Marketing professionals know you better than you know yourself
However, when big data is combined with psychological profiling, the head meets the heart and digital marketing offers much more interesting prospects.
We should welcome this innovation, but make sure we use it responsibly from the outset.When Jeff Bezos founded an online bookstore called Amazon in his garage in 1994, he did not invent digital marketing. But he did create what would later become one of the most important building blocks of digital marketing.25 years later, the company has a previously unimaginable database of customer behavior. Its algorithms look at a person's past purchasing behavior, compare it with herd behavior and predict with great accuracy what customers want and when they want it.
Frequently copied Amazon method
As a result, Amazon is now the world's largest online retailer in terms of sales and market capitalization and Bezos is the second richest man in the world. However, this method, often copied on the internet, has a serious flaw: when Netflix recommends "Downton Abbey" and not "Breaking Bad", it is not because the company has knowledge about the beliefs, future prospects and personality of the customer in question. Rather, the recommendation is based on statistics. Sometimes it is horribly wrong, and customers may feel that the company no longer "understands" them; the algorithm doesn't even know why it is making a suggestion. As a result, a marketing professional does not receive any insights about their customers on the basis of which they can develop a product or an advertising campaign, but things are gradually changing.
New study on psychological profiling
A new study by Cambridge University looked at the possibilities of psychological profiling on Facebook and found that it is possible to create a very accurate psychological profile of a Facebook user based on posts and likes using the five-factor model - the so-called "Big Five". The same process can be used to analyze tweets, websites and even emails.the five personality traits are: Extroversion, Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism. None of these traits are good or bad; they are merely descriptors. Psychologists have spent years studying people and assessing each trait to identify their individual personality traits and behavior patterns.
