7 minefields of big data marketing, how many have you stepped on?

Nowadays, when talking about marketing, if you don’t talk about big data and entertainment, you would be embarrassed to say that you are in the marketing circle. As far as I can remember, there were almost no events I attended this year where these two words were not mentioned.

In the book "The Age of Big Data", translator Zhou Tao quoted a sentence from Susan Langer's book "New Horizons in Philosophy": "This 'grand concept' suddenly became popular and pushed almost everything aside for a while", to pour cold water on those investors, media people and entrepreneurs who have no deep understanding of big data but are busy with various "big data carnivals" every month, every day and every second.

Minefield 1: Equating big data with massive amounts of data

Can a large amount of data be called "big data"?

This reminds Sister Soso of when she was in a newspaper company and her colleagues in the advertising department went to talk to clients, they were asked what the advantages of our newspaper were. Some of them said, "We have big data." What kind of data is that? It is nothing more than the subscriber’s name, unit, title, phone number and other information. In fact, we don’t even know whether these users will see our newspapers and the advertisements placed therein, let alone have any understanding of their consumption habits and demands.

Well, this part of the data cannot be considered as big data, perhaps because the quantity is not large enough. But if the data of these information such as "name, unit, title, telephone number", etc. increases exponentially, can it be called big data? Obviously not.

therefore--

The standard for judging big data is not based on the dimension of quantity, but on the dimension of scenario.

Minefield 2: Treating your own big data as a treasure

Also in the book "The Age of Big Data", the author mentioned, "Although data has not yet been included in the balance sheet of an enterprise, it is only a matter of time." The implication is that big data is undoubtedly a company's valuable asset. This is indeed the case. When we ask some advertising companies and marketing platforms what their advantages are, one of the answers they give is definitely: big data.

Therefore, some people jokingly say: "It looks like everything is a treasure, but in fact it is nothing." This is exactly what they mean when companies close their own data and form data islands, which causes the loss of value.

Therefore, BAT, JD.com, 58 and other platforms are all trying to open up data and better form a digital ecosystem through data cross-border, penetration and insight, such as the implementation of the Jingteng Plan and the Tengcheng Plan. For example, Tencent is cooperating with some vertical industry platforms such as Chehui, Didi, Tongcheng and Leju to solve the problem of data homogeneity and realize the interaction of transaction scenarios.

Minefield 3: Viewing Big Data as a Panacea

Whether product is king or marketing is supreme, I personally think this is a question that does not need to be discussed. But with the addition of the "magic pill" of "big data", some people really believe that even if the product is not well made, they can still sell the product by creating gimmicks by understanding the pain points of big data.

We will not discuss with those who shoot and move on to another bird's nest. For those who really want to make good products and use big data for marketing, we would like to remind you that the so-called big data also has its limitations, especially at a time when data is far from open, interactive, and intelligent. Programmatic purchasing cannot completely replace human judgment, just like news information push cannot rely entirely on robots.

Minefield 4: Using big data from platforms and service providers for marketing

This idea is certainly correct, but advertisers should not forget that the most valuable data is in your own hands, and you are the ones who know your customers best. Just like the conversion effect of a campaign, advertisers should know it best, rather than relying on the gorgeous data provided by the service provider.

At this point, we are back to the point of "openness". The data in the hands of advertisers is a treasure mine, but do they have an open mind to allow service providers to dig out the real gold? If not, what are their concerns? Only they themselves know.

Minefield 5: Is big data marketing performance marketing?

We just talked about the issue of conversion, and big data marketing is often accompanied by an adjective, that is, "precise". Therefore, when big data marketing is mentioned, it is easy to link it solely with ROI, equating it with quickly and directly solving short-term sales problems and increasing sales targets.

But in fact, big data marketing actually works on both the brand and effect ends at the same time - hoping to increase brand awareness and reputation through brand marketing; at the effect level, by influencing users online, allowing users to become store customers, and finally reaching a deal and realizing a closed loop of sales.

Data can help advertisers to better place advertisements, not just to achieve effective results. At the same time, advertisements can be placed through methods such as PMP and PDB to meet customers' brand needs.

Minefield 6: Does big data only help with delivery?

We just mentioned that big data can help advertisers to place advertisements. Now the question is, does big data only work before the decision to place advertisements is made?

The answer is of course no, this is already a thing of the past. In the past, it was true that the marketing decision-making process ended when the ads started running, but now it has just begun when the ads start running. During the advertising delivery process, it is necessary to continuously optimize data logic, and even deliver and monitor several versions of creatives at the same time, interact with users in a dynamic process, and let users decide which creatives will be delivered on a larger scale.

At the end of last month, when Baidu MOMENTS Marketing Conference launched the "Baidu Thinking" intelligent brand marketing ecosystem, one of the important features of its product was real-time interaction, which opened up the entire process from early decision-making to delivery in the process and then to later effect evaluation.

Minefield 7: Is it enough to do marketing based on demand?

Sister Soso heard a marketing guru share the story of his family buying a car. His request was not to buy a "street car", but when they finally made the purchase decision, they found that their friends around them coincidentally bought the same brand of car as them. In other words, within a small range, this car tragically became a street car.

What's the problem? Is it enough to do marketing based on demand? Of course not. In addition to understanding the needs, you also need to understand the relationship chain of decision-making and the extent to which they influence each other.

In summary, as Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, author of "The Age of Big Data", said: In the era of big data, we will realize that the power of the most important or real data is not only to meet this main need; and first-hand data is only the tip of the iceberg of the overall value of data.

The new year is coming soon. May we clear the minefields and dig out more valuable treasures under the iceberg.

Author: Dong Xiaojing

Source: Yingchuang Business Review