• by Eric Farng , Op-Ed Contributor, March 25, 2016

As “digital” becomes more of a lifestyle for practically everyone around the world, an explosion of data emerges in which actions and interactions can be mapped to specific behaviors with a good amount of precision. This has led to the rise of data science—or, in simpler terms, critical business insights that bring clarity to how people interact in the digital world.

Data science is important for marketers because it helps local businesses reach, target, engage, and convert potential customers with more granularity and precision. The current marketing landscape is being shaped by data science as is the future of customer interactions. Here are three reasons why:

Marketers need data science. The emergence of data science as an area of focus and expertise signals the need for marketers to prove their hypotheses with greater confidence, rigor and precision.

Data science has also introduced a new set of algorithms to the industry. Market segmentation research uses clustering techniques. Supervised machine learning helps predict future trends. Pattern-matching techniques can identify specific purchase behaviors.

When combined with the large amounts of data we have available to us today, these new algorithms can solve these marketing problems at greater scale and with more relevant business insight, giving advertisers better ability to create customer profiles and target would-be buyers at key moments in time.

Mobile continues to hold great promise. Mobile phones are an extension of a person’s personality—more than a desktop ever was. Because smartphones allow for location tracking, mobile location data enables advertisers to more accurately identify the correlation between how many people see a specific mobile ad and how many people visit the advertised retailer after seeing that mobile ad, providing a crucial link between online and offline behavior.  

Mobile apps also hold a wealth of insight, providing additional clues about a user’s interests and behaviors, which allow for more detailed customer profiles that can be used to deliver more targeted marketing.  At the end of the day, all of this real-time, real-world intelligence can help create truly effective—and measurable—lead-generation opportunities for advertisers.  

Big Data requires actionable insights.  Data can be crucial to more clearly articulate and optimize for today’s “zigzagging” consumer journey, where we see more and more consumers moving between multiple devices and platforms as they make purchase decisions.

But without actionable insights to drive sales, all of the data is meaningless. To achieve these insights requires analyzing a variety of algorithms as basic as cookies to as sophisticated as store visits or foot traffic.  This area in particular continues to evolve with the emergence of new technologies and platforms to provide a more detailed picture on consumer behavior.

With so much information available, trying to decide how and when it is best to leverage data can be overwhelming. To make the most of your local marketing strategy, it is important to remember the art behind the science.  The data can only be as effective as the insights applied to the campaign and its effect on driving business results.