Big data. You know it’s out there. You know it’s accumulating in mind-boggling volumes and at breakneck speeds. And you know you need to do something about it to drive your retail content marketing efforts.
If the words “big data” get your pulse racing, make you toss and turn at night, or, worse still, prompt countless internal meetings about how to deal with it all, you are not alone. Marketers, particularly retailers, are dealing with massive volumes of customer data coming at them from a multitude of channels and myriad customer touchpoints. Those touchpoints house a wealth of intelligence on customer preferences, habits, and desires that could help you strengthen your relationship with your customer. Many marketers are looking at this data for retail content marketing inspiration.
Yet retailers are not entirely sure about how to get their arms around the growing volumes of data, much less how to derive meaning from and act on it. The good news is that collecting and using customer information is nothing new. Retailers have always studied customer patterns, looked for what motivates people, and built relationships with customers by telling them engaging stories and giving them what they want. Now, they’re just attempting to map content to those behaviors as a way to respond and engage with them online.
