The 4 V's in Big Data for Digital Marketing – Business 2 Community

The 4 V's in Big Data for Digital Marketing – Business 2 Community

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Digital marketing professionals declare big data as the next BIG thing in digital marketing. In the past years, only a few marketers take the time to keep tabs on the big data flowing across the different aspects of their marketing campaigns. This time around, there is no way of stopping the surge of big data explosion upon the emergence of better online marketing analytic tools, mobile marketing schemes, internet technology and social media platforms. If you are not at least acquainted with big data by now, then you should not wonder why your online marketing campaign is probably lagging behind your competitors.

The essence of big data within the marketing concept

It is high time to demystify the implication of big data explosion within the marketing concept. For a concise understanding about big data, it is a popular term that refers to a wealth of information in the form of either a structure or unstructured data that internet marketers can use in order to predict and analyze business circumstances that can lead to a more confident decision making process. Industry analysts define the four major elements of big data referred as the 4 V’s as follow:

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1. Volume

The volume of data can be extremely high in the event of years of data collection. The data volume buildup may be from unstructured sources like the social media and machine based data that can be collected. The relevance of the volume of data collected may be filtered using analytic tools in order to identify important metrics that are found to be relevant to your business.

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What does big data volume means to your business? To its simplest term, the volume element refers to the amount of data available for your digital marketing campaign. This may impact the following aspects of your business market:

Customer identification data. Your site will be receiving visitors but the question is how well do you know them? Use big data analytics in order to know the unique identity of each including the source of the traffic directing them to your site and the channels that they use when visiting your site (whether mobile, desktop, PDAs, etc…). This will help you improve your website design and development approach in creating a more responsive website that can cater to the different viewing needs of your customers. You can also reinforce your marketing efforts on sites with more referral of customers to your business in order to pursue profitable sales.Descriptive data of your customers. This will help profile your customers. You can review the available data to know their demographic information like sex, age, education, lifestyle, profession, marital status and even knowing who their children are. These are information not readily available to you however but social media has a lot to help you in obtaining the data that you need. Use the information to help you develop your products and services that are tailored to meet your customer profile to ensure that they will like and prefer your business over others.Quantitative data on your customer’s direct engagement to your business. This information will help you understand the purchase history of your customers, their inbound and outbound communication to your business, social media interaction such as sharing or liking your web page content and other web analytic data like number of visits and product reviews and comments of your customers. You can use the data to re-structure the way you do your digital marketing approach to improve customer engagement to your business.Qualitative data. The information that you can get from analytics through qualitative data will help you pursue the more productive marketing strategies that can help you convert leads to sales better. The data here involves your customer behavior when shopping, obtaining their opinion and motivational indicators. Extract these data from email conversations, comments, feedbacks and through your customer service communication.

2. Variety

Data collection can be from varied sources and forms. It can be sourced out from emails, audio and video forms. Managing complex forms of data is something that digital marketers continue to grapple with and needs to find a more accurate data management system to apply to their business advantage. To help you manage this element of big data, the following can help:

Use analytic tools to segregate groups of related data to avoid mixing up your database organization.Restructure how you collect and store data. Because of the volatility on the incoming data that you receive it is important to segregate fresh and old data coming from varied sources to help you connect and compare the changes the digital marketing trends and customer behavior.Use more agile analytic tools that are capable of receiving and interpreting the influx of information as they come and change in value quickly.

3. Velocity

The velocity of data streaming is quite fast paced. Organizations are often overwhelmed in embracing the loads of information that are available for them and managing them is a big challenge among marketers in today’s digital marketing era. Marketers receive loads of history of their customers’ every click and interaction to their business and how you quickly respond to this matter.

Make recommendations quickly for similar products on your customer’s purchases.Use mobile marketing in order to reach more customers. Mobile purchases are on the rise and you need to make your business more mobile friendly to reach more leads.Develop mobile apps to cater to the fast paced mobile browsing activities of your potential customers. You want to be sure that you cover every opportunity of connecting your business to your customers in a highly mobile marketplace.

4. Veracity

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This refers to the uncertainty of the data available to marketers. This may also be applied to the variability of data streaming that can be inconsistent, making it harder for organizations to react quickly and more appropriately. Generally, big data veracity has an impact on the confidence reposed by the marketer to their database. However, in a volatile big data environment, accuracy becomes an issue among digital marketers regarding the collected data for their business. Here’s how you can mitigate the inaccuracies of big data in your system:

Immediately assess data value as soon as you receive them. What might be a customer’s preference today may change rapidly and your inaction may cause you a lost potential lead for ROI.Organize data information according to groups, value or significance. This will give you a better focus on how to approach each data for a better actionable marketing strategy.Focus on using data according to its purpose. Do not mix unrelated data together as this can cause more data gathering confusion and mixed interpretation.Hire business IT professionals and data management consultants to help you in controlling the amount of fresh data to focus on your real time marketing campaign.Big data-driven marketing valueImage credit: seekingmastery.files.wordpress.comThere are 4 steps on how to apply the 4 V’s in big data to add value to your marketing efforts. This includes the following:AcquireOrganizeAnalyzeDecideAdding value to big data will deliver a boost to your digital marketing efforts producing the following business advantages:Measurable customer engagement There is no doubt that the infusion of big data is indispensible in digital marketing. The opportunity for data acquisition is everywhere from tweet updates, Facebook comments, social media discussions on trending topics to status updates of users from various social media platforms. These daily occurrences in the World Wide Web are good sources of data that you can mine and analyze to acquire for better decision making. Big data delivers information that provides a better understanding about customer insights, views and perceptions about your business. You can thus pulse the current and potential customer’s needs and preferences that can help make your business more engaging and relevant to them.Identify purchases versus customersA purchaser is different from a customer for the former is one who actually makes a purchase and uses your products. A customer may be interested to your products but have not purchased but remains to be an active follower of your business. Purchasers are not merely leads but already converting ones and whose loyalty you need to retain while a customer are potential leads that you need to help convert. Using big data analytics will give you a better marketing stance to engage in a marketing campaign that will produce better customer retention of purchasers and lead conversion of customers.Get a free Big Data eBook here.Author: Jason Bowden View full profileThis article originally appeared on Digital-Warriors and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with Business 2 Community.More White Papers ›Related White PapersHow to Unlock the Promise of Agile in the EnterpriseThe Definitive Guide to Marketing AutomationThe Definitive Guide to Engaging Email MarketingRecommended Reading

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The 4 V's in Big Data for Digital Marketing – Business 2 Community

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