How businesses can turn big data into smart data - Part 1

Over a series of monthly instalments, I will aim to tackle the ever growing issue of turning big data into actionable insights. Singapore’s level of digital activity is staggering. In APAC, we have the fourth highest mobile penetration (148%) and spend 19.6 hours per month on Facebook, more than twice the global average (8.3 hours).

These high levels of online activity are creating enormous amounts of data that can be a treasure trove for marketers, but can also be an enormous headache to evaluate.

The World Federation of Advertisers recently released a global brand study that revealed 54% of marketers struggle to cope with the huge volume of data being generated from digital and online activity, and 49% struggle to deploy practical insights across the business.

Closer to home, Adobe’s APAC marketing performance dashboard revealed similarily that more than one third of marketers struggle to measure the value and return of digital marketing investments.

So if you are facing these problems, you’re not alone! What will set you apart is your ability to do something about it, and fast!

But how to get started?

Put plainly, keep it simple and start small; review your business goals and objectives and match them to your digital activity. Get all the relevant teams and stakeholders on board and establish shared success metrics that will grow your business.

Everyone is then working towards shared goals and a shared focus, which will (hopefully) avoid getting lured into “data spewing” - presentations of 100+ slides containing graphs and numbers that nobody understands! I have attended enough of these meetings to know many (if not most) businesses are guilty of this.

Once you have established the measurement goals and KPIs, it's time to apply these to your digital assets. Start with your website – what is the success metric going to be?

If you transact online, this should be easy, as you already have a clear path to purchase and a dollar value to track. If you don’t transact online, ask what is the most important action your site can contribute to your business – store location; loyalty program sign-ups? Assign a dollar value and measure it.

What about mobile? You can count app downloads, but that should not be your number one metric. Nobody cares how many people download your app if no one uses it. Instead, count metrics such as usage times and volumes and monitor what times of day are the busiest. This will help you find ways to grow the user base and increase engagement.

Once you have these metrics and track them correctly, you can apply the trends to your online marketing; for example, running ads at high mobile usage times, if that is an insight you derive from the data.

This will improve ad performance, knowing your target market is active at these times, as well as cost efficiencies, as you don’t run your ads the entire day. An actionable insight- higher engagement, more active users, and lower advertising costs!

Let’s take a quick look at social. If you are measuring only ‘likes’ on Facebook, ask yourself if that is actually increasing profitability; instead, apply more meaningful metrics, like visitor frequency rates, or audience growth rates. By tying in business-impacting KPI’s, finding insight in the data is much easier.

Remember, start small. Think of your business first and what moves it forward. Bring in the right teams to help you get there. Don’t try to analyse ALL the data; start by focusing on what means the most to you and then build strategies around that. Once you master this, you are on your way and beginning your data-driven journey.

Finally, understand that your online assets (site, app, social, marketing) are simply tools to help you reach your business goals.

If you think of them otherwise, or silo them, you will not know how to connect them to your business. Just as potential customers are connected all the time, businesses should also connect all activity (online or offline) to each other to truly view and assess impact.

If you can start today and just focus on these few basic tips, you will achieve two things: pioneering your teams to becoming data-driven; and beginning to use the data for something useful to your business. This should put you ahead of your competition and make your bosses very happy!