Big Data – ‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure’
With the ever-growing strength of the internet, organisations are realising how they can use it to their advantage. Where before organisations were acting on intuition and past experiences, they are now using big data to revolutionise decision making and learn significantly more about their target audience.
The ability to learn more about their audience means that they can effectively measure not just the purchases that have been made by an online user, but also what they have looked at previously, how they navigate around the organisation’s website i.e. which website pages are receiving the most traffic, and the similarities across individuals and groups of people.
By learning more about an organisation’s target audience they are able to tailor marketing activities and produce effective, personalised marketing to match the wants and needs of the target audience, thereby increasing the chances of the online user converting to a consumer.
Marketing decisions based on Big Data rather than intuition and experience are better made decisions. Using Big Data means that the approach enables managers to decide on the basis of clear evidence. For that reason it has the potential to revolutionise the way that organisations market their products and services.
As the benefits of Big Data for an organisation increase, the cost is continuously decreasing. With these two factors in mind, it’s no wonder more and more organisations are using it to receive greater opportunities and greater competitive advantage.
Mcafee, A., & Brynjolfsson, E. (2012) Big data: the management revolution. Harvard business review, 90 (10), 60-66.