Seven Things Marketing Should Know About Big Data

What are the key points to remember about Big Data?

1. The migration to a digital and interactive world creates breadcrumbs of all types everywhere; this in turn dramatically increases the velocity, variety and volume of data.   We need to rethink just what it means to be data.  
2. Big Data is so big that our historic view of processing it - requirements, capture, analysis - just doesn't work anymore.   For those of us who grew up in the marketing database era, we have to completely rethink our relationship with IT.  And IT will have to rethink its role.
3. The idea of Big Data will go thru the typical hype-cycle where it becomes the topic of conferences, technology pitches, and bloggers (including me).  Thus, it will mean different things to different people and that requires patience and a steady hand to navigate.
4. Like all large, complex, and fast moving worlds the best approach is to have a clear objective in mind before you start.  Set the goal first to help deal with the really messy aspect of Big Data - access and transformation.
5. Since the majority of the Big Data is now created 'out there' rather than from just buying stuff from us we have the ability to understand the path to purchase much better than ever before.  New understanding of what happens at each step in the journey will be required thru 'moment' or 'value' mapping exercises.
6. Given that we want to derive insights from Big Data, the deployment methods will have to change.  We can't assemble in a conference room to discuss changes in offers and messaging - we must learn to trust the data and let it decide within a framework.  Predictive analytics will be operational, not project-based. 
7. Your brand promise will have a strong guiding hand on how you leverage Big Data. Understanding what benefit consumers takeaway from your product or service will help you decide how best to facilitate their journey and choice.