What do marketers and Big Data have in common? They both have an insatiable desire to know more about their targets.
Big Data is that buzzword that describes the increasing volume of data surrounding every aspect of human life. It refers to the idea that nearly every human action can be quantified and logged in a bank of data that is growing at an unprecedented rate. In fact, there are nearly as many pieces of digital information as there are stars in the universe.
Marketers look into this vat of data bug-eyed and frothing at the mouth.
Why? Because Big Data holds the potentially to describe target customers with an accuracy and level of detail unfathomable only a decade ago. While old-school marketing efforts were limited to things like tracking returns on direct mail campaigns, or number of subscribers to newsletters, modern marketers can have data on people’s exercise habits, digital clicking behavior, time spent on various sites, purchasing history, personal preferences based on social media postings, time awake, time spent in the car, caloric intake, and almost anything else you can imagine.
