Consumer behavior and preferences are no longer shrouded in mystery. Thanks to cutting-edge data collection, organizations in all sectors can get a complete customer profile that goes beyond traditional market demographics to reveal the meaningful data beneath. How are clients or customers behaving online? What do they want? With the right data and analysis, businesses and other groups can leverage actionable answers to these critical questions and take the guesswork out of marketing.

Marketing in the Age of Big Data

“Big data” is more than just a buzzword – it’s a sign of the times. Behaviors like purchasing, researching and reading the news are now happening almost exclusively in the digital space. As more behaviors take place digitally, data collection becomes increasingly imperative to marketing efforts.

First-party data is currently the bread and butter of digital marketing. It’s easily accessible and gives a basic picture of each customer’s history and habits. Most businesses collect first-party data and understand how to use it to their advantage, but this data is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gathering information about customer behavior.

Going Beyond First-Party Data

First-party data can be useful for simple functions like product suggestions or targeted ad displays, but the growing influence of big data makes additional information collection a necessary part of any organization's strategy.

Accessing additional data provides a whole new level of information and guidance for marketing efforts. Second- and third-party data are additional information sets marketing strategists use to dig deeper and understand their audience. These two types of additional data form a more comprehensive picture with consumer information automatically sorted and analyzed to create everything from demographic groups to a personality profile for each individual visitor.

Detailed Data and the Competitive Edge

Synergizing different types of data adds dimension to analysis and illuminates a way forward for marketing efforts. Organizations that use multiple types of data are in a powerful position to create specific marketing campaigns that speak to an actual individual and are more targeted than 20th century marketers would ever have thought possible.

A data enrichment platform—like the one developed by nContext—puts marketing efforts into focus by replacing guesswork with verifiable facts. With multiple data tier offerings, nContext provides access to stunning insights with accuracy and efficiency. And with a 360° view of customer behavior including habits like social media usage, you’ll have a better feel for who you’re trying to reach, how they act in the digital space and their propensity toward your product. This puts marketing efforts into better alignment—you’ll know how to reach your target audience with laser-sharp precision. Pairing your first-party data with nContext’s higher data tiers opens the door to a rich set of information and supports the most efficient marketing moves possible.

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