The media landscape is changing. With new acquisitions, subscriptions, and innovations across media industries, understanding the value of users has never been more crucial for businesses in the sector.
And that’s where media analytics and Big Data come into play, giving media organisations the opportunity to successfully manage and utilise a mass of information, engage with customers more effectively, and improve operations.
Big Data in media and entertainment proves to offer a competitive advantage — as long as businesses use the right technology to gather and analyse the information. Telco, newspaper and magazine brands, and streaming video services can all use Big Data to understand customer value and deliver better customer benefits.
For example, newspapers going digital might identify user interests through browsing behaviours. This information can help inform their content strategy. It might determine what type of content to create, at what time to present it to audiences, and on which device, too — improving customer value.
A streaming video service can use Big Data to understand customer behaviour. These insights can help inform accurate personalisations such as viewing recommendations. This strategy offers value to the customer as better content discovery means less time and effort searching — and ultimately, helps the company retain subscribers.
Media and entertainment organisations measure customer value against several factors — how much a customer believes a product or service is worth is just one of those. In this guide, we’ll explore what Big Data means, and how Big Data and media analytics can help the media industry understand customer value beyond price points.
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What does Big Data mean to the media industry?
Businesses are constantly collecting data from various parts of their organisations. This data comes from many sources, including sales, advertisements, and memberships.
Today, Big Data is vital to make smart decisions about your customers — whatever industry you’re in. And there are tools that can help collect and manage your data, such as a CRM system.
For media specifically, there are many different types of Big Data collected. This includes viewing history, ratings, searches, reviews, location, and device data. Many media businesses are using this data to understand customer behaviours better. For example, some streaming video services may use Big Data insights to establish when customers are most likely to watch content and what device they will watch it on.
Businesses can minimise the guesswork of understanding audiences by sourcing Big Data. And navigating the changing media landscape with data-driven strategies will mean businesses in the sector can continue to innovate and generate more revenue.
But although companies are collecting large volumes of data about customers, many still have trouble understanding how to maximise the value of this data. A key challenge for many is how they interpret Big Data. Accurate media analytics is an essential part of the process. That’s why integrating the right technology is critical for your business, and ensuring your employees have the skills to interpret Big Data.
Ultimately, Big Data in media and entertainment offers useful insights to help understand customer value, generate more sales, attract and retain customers, and improve operations.
Why is understanding customer value important?
The customer, not the business, determines value. They base this on the benefits of your product or service, the costs, and whether your offering is competitively priced.
So, it’s essential to understand what exactly your customers value. This can include price points, product features, and functionality. Consumers have more choice than ever before, so businesses must consider the price of products and services, and improve customer relationships and overall experience.
Essentially, the value of users is vital in helping generate more revenue. But there are many more reasons why you should consider enhancing customer value. It helps build customer advocacy and loyalty, too. For many, understanding customer value can also help you to price products or services fairly.
Customer value can change over time across different industries within media. For example, newspaper and magazine brands meet customer expectations by providing reliable and relevant content. Readers often rely on qualified and credible journalists to provide this content. And these expectations create unique value for the business and help brands distinguish themselves from competitors. However, a company can lose this customer value. For instance, if the journalist leaves or prints something that is later disproven, the brand will no longer deliver to customer expectations.
The telco industry includes internet service providers, cable and satellite companies. Most sectors around the world rely on global communications made possible by telecoms. These businesses create customer value by providing reliable and quality service. And customer care and quick problem resolution go hand in hand with customer satisfaction. These businesses are also providing security protection, music on-demand, and bundled services — the list goes on. But these companies can quickly lose customer value if users experience a disruption to service or poor customer service, especially if competitors continuously meet those needs.
Using Big Data to understand user value
Businesses need to organise Big Data to learn from it. But many companies in media industries don’t have the skills or software to identify actionable insights. That’s where a CRM comes into play. Big Data is at the core of a CRM system, which provides businesses with a better understanding of their customers.
Businesses are creating customer value through Big Data analysis. You may already have the tools to analyse this. For example, a CRM report can analyse your existing data. Running a report on purchased services by location and time period may show you trends that you can use to your advantage. If a single region purchased the service at a higher rate than others, this would be worth investigating.
But some companies are generating reports manually, which costs time and resources. Instead of spending time pulling data, tools like Einstein Analytics allow teams to focus their time on analysing data. The Einstein Analytics application enables you to visualise data, manage datasets and customise dashboards, so that you can make sense of large amounts of data.
Salesforce offers solutions to help businesses simplify processes, too. Marketing Cloud works by adapting to your customers' changing behaviour — sending audience-specific messages at the right time, deploying campaigns quickly and helping to keep your customers engaged.
How can this benefit my business?
Big Data enables you to identify patterns in customers’ purchasing habits that would otherwise go unnoticed. You could identify trends to optimise and focus content. Historical sales may help establish future opportunities as well. You can even offer greater value to your customers in exchange for data that will lead to personalised content and advertising.
Real-time data is essential for building long-term customer engagement. Many media industries will collect, manage and interpret Big Data to help with this task, including information on the customer journey, purchases and transactions, multi-channel engagement and location.
Using the right technology, you will have greater access to Big Data, visualise media analytics from various sources, and explore large and complex datasets — everything you need at your fingertips to better understand your customers’ behaviour.
Stay ahead of the competition with data-driven strategies — and keep your customers coming back thanks to valuable and personalised experiences.
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