Big data as the name suggests has taken a toll on various companies, which deal with colossal amounts of customer data. The term Big-data might sound a bit vague to some of us, but the amount of data created per day in 2015 is humongous as compared to 2010. You might argue that scientists must have found several ways to map data efficiently. True, they indeed have. However the amount of data generated by Humans is getting out of hand, literally and figuratively.
This is where sensible marketing of Big Data appears. Have you ever wondered how billion dollar companies that do not charge their users a dime function? Be it Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat or any other website. Facebook has started advertising now but it did not for a really long time. How was it then worth a several billion dollars? Big Data!
Yes, the answer is Big Data. Data generated by consumers like you and me has grown by leaps and bounds. This sensitive information of almost all the people living in the world is fragile and expensive at the same time. In the future, there is only so much a billion dollar company can do without proper marketing or leveraging of Big Data.
Big Data opens numerous possibilities for chalking out future marketing strategies and business plans. Before the advent of Big-data, marketing giants relied on simple statistics but mostly functioned on their gut feelings. However, said human gut feelings are not dependable even though they make us feel that they are. Gut feelings are volatile, whereas Big Data is not. Data gives all the information right there when we need it, the way we need it.
Source: Kissmetrics.com
As shown in the above infographic, Big Data is underused or not used at all in most companies. Marketers either think the data is not reliable or cannot be put into use in an efficient manner, which ultimately leads to them taking decisions on their gut feeling. This trend has continued over the years since forever. But people must realize now that Big Data is real and its possibilities, endless.
The business opportunities available for marketing professionals, both Fortune 500 companies and start-ups are endless due to the amount of data available out there. Start-ups are more to benefit out of said data than their bigger counterparts in the long run. However, bigger companies would be the first to access voluptuous amounts of data through varied sources and put it to efficient use. As we speak about Big Data, there are several start-ups like Uber who are using real time data to map their business in the whole planet. Data is like a never ending gold mine and information flow shall always keep said gold mine filled to the brim.
There was a prediction by Computer Science Corporation (CSC) that the amount of Data would increase 43 times by 2020. The following infographic shows how Big Data is the next big thing.
Source: CSC
The amount of Big Data is increasing without any bounds, creating challenges and opportunities at the same time. As the infographic above shows, structured data and data processing is not the centre of this domain. Unstructured data amounts for a lot more than it did a decade ago. User data, which includes images, videos all over the internet sum up to all of said unstructured data. This resulted in a completely new field of industries revolving around storage and sorting of business insights from Big Data.
Big Data could be the next shift in marketing considering the possibilities and statistics it offers. Marketers have bet a lot more on a lot less information and struck gold. This could define and bring out a completely new ball game in the marketing industry with sophisticated techniques of measuring and mapping market predictions.
Google Trends is as close as we can get to Big Data in the current world providing information about countries, languages and other statistics usually difficult to gather. There are several reasons also which indicate how important big data is to marketing firms. Big data not only gives insight on who their customers are but also their location, needs and several other miscellaneous information which is equally important. Big Data helps marketers discover factors that enhance customer loyalty, what retains them and makes them come back for more. Testing and analysis could be undertaken on a reasonable and calculated scale with big data calculating optimum marketing spending techniques over different mediums.
There are three main types of Big Data which could mean a lot to marketers over the years. Customer domain includes behavioural data from sources such as websites, surveys, shopping points, online forums and several other aspects. Operational domain usually includes data from marketing projects and operations, the amount resources utilized, financial expenditures and so on. Financial domain is another field altogether that includes profits, revenues, objectives and sales, which determine the stability of a corporation.
Mining Big Data is not an easy task either; there are several challenges which marketers would have to face in the future. The volume of information at a marketer’s disposal would be enormous and differentiating customer, operational and financial data is a task in itself. Gathering and processing wrong data could create a huge blunder if not have heavy repercussions on the corporation. Using the right analytic tools is also important, as this will help to segregate and analyse big data. There would be tons of applications that would claim to be the best in processing sensitive consumer, operational or financial data but which application would be the best can be determined only after careful retrospection. Having humongous amounts of data is not a big deal, making sense of it all is. Useful insight should be extracted in a manner that has a profitable impact to the marketer.
In the coming years, there is going to be a plethora of information regarding everything that is happening around in the world. This information either could be processed and used accordingly or would continue to exist in the void, like it always has. Big Data is inclined towards supporting the former; the question is, are you?
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Well written and insightful
Very insightful article!!