What are the most effective ways to use "marketing data?"

Back to the Harvard Business Review article on how to assess potential marketing professionals, and they poised the question on how to describe and best use "marketing data."

The first and often foremost “marketing data” points discussed in business are anecdotal in nature. These are based on the experiences of executives in the business, and while valuable they may be unreliable and not be truly representative of a situation, especially in industries undergoing rapid evolution based on the impact of technology or strong competitive threats.

Focus Groups - better done now by Video Chat.

The next type of marketing data is more formal in nature, being qualitative or quantitative research. Focus groups and one-on-one interviews are the most popular types of qualitative research. This type of research is now available from online providers like Video Chat Network, who make them really fast and affordable compared to traveling and sitting behind the one-way mirror at central research facilities. 

Web-based research (like Survey Monkey) or  phone surveys are popular quantitative research methods that can gauge things like customer satisfaction levels or attitude / awareness / usage data. The advantage here is statistically reliable data that can help develop projections and be bench marked over time.

HDTV Purchase Intent Visualization.

These surveys can paint the picture of a target audience from a demographic, geographic or attitudinal / behavioral standpoint. They can also measure product awareness / purchase intent and usage patterns of the marketer's product / service and the competition.

Then there is the emerging area of “big data” an increasingly used term that describes the collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. It can range from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes worth of data. Gartner Analyst Doug Laney defined data growth challenges and opportunities as being three-dimensional: Increase in volume (amount of data), velocity (speed of data in and out) and variety (range of data types and sources). 

Or simply as the updated Gartner definition states big data is Three-V focused: High Volume / High Velocity / High Variety that now requires new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision making, insight discovery and process optimization.

The increase in the sheer amount of data storage capacity over the last twenty years has been both exponential in growth and simply mind-blowing.

Much of this marketing related “big data’” is being generated by advancements in technology like smart phones and changing consumer behaviors like online shopping. In both cases actions leave “electronic finger prints” or data points that can be collected and analyzed for cause and effect.

Then there is the whole world of social media, where companies like Facebook and Linked In track online conversations for key words and posting subject matter and then serve up relevant ad content based on projected subject matter relevance and interest. 

In the end, no matter where marketing data comes from, it should be analyzed and used to inform both strategic marketing plans and tactical initiatives that can then be tracked / measured to basically see what works and what doesn’t relative to business objectives. 

All this can help optimize marketing spend and turn marketing from an expense into a projectable investment with ROI hurdle rates. It puts marketing on a more objective footing with finance and senior management types, making it much less subjective in nature.