Identifying the Correct Data

Given the paradigm shift in technology & its outreach the avenues for marketing has broadened and have been given totally a new shape.

But as the saying goes “Every system has its merits & demerits” same stands for the shift of promotional mix towards digital. The rise of social media gave rise to independent forums wherein customers are not relied on a particular or company feed information. With expansion of technology the channels for marketing widens and accordingly the P of marketing are now 7 from 4.

Technology Platforms

Ask any tech geek , they will list you numerous platforms which you might not have heard of; ask any marketing expert they will list you multiple platforms effective for marketing which companies can explore but ask any CMO he/she might struggle to give you an answer what is suitable or effective for their firms marketing strategy.


The rise of social media & mobile technology is now not limited to a particular segment, interestingly it is being accepted across various demographic segments including gender & age.

Phenomena of Data or Big Data
The rise of social media and various digital platforms have given rise to the new phenomena of Big Data. Since now every activity on these platforms are a consequence of codes or computer programmes which can be recorded. 

Therefore any user who does any activity becomes a profile & all its activities are noted as a data which basically reflects the critical information of the user.


Well this is the information that companies look for so as to understand what customers like so that they can sell only those things. Now in order to capture this data companies invest considerable resources to build up a team of analyst & researchers who acquire process &analyse that data technically known as Data Mining.

This deal looks simple on the first hand but if it looked at closely you will understand that there are multiple platforms and channels in which millions of users are active. The basic feature of digital media unlike traditional mass media is that it has no boundaries. So this has created a situation where now, be it any platform there is the explosion of data which is being recorded or developed.

Very often we see likes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest boasting of how much data they process daily in terms of user activity which runs in billions of terabytes. Really nail-biting, and this becomes a nightmare for these data miners because this one such mine which unlike minerals never get exhausted but fills up every day.

Now when companies who were grappling with this situation are being increasingly warned about the relevance of data. It becomes apparent that simply going after and crunching the available or incoming flow of data has not yielded the results which companies hoped for. Maths also require some human touch wherein the company has to decide upon sources as well what channels to be taken into consideration while collecting data. On every site or platform there is enormous data generated which tempts marketers to capture everything but gradually it becomes inhuman. The following article of Tech Republic clearly emphasize this point.

It has been often been seen that companies who went after chasing big data and indulge in quantitive analysis with qualitative thought process or strategy have not seen light at the end of tunnel because the tunnel never ended.

In various interviews CMOs often say they are not able to keep pace with the change in technologies leave alone implement them. But now it is felt that it is not required to, since one cannot expect big campaigns to simply migrate from platform to platform without getting any ROI. They should focus on certain platforms and build upon them because one will see that follows tech space very keenly the pace of change & it has no limit. Forbes very clearly states in this article.

IBM has also raised this issue in its interaction with various CMOs. Here is a sum up of it.

Therefore, identifying the correct data is more important than going after Big Data because like companies no matter what the pace of technology is, even the customer does not adopt so fast. So relax, identify and then mine apparently you will see light at the end of tunnel.