Advances in technology have brought about increased computing power in both scale and speeds, making Big Data ever more accessible. This has created an environment where large amounts of data can now collected and easily decipherd. Analysing this information correctly has the potential to help any organisation with its marketing efforts resulting in an increase in reach and subsequently, revenue.
The inspiration for this article comes from a New York Times article by Bernard Marr in which he lists some mind boggling facts about big data. Listed below are 3 good reasons why big data should be part of every marketers strategy as a sure-fire way to get better results:
- Big Data: A treasure Trove of Information
The collection of user information from various offline and online services ranging from social media, shopping, banking, and most other parts of our daily lives has raised the issue of privacy recently. There is no doubt that user’s information should be protected at all costs and only collected after explicit consent at that.
However, legitimately collected data has the potential to provide immediate and clear insights that would otherwise have taken years of research to unearth in the past. Marr begins by pointing out that the last recent years have seen an explosion in the amount of data we create and collect. Having created and curated more data in the past two years than in all of humanity’s history, humans are set to be creating 1.7 megabytes of new information every second by 2020!
In addition to this, our data volumes are growing faster than ever, creating what is essentially a treasure trove waiting to be discovered by marketers.
While such numbers may seem overwhelming, it is important to remember that increased computing power also means an increased ability to analyse the information collected. For example, Google handles over 40 thousand search queries every second, that amounts to over a trillion of searches every year. Website Content and SEO services.
The search giant can handle queries and surface relevant results in seconds. In addition, tools such as the Adwords keyword planner can harness all that search information to provide marketers with the exact keywords their target audience use to search the internet.
