Big data is the syndication or grouping of high volume, velocity, variety, variability and complex data. The superpower of this is that it unveils patterns, associations and any opportunities and threats and the list is endless. This intelligence gives way to progressing society in so many different aspects and within marketing it would regard human interactions, behaviour and needs.

“Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the Web like deer on a freeway.” Geoffrey Moore. Now big data is embedded in nearly all verticals, from retail to automobile, and heavily invested in marketing.

The difference between data and big data is how transformational it can be to your business.

Whether you’re trying to retain your existing customers or thinking of innovative affiliate campaigns, big data is here to improve decision making and creating solutions. From getting a full understanding of the audience to leveraging real time data which means instant and dynamic communications (i.e. clicks on a landing page and then sending tailored messages).

The revolution of this doesn’t stop here; the opportunities are endless when used wisely. It can help predict accurate predictions for customer behaviour and trends or competitors next steps. Now, before we go into how Affiliates should use big data to yield better results for their projects or campaigns, let’s talk about its types.

Content

The types of big data for affiliates

Why Affiliates will see a better ROI from big data

Better evaluate partnerships

Scale campaigns like never before

(A) Utilise a CRM system

(B) Stay ahead of the competition

(C) Find new opportunities

Better targeting

Conclusion

The types of big data for affiliates

There are three types of this; customer big data, financial and operational. They capture insights at a level of detail never possible before. We can be more ‘in the moment’ leveraging micro moments of customer, be more reactive and agile in our response and transform things that were practically unachievable just a few years ago. 

1. Customer big data helps affiliates hone in on their audience. Whilst demographics and factual in their behaviours only give us so much indication of who they are, but it is the gathering of their activity across different touchpoints of their journey, their conversations and so on, where we get a deeper understanding of their attitudes and thinking – this is then up to affiliates to harness the power of big data to make impact.

2. Financial big data helps streamlines performance and pave ways for efficiency. From sales and statistics, all of this can be analysed more effectively resulting in faster, and agile decisions.

3. Operational big data is as you guessed it operations. This is understanding how systems in place can cut down on any unnecessary costs, reducing any form of wastage from time, effort and materials. This can lead to better performances and better customer experiences.

Why Affiliates will see a better ROI from big data

With big data, affiliates can reduce their time looking to understand consumer behvaiour or their target market cues, as it’s all already analysed for them and quantified. This is able to help them match segments for different affiliate niche products, which will yield better results.

Moreover, analysing performance of the campaigns and partners, ensure that the affiliate platforms or networks will compensate the actions that reward results which can be efficiently measured. This will attract a larger, undiscovered audience. 

Better evaluate partnerships

Plus, it’s easier than ever before to evaluate which of the partners are valuable. From the brands side, they can now track a partner’s impact on sale to insights into which affiliates are driving more value. This can help draw up with tailored incentive plans to retain them. Furthermore, attribution modelling becomes more sophisticated, as marketers can track all user interactions coming to their site. 

Fundamentally, affiliate marketing is about making strong partnerships. Once you have information about different partners, it can help affiliates create more successful campaigns.

Scale campaigns like never before

Leveraging big data can enhance the growth of their business, and allow to produce campaigns that make an impact. Scaling a business is hard as it takes considerable effort. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. There are several ways affiliates can do this:

(A) Utilise a CRM system

Manually tracking conversions, engagement and interactions are hard it can be too cumbersome as the business grows. So if you want to scale quickly, a customer management system such as SalesForce and HubSpot are viable options as they integrate with other cloud-based services to find what works best and deliver indications of what would be the best solutions for your audience.

(B) Stay ahead of the competition

If you’re looking to attract the masses with your affiliate offer, it’s necessary to keep a close eye on the competition. There are big data marketing platforms which provide competitive intelligence from AdBeat to Similar Web. These give you ideas as you uncover their online strategy and also find what’s working and what’s not for them in order to create your own campaigns that would beat theirs. 

(C) Find new opportunities

By analysing the audience, or demographic better, you will potential opportunities which you can pursue without the amount of time it takes to analyse and match up different sets of data. You can identify hidden treasures of cheap, but high converting traffic. Especially in saturated verticals, it can be very hard to be successful. So finding other types of targets that competitors aren’t using with big data tools, will help increase ROI.

Better targeting

Affiliates can discover opportunities in untapped regions. For example, trying to reach emerging marketing that have an interest in a particular niche. This is giving affiliates access to cheaper but high converting traffic. While it will take time to understand language, search terms and keyword they are likely to use to find the affiliate product, there are big data tools that does the work for you. There are a number of keyword research tools to help affiliates find out how to get access to this traffic. They may also notice increased activity in another region, and may want to focus their efforts there.

Conclusion

With more impending changes to affiliate marketing on the horizon, there’s no question that big data will be fundamental in that. To stay a step ahead of the competition, it’s wise to apply the right sets of big data to make an impact. Big data can help affiliates make sustainable decisions which will help them do well even in the face of change. It opens up lots more opportunities which normal data can’t do at the same rate.