Big Data’s Importance to Business Marketing

Large companies continue to churn out big data. At one time or the other, marketers don’t know how to take advantage of it. In a recent Gartner report, it is expecting that Chief Information Officers will shell out at least $230 billion on technologies related to big data for the next 5 years.

To illustrate, Walmart is currently handling around 1 million retail transactions in an hour. It has to maintain databases with at least 2.5 petabytes, which is about 1 million megabyte in 1 petabyte. For eBay, business data collected around the world grows twice as much every 1 year and 3 months. According to IBM, the world creates around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily. Big data can be managed by new hardware and software technologies in real time but there is no technology currently able to manage big data. Thus, there is a need to spend at least $230 billion for it.

Big data is currently stored in large virtual data storages in the clouds. Although people can have access to such data, there are barriers and rules which people need to overcome and follow. Before anybody can take advantage of big data, various tools must be used before it can be utilized for marketing purposes. Organizations of any size have their own data and each of these firms must be able to tap it to harness its full benefits. Information must be collected and quickly segregated to become marketing leads. There are various tools available for all types of users to tap big data. The problem is that people may not be aware that they can use these tools already.

Company strategy decisions are made every single day. Managers are expected to keep with the quick pace of changes brought about by globalization. In a recent Harvard Business Review survey, it revealed that 74% of SAS executives are pressured for results more quickly than in previous years. They must quickly analyze data available to them so that they can be used as guidance in their decisions. However, there are still the usual databases and unstructured data which must be taken into consideration for competitive insight.

Customer link analysis, a new analytical concept, can help established a customer’s influence on his colleagues, friends, family, and community. It is able to examine the timing, frequency, length, and type of calls. Analysis of call data makes it possible to determine the most influential callers. The analytical insight can be used to target these influencers with retention and marketing efforts so that companies can decide which of the products are to be offered to customers. Today, marketing budgets of companies tend to lean on analytical insight.