The days of in-your-face, disruptive marketing are over. Today, it’s difficult to get your audience to respond to promotional messages without first building and nurturing relationships with them. To do this, you need to know your target audience. This is where Big Data jumps comes in. Why? Big Data holds a goldmine of information on your target audience. This level of accuracy and detail is unfathomable to marketers of the past.
Lately, we see, hear, and speculate about Big Data entering domains like public sector, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. In terms of application, there’s another prospective field: Sports. The latest piece of news is about Big Data joining the realm of sports marketing.
In last May’s Microsoft Ignite keynote in Chicago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Real Madrid CEO José Ángel Sánchez announce a partnership that leads the legendary football club to a digital transformation. According to Sánchez, leveraging Microsoft’s cloud platform can help them “understand what are the needs and wants of [their] fans, so this relationship is not a one-way relationship anymore.” He continues, “The cloud gives us the opportunity to put all these people in contact and makes it possible for us to interact with them, in a very personalized way.”
With the cloud leading them, Real Madrid officially enters the Big Data game by finding a way to cultivate its 450 million-strong fan base around the world. Leveraging cloud and data is a smart and savvy way to connect and engage with their fans.
Microsoft’s platform allows Real Madrid to provide more relevant content to their fans through their mobile app. Additionally, the club can create targeted initiatives to enrich the experience of their fans through loyalty offers and personalized messages.
While Big Data’s predictive capabilities have made earlier appearances in the sports arena, its general use is to improve game performances. However, Real Madrid’s Big Data move falls squarely within the areas of sports marketing and brand-building.
What does this prove? A growing number of industry segments are dipping their feet in the Big Data pools and the application of big data knows no bounds. No matter the industry, you can maximize your business relationships with the help of Big Data. The ability to better understand, connect, and engage has boundless potential. With the converging forces of cloud, mobility, and social media toppling the conventional notions of business, it is crucial to harness data to grow your business community.
Many believe that Big Data-enabled customer intelligence and operational efficiencies can help businesses make better predictions. However, Big Data will not impact all business in a similar fashion. You have to understand the context of its application to get the best return from your Big Data investments. That’s the secret sauce to make Big Data work.
This post was originally seen on Ricoh blog.
