The availability of very granular behavioral data about consumers – which began in digital channels but is now extending into “traditional” media – is sparking a lot of interest and activity around the concept of “big data.”
Large and small companies alike are developing new intellectual property in this space, excited by the significant promise that such data can bring. IBM, for example, has unleashed its Watson system to start solving big problems – even Jeopardy questions – with big data.
The increasing scope and scale of information being collected, while commendable, will only be useful if backed by longstanding principles of analytics and business science. All those terabytes of data won’t provide value if they’re not being leveraged to effect action throughout the organization. In fact, collecting and crunching data can actually be counterproductive if it leads to incorrect or misaligned hypotheses about business drivers. Despite the increasing sophistication of data-gathering and analysis tools, the “garbage in/garbage out” theorem still applies.
So before you get too caught up in the lure of big data, remember that your organization still requires a disciplined approach to marketing measurement and resource allocation. Analytics must connect all activities back to a core question: How will they drive the business? And, ultimately, how can we create a capability that will connect and understanding of these drivers to decisions, actions and continuous learning?
A clear understanding of the business goals will provide insight on the proper scope of data needed, as well as the right methods to interpret and act on that data. Marketers can then assess the data to ensure that its breadth and depth is appropriate for these objectives. Marketers also should assess the organization to ensure that the interpretation and actions based on the data will be effective. Only then should the organization invest in the technology and tools to help achieve its goals.
With big data, size doesn’t matter – what counts more is the strength of the underlying measurement discipline, and its ultimate linkage to action.