Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – so much that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.

Every time we travel with smartphones, make card purchases online and use social media we contribute to ‘big data’ – but can it be used as an effective marketing tool? According to a recent survey carried out by German market research institute, 86% of marketers consider that big data will change the function of marketing, and a further 62% say that it has already fundamentally changed their role.

But if we consider the benefits of “Big data” to get the success in the field of digital marketing, then “Big Data” is a very impressive tool. Now with internet one can easily track and analyze things like cookies and tracking tags. This infusion of social media has contributed to the rapid growth of big data and the incoming noise that needs to be sorted through.

Yes, big data is everywhere. So why is it so important for marketers to understand? It is important because of various reasons. First Big data helps the brands to understand their customers. Customers generally leave behind a digital trail of their action, allowing various businesses to analyze what actually the customer wants. Second Big Data helps to get the real time results. For example, a company launches a digital campaign for their new product, big data will help the company to know whether their campaign was successful or not. The company can now implement the changes to the campaign to make it successful. Finally, big data is cost effective. The bulk of advertising budgets are allocated to digital marketing, and by using big data, companies can optimize their marketing campaigns and make modifications in real time. Knowing when, where and how content should be distributed increases opportunities.

Hence, big data is here to stay, and it can be the determining factor in how successful digital marketing is for any company or brand.

Before developing digital marketing strategies, the marketers should know that there is clarity and alignment on the overall brand strategy. There are five cornerstones for efficiently designing and boosting the digital marketing strategy, without which the strategy will not be successful.

Below are the 5 major steps each marketer should consider before designing digital marketing strategy:

1. Customer Centric: First focus should be on customers. Since people in today’s world are more engaged in the technology, so the companies should focus on reducing the layers between the end customers and the brands (B2B or B2C). So it is vital to know what customer wants, where are they and what they like and even more which all websites customer visits.
2. Content Strategy:  After finding the target audience and after setting up the objective, next step that marketers need to work on is the content of the campaigns they develop. They should focus on why after seeing the ads online the customer will buy the product and why customers will recommend their products to others. The brand should have a mission that touches on the emotions of the customers. Having a clear purpose beyond improving sales makes the whole marketing effort decidedly more meaningful.
3. Focus on Loyalty: Marketers should focus on to show in their marketing campaigns that what is there in the brand that will make the customers to come back for more. Digital Campaigns should focus on to make customers trust the brands and to make the customers loyal to the brand i.e. the customer must feel that the brand is trustworthy.
4. Measurement & Metrics: The companies should make the proper use of “Big Data”. There should be advertisements on the website customer visit. Tracking and analyzing that data to come up with a clear picture on the efficiency and effectiveness of different programs is entirely feasible with the right tools.
5. Distribution and integrating into the overall media mix: There is no way to have a successful content marketing strategy without a distribution strategy.  Following are various ways in which marketers can develop a distribution strategy:

• The Employee Base
• Social Media and Bloggers
• Search Engine Marketing
• Partners and Allies
• PR
• Events
• Mass Media

With the advancement on technology and people are spending a lot of time using digital media, the companies have started marketing their products using digital campaigns. Consumers are very much informed about the various media channels and are using the online media channels to do shopping.  It is the need of an hour for the marketers to design campaign digitally in order to connect with the digitally savvy consumers.

One of the best examples of digital marketing is McDonald’s which has used 10 brilliant digital marketing campaigns. As the largest restaurant chain in the world, McDonald’s is no stranger to the effects that digital has had on consumers. McDonalds used strategies such as McDonald’s Extended Restaurant Hours, Digitization of McDonalds’ monopoly, McDonald’s Iced Fruit Smoothie App, ‘Kick the Trash’ Campaign (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awu6t5af_AQ)

Few of the Digital marketing Campaigns started by McDonalds are as follows:

1. Mobile Banner Ads: One third of the outlets had new late night opening hours Since majority of the customers are shift workers and travelers, McDonalds targeted these consumers to download there new Restaurant Finder Application to market the app, McDonald bought Mobile Banner Ads and got them displayed on the websites which consumer use more often.
2. Ask McDonald’s YouTube campaign: With lots of restaurants in the market and variety of food available the consumers are very much worried about the quality of food and have various questions related to the same. McDonalds Canada had a question answer session with the public, where around 20,000 questions were answered. They set up a You Tube Channel which showed the video responses of some the questions, which proved useful for the consumers to resolve their queries related to the quality and traceability of food.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w_OxdmoiDQ)

These campaigns helped McDonalds not only to earn loyalty but also more customer engagement.

Ref.http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/63032-10-brilliant-digital-marketing-campaigns-from-mcdonald-s

Is Listening and responding to your customers on Social Media necessary? Well, almost everybody would say ‘Yes’. But, do brands actually practice this? Many marketers in haste to gain the social media advantage create a Twitter or a Facebook account and proclaim “Mission Accomplished”. They forget that actually the mission has just started. Just tweeting a day is not enough today; marketers should interact with their customers more often, engage with them, answer their queries and respond to their complaints.

One may ask ‘What worse could happen even if I do not engage with my customers often and even if I do, does it carry any advantage?’

Let’s look how important it is to listen and respond to your customers and why does it matter.

In October 2013, a disgruntled Air France customer wrote a blog (Ref: http://jayharishshah.blogspot.in/2013/10/one-night-in-paris.html) describing his agony and posted it on the Facebook page of Air France. The buzz started on the tunes of the same guitar which United broke (Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo#t=0) four years back. Similar to United, Air France chose not to respond to the post unlike other customers who read through the post, re-posted it ad tweeted it on their twitter accounts. Air France had to pay hefty price of not listening and responding to the customer. The post eventually went viral and Air France went on to find covers to hide themselves. It was a week later, when the brand was destroyed and defamed by customers through various social media channels, Air France replied back. But till then, the damage was done.

What if Air France would have responded and apologized to the customer as soon as they knew about the post? Could that have made any difference? I would say, an obvious ‘Yes’. With the open forums such as Twitter, the marketers should be cautious of every step they take towards building their brand online.

The formula that leads to success in the social media scenario can be as simple as following the below mentioned points.

• Before going online, have your social media policies in place
• Go online when you are ready to do so
• Engage with your customers: respond, appreciate and thank them for their posts
• Identify your social media advocates
• Set dialogues with you customers

Weather to choose to listen and respond to the customers or ignore them defines the future of the brands.