‘Data is the new oil’ declared Clive Humby in 2006. Humby, a mathematician from Sheffield in the UK, had fresh earnings of £90m to support his claim. Now, his analogy comparing data to oil, the 18th century’s most valuable asset, has some scratching their heads, and other scrambling for a slice of the action.
Humby asserted that data is now the lubricant that greases the marketing machine, but the similarities don’t end there. Raw data is no better than crude oil, it needs to be refined before it can be used. In this article, we look at just how that is done, and why data will shape the present and future of marketing.
What is DaaS?
The acronym DaaS refers to Data as a Service and is closely related to, and heavily dependent on, SaaS (Software as a Service). SaaS refers to centrally hosted, subscription-based software—think iPhone apps. All of the applications, programs, and software provided by SaaS ended up creating data from their users. Eventually the value of this data was understood, leading to service-generated big data being stored on cloud servers. These masses of data led, in turn, to DaaS.
SaaS is sometimes referred to as Software-On-Demand, meaning you get a service when you want it as it already exists. Similarly, DaaS is sometimes referred to Data-On-Demand for the same reason; people want the convenience of instant data, rather than the troublesome research and preparation that would otherwise be needed before business decisions could be made. The growth of news API, a database of historic articles from tens of thousands of publishers, is demonstrative of the demand for these kinds of services.
DaaS is exciting for the new opportunities it creates for businesses. Imagine you need a buyer for your product, with DaaS, you can now pay someone to locate that buyer on a worldwide database. It’s opening up opportunities for entrepreneurs, businesses, and investors to streamline their way to profit.
DaaS is in a state of rapid growth, and it has been used by a number of leading organizations since the mid 2010s. The United Nations (UN) is one outlier from the usual crowd of organizations who use DaaS, though for more democratic means. Global, up-to-date statistics are available on data.un.org, which demonstrates just how dynamic big data services can actually be.
How does marketing traditionally work?
Broadly speaking, marketing is the act of communicating, delivering, and exchanging offers that have prospective value for customers, clients, and the wider society. Before DaaS, marketing was a task of painstakingly large proportions, but marketers have always had tools at their disposal.
Market research is one key tool. This is a more direct approach where consumers are linked directly to the researcher who works for, or on behalf of, the marketer. Here, the consumers evaluate and assess situations, services, and products in real and simulated environments. This data is then processed and analysed for what it reveals about business contexts.
Marketing is also understood in simpler terms, including ‘the four Ps’:
∙ Product—this can be physical, an idea, or a service.
∙ Price—the amount of money a customer is to pay if they want or need a product.
∙ Place—a reference to the movement of products to customers, whether through delivery or availability at a shopfront.
∙ Promotion—the tactics used to insert a product into the consciousness of customers, populations, or demographics.
There are also different kinds of marketing, ranging from using influencers to keyword marketing.
What can DaaS do for your marketing?
No matter how diligent, creative, and passionate your marketing team are, if they aren’t getting the message ‘out there’, then their efforts are in vain. A database driven marketing technique like DaaS is loaded with an expansive array of tools for marketers, leaving old practices outdated. Here are some ways that DaaS can assist with your marketing strategy:
∙ Save time on research
∙ Clean, current and trustworthy data
∙ Access to global data
∙ In-depth information on your own customers
∙ Target specific groups of people
∙ Assistance with multichannel marketing
∙ Geolocation
∙ Improve your SEO.
So, what does the future hold for DaaS and marketing?
This is an exciting time for DaaS. There is currently a lot of momentum in small to medium sized businesses (SMEs) migrating over to the cloud. Motivations to migrate include financial incentives and increased marketing efficiency.
DaaS is the kind of service that thrives on increased usage. As its popularity grows, it takes in more data, becoming more proficient with the results it can give you. With cloud technology winning over even the staunchest of marketing purists, its upward trajectory shows no signs of slowing any time soon.
This leaves the future of DaaS wide open. Big data is growing to such a point that it’s even challenging the tech companies themselves. It’s thought that these vast sums of data will assist in the development of core AI technologies and machine learning.
In Conclusion
Big data and cloud computing are revolutionary technologies that are growing fast. What DaaS can do for marketing is:
∙ help save time
∙ create accurate, up-to-date, and geographically parsed data
∙ help you understand your customers
∙ refine your multichannel marketing
∙ improve your SEO.
Whether you’re using it professionally, or noticing heavily targeted marketing online, DaaS technology is becoming more and more entrenched into our lives. The results are leaving the marketing world changed forever.
