Interacting with brands is no longer confined to simply walking into a store and physically viewing a product, the overall customer journey has transformed and so has a brand’s marketing strategy. Email communications, website visits and media engagements have made it easier for consumers to make informed decisions, however, keeping a track of these engagements is the biggest challenge for marketers today.

There is ample customer data but it is only through analysing this data and turning it into insights that it becomes useful to companies. This is where data analytics come in – it simply eases these complex processes, and creates a seamless experience for the customer throughout their journey.

Alternatively, from a marketers viewpoint, analytics can help them to understand the effectiveness of their marketing strategy, weigh the pros and cons of their marketing activities and ultimately pinpoint the efforts needed to achieve their business goals.

Analysing and interpreting data subsequently provides a deeper understanding of the kind of content or messages that would be more impactful.

Additionally, these unprecedented, pandemic driven times have made it harder for marketers as they can no longer rely on previous assumptions about their customers and answer the where, what and how they buy questions. As a result marketers are left with no choice but to immerse themselves in data and allocate budgets for marketing analytics.

According to research reports healthcare providers across the GCC region are also set to embrace big data analytics, paving the way for substantial improvement in patient care while driving down costs.

A survey, conducted by the consultancy firm Protiviti, has projected the healthcare analytics market in the MENA region to reach $1.49bn by 2024 from an estimated $630mn in 2018.

The report further stated that the global healthcare analytics market, estimated at $14bn in 2019, is expected to increase to $24.5bn this year, with the prescriptive analytics market holding the highest growth potential.

Many organisations across industries are using prescriptive analytics for a range of use cases spanning strategic planning, operations and tactical activities.

Prescriptive analytics is joined by descriptive analytics, diagnostic analytics, and predictive analytics.

In a nutshell, descriptive analytics is the data that tells us what has already happened, while diagnostics analytics rides on the foundation of descriptive analytics by examining why things happened. Finally, the insights derived through predictive analytics better equips marketers to determine what is likely to happen in the future, so they can revise their marketing strategy accordingly.

Retailers and brands mostly value predictive analytics because it can be applied on a daily bases to estimate the success rate and the downfalls in the circuit. For instance, retailers can analyse various factors such as customer shopping behaviour, social media engagement and customer segments. Using the predictive model retailers can strategise accordingly and aim for a guaranteed increase in sales.

Data analytics has also made it possible for companies to take advantage of customer and user experience data to provide customer-targeted services and drive positive outcomes for customers while still maintaining data protection.

Recent GlobalData research cites the examples of 3.5bn Google searches and 1.3bn internet-of-things connections per day, and 254 exabytes (one exabyte is a billion gigabytes) of mobile broadband data traffic per year. When all this data is scattered across formats and is difficult to analyse, it’s of little value to businesses or consumers. Through marketing analytics, a brand or company can closely measure and monitor every campaign and decide on their campaign goals accordingly.

The Middle East, UAE especially, is continuously pioneering in technology adoption, and businesses are always looking for new ways for improvement. Some other industries that are also using big data and turning it into valuable information to create new business opportunities are the hydrocarbon sector, telecommunications, financial institutions, new media and culture among others.

With this pace it won’t be long before the Middle East economies emerge as leaders in the global big data race.

Jadd Elliot Dib is the founder and CEO of Pangaea X