Big Data: Hard to Define, Easy to Harness.
Big Data is hard to define.
For a marketing professional, it may be defined as “datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.” However, for someone who hasn’t had courses or experience using big data, it may be defined as something big and scary that knows everything about an individual based on their online presence.
Big Data, in a sense, is an umbrella term, encompassing everything from digital data to governmental data collected in paperwork over several decades. Due to its comprehensive definition, Big Data is well... confusing. Despite confusion on what the term means, one thing that any professional should know is that it is not going anywhere. It has evolved over time with technological advances and human understanding, and smart data, identity data and people data are here to stay. These three segments (smart, identity and people data) are very broad, but by dividing the immeasurable amounts of data in the world just a little, we can better grasp the meaning of Big Data.
Smart data is big data that is turned into actionable data. It is data that can be turned into measurable and understandable statistics. It is one of the most useful tools for businesses, as it allows them to analyze who their customers are, and to optimize their content and message to reach those people.
Identity data is data that concerns a consumer’s profile. This data includes credit card and billing information, addresses and purchasing habits, social media handles and online habits and behavior. It is perhaps one of the hottest topics in Big Data discussions, due to the sensitive and personal content of the data being collected. Although controversial in nature, this data makes it easier for a company to get to know their customers and to build relationships with them.
People data is basically defined as the data that gives a face to the people who are in your previously generalized audience. This data includes what types of things they follow on social media, what they like and view, how long they stay on your site, and their preferences.
By leveraging these three segments, a business can build (and maintain) relationships with customers, learn their preferences, and better target their products and services to become more successful and continue to gain business from more and more consumers. Maintaining these relationships is one of the most important things a company can do, and Big Data makes it a lot easier for them to retarget their content to customers online so they continually return to a brand’s site.
Over time, Big Data has been measured along the Four V’s – Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity. By sorting through these Four V’s, companies can leverage Big Data for their benefit, and learn massive amounts of information pertaining to their customers, and ways that they can reach them more effectively.
Defining these Four V’s is easy.
- Volume is the scale of data.
- Velocity is the analysis of streaming data.
- Variety is the different forms data can take.
- Veracity is the uncertainty of data.
There are several platforms that make it easy to harness, segment and understand this Big Data that is collected over time. One of the most used platforms is Google Analytics, which operates on four premises: data collection, data configuration, data processing, and data reporting. Learn more about Google Analytics and its hidden gems here.
Another tool that makes it easier for companies to turn Big Data into actionable data is Facebook’s Power Editor. Power Editor is a tool that helps businesses manage multiple campaigns, ad sets and ads. It is a plug in that you must download, and that makes it easy to use Big Data collected by companies and turn it into a campaign or multiple campaigns and ads that target their audience on Facebook. Here is a step-by-step guide of how to use Facebook’s Power Editor if a company were trying to sell more Ole Miss T-Shirts to male students in Oxford, MS and surrounding areas by getting them to visit the website.
Step 1: Log into Facebook and click create ads. This will bring you to the Power Editor page.
Step 2: Create your campaign and choose your marketing objective.
Step 3: Enter your account information.
Step 4: Define Define your audience. You can be as specific or as broad as you wish. This is where you optimize your reach with a strategic analysis of your audience from Big Data.
Step 5: Decide your ad placement and set your daily budget and schedule.
Step 6: Choose what format you want your ad to be in, define a landing page, and further personalize.
Step 7: Place your order. Your ad will start to run based on the times and budget your defined earlier.
Utilizing these tools like Google Analytics and Power Editor, businesses can better utilize their Big Data that they collect, and create meaningful relationships and reach a more specified audience who will likely respond to marketing efforts. Big Data may be difficult to define, but it is easy to see the significance it plays in business today, and these tools make it something easier to grasp for those who see it as a big bad monster of information.