themselves, and constantly look out for possible disruptions to inform and accommodate customers. Technological applications help marketers achieve higher results and metrics in performance marketing, but they also can create certain levels of risk. For example, the rise of big data always increases the risk of data breach, and hackers can meddle with chatbots to damage a brand’s image. During my internships, I also witnessed how easy it was for big data companies to scan social media for information that users neglect to set as private. Because of such cases, communicators need to keep a human eye on these technologies and combine their existing experiences and knowledge to improve their companies’ performance and to prepare solutions when problems arise.

In conclusion, digital marketing is becoming more personal than ever with the help of technological advances, such as big data and chatbots. Companies that quickly catch up with this trend are likely to improve their efficiency and their impact on customers. Therefore, advertisers and marketers need to update their skill sets frequently and anticipate possible problems related to the new trends to accommodate the needs of their peers and customers.

Works Cited

Alford, Emily. (2018, June 5). 5 Brands that prove chatbot-powered marketing is the future. ClickZ. Retrieved from https://www.clickz.com/5-brands-that-prove-chatbot-powered-marketing-is-the-future/214900/.

Columbus, Louis. (2016, May 9). Ten Ways Big Data Is Revolutionizing Marketing and Sales. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/05/09/ten-ways-big-data-is-revolutionizing-marketing-and-sales/#4760604b21cf.

Faggella, Daniel. (2018, January 22). How companies are using chatbots for marketing: Use cases and inspiration. MarTech Today. Retrieved from https://martechtoday.com/how-companies-are-chatbots-marketing-209475?utm_src=ml&utm_medium=textlink&utm_campaign=mlxpost.

Marr, Bernard. (2018). What is Big Data? A Super Simple Explanation for Everyone. Bernard Marr & Co. Retrieved from https://www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=766.

Newlands, Murray. (2017a, February 28). 10 Facebook messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289785.

Newlands, Murray. (2017b, September 4). 10 Ways to Use Chatbots for marketing and Sales. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299611.

Rampton, John. (2017, February 28). Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289788.

Slessareva, Leeza. (2016, September 21). Are market research and big data the perfect pair? GFK Insights Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.gfk.com/2016/09/market-research-big-data-perfect-pair/.

Wilson, David, W. (2018). The New Insights Imperative: market Research + Big Data + Predictive Analytics. Data Decisions Group. Retrieved from https://www.datadecisionsgroup.com/blog/bid/153711/big-data-and-market-research-what-is-it-and-how-can-i-get-started.