Big Data and Insight: Lies, damned lies and statistics

In short, the webinar sought to show the differences between *describing* people from a series of static (and most likely out-dated) attributes to *understanding* them as evolving individuals from a variety of real-time data sources.

Aly’s hierarchy of customer insight examined the worth of:

• Basic info (i.e. name and address)
• Geographic/Demographic
• Transactional/Event-based/Response-based
• Complete Marketing History
• Social interests/interactions
• Content interactions

Geographic/Demographic

Although Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne might fall into the same customer segments based on particular demographic criteria (age; gender; family status; affluence; holiday destinations etc) , an understanding of them as individuals – not simply a smaller subset of a segment – should change how a brand interacts and communicates with them.

Transactional/Event-based/Response-based

Am I what I’ve bought? Am I how I respond to a campaign?

The problem with these recorded events is that they invariably only show particular journeys with single brands, not the whole picture of which other brands and products the customer has interacted with or purchased. The same limitations apply to campaigns. If marketers are able to get a wholistic view of the customer, even when they’re not engaging directly with the brand, it can allow them to ‘jump in’ and suggest a relevant proposition to each customer.

Social interactions and interests

Brands shouldn’t just be interested in direct customer interactions on social media channels, but can also mine customer profiles for insight  about their interests and activities. These can be used to begin to understand the individuals as people, and not just prospects. Based on this insight, brands can begin to understand when they can have relevant conversations with customers.

Content interactions

If you  analyse the content read and shared by customers – you can begin to understand the topics and points of interest for that customer. Furthermore, brands can begin to use this insight to influence – for example, by suggesting piece of branded content on a similar topic, or perhaps a product/offer/advert which is relevant to the article.

An example of how insight from content analytics might go beyond that found from social profiles is that  you could begin to infer intelligence levels and level of education – this is much more truthful than what someone may have written on their CV or Linkedin.

Ultimately, each of strata of insight is not the silver-bullet of customer insight – however, cumulatively by understanding the customer’s social and behavioural activity as well as purchasing history and campaign responses, can go a long way to making brand’s marketing more relevant and meaningful.   

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Idio’s platform applies content curation, real-time decisioning and predictive analytics to enable brands to do content marketing that is trackable, scalable and measurable, and understands each customer’s evolving social and behavioural context.

Idio helps major brands grow, track and convert their social media communities through intelligent content marketing solutions. If you’re not sure where to start with content marketing for your social media brands, do get in touch.