Marketing
is a science. Then again, it is also an art. One needs an understanding of
human sentiments and emotions to grasp why a certain brand is preferred over
another. At the same time, unless you are supported by hard facts, data and
proper analysis it becomes difficult to reach any kind of conclusion - even an
emotional one.
The world
sees information being churned out at a humongous rate - IBM suggests it is 2.5
quintillion bytes of data every date -data from satellites, posts from social
sites, mobile usage statistics, internet consumption rates, traffic patterns,
content in form of words, audio and video, ….its an endless list.
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| Image courtesy of Vlado/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
For
marketers the scope is teensy-weensy bit smaller. We only have to analyze the foot-falls, the buying patterns, the
information exchange patterns, the economic trends, the competition. We have to
be aware of what policy changes are happening in country A and how that will
affect our sales in country B. There has
to be a constant study of which email campaign worked, why it worked, what's
the click through rate, how many unsubscribes. Are there any cross-sell
opportunities with our current customers, how do we profile new
prospects…...Whew!!!! And, this does not even cover a miniscule portion of data
we need to collect and analyze.
This is
where Big Data comes in. Data would be considered Big if it covers 3 dimensions
- Volume (the amount of data generated), Velocity (the speed with which data
is generated) and variety (the kind and type of data being generated).
If the
above list indicates anything its this - Marketers are being hit with Big Data
from all sides. But the challenges are numerous. Most organizations do not have
a streamlined process for collecting data. This means either the data is not
collected frequently and consistently or, it is not in real-time. There is also
a lack of data-sharing across the organization and marketing communications are
still not personalized to reflect this data. The 2013 Big Data for Marketing
survey* shows that 30% of those surveyed are still having a hard time
understanding how, exactly, marketing analytics could be used in their
companies.
What is
needed are tools and techniques capable of handling such data. Such tools will
help replace guesswork with insights, pinpoint trends and help analyze
information so you are able to make faster and relevant decisions. On a broad
scale these tools can be classified as analytics tools, predictive analytics
tools and data driven automation tools.
Few
companies are already becoming comfortable on this bandwagon. Amazon not only accesses and analyzes its daily visitor patters and
provides them with suggestions on 'items of interest' but also has the agility
to incorporate the now for business profit. The day
Michael Jackson passed away Amazon reconfigured their whole MP3 store within 2
hours**. This gave them access to a revenue stream that others were still unsure
on how to tap. Linkedin, the world's largest professional networking site with over 200Mn+
members, can at any time pull in statistics which help decipher a company's
attrition rate, regional expansion patterns and much more.
The
market is seeing a number of players specializing in helping organizations in
deciphering what their data means and then utilizing it optimally. A good example is the India based company Vizury which helps e-commerce and online travel companies harness their digital data
assets for micro-targeting highly-pertinent ads to website visitors.
Do you
have more examples of how Big Data is being used by marketers? Do share.
*http://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/moneyball-meets-marketing-leveraging-big-data-analytics-improve-results
**http://www.toprankblog.com/2012/08/big-data-what-marketers-need-to-know/
