The Big Data-Driven Business: How to Use Big Data to Win Customers, Beat Competitors, and Boost Profits by Russell Glass & Sean Callahan

Author:Russell Glass & Sean Callahan [Glass, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781118889800
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-11-05T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Implementing a Big Data Plan (Sometimes by Thinking Small)

Big data is an intimidating concept. It sounds hard. It sounds overwhelming. It sounds expensive.

Data has always been with us. The difference now is that is it more accessible and more immediate. Data, lots of it, is available in real time.

“It's been here for a very long time,” Vinny Sosa, director of web intelligence and optimization at Citrix Systems, marketers of GoToMeeting, said of big data. “Now it just has a name.”

The key to getting big data right at your company is not to get bogged down with the concept of big data. Start by identifying the needs of your customers and your business. Also, think small—focus on the parts of data you think can change your business for the better, not on the entirety of the data available to you. Keep in mind the old proverb: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Note that leveraging data is not reserved for big companies. Big companies do have advantages, such as deep pockets. But small companies have advantages, too. For instance, they are nimble and are often not tied down by legacy systems and data siloed in various corners of the company.

It's instructive to examine how George Stenitzer approached bringing more data and analytics into his marketing department when he was the vice president of communications at Tellabs back in 2010. Stenitzer focused first on what he wanted. He knew Tellabs, a telecommunications equipment company, had been investing a significant amount in its website. Not only was Tellabs investing time and money into building the website and populating it with content, but it was also investing in search engine optimization, e-mail promotion, display advertising, and other tactics to drive prospects to the site.

Stenitzer, who now runs his own marketing consulting firm, Crystal Clear Communications, didn't believe that Tellabs was getting its money's worth from its website. He wanted more “soft conversions” from site visitors; he defined soft conversions as reading a blog post, watching a video, or interacting with certain other content on the site without having to supply an e-mail address. He also, of course, wanted more “hard conversions,” where prospects shared their e-mail addresses to download white papers and other similar content.

In 2010, Tellabs was generating soft conversions at about a 10 percent rate, meaning that one out of every 10 visitors to the site interacted with a piece of Tellabs content. Stenitzer wanted to improve that rate. At the same time, he wanted to demonstrate marketing's contribution to revenue. To accomplish these goals, both of which required collecting and analyzing more data, he took three basic steps:

First, he revamped Tellabs.com to encourage more content interaction.

Next, he invested in new analytics tools from IBM and marketing automation technology from marketing automation firm Marketo.

And finally, he used these software tools both to measure his content efforts and to nurture prospects in the Tellabs e-mail database toward becoming genuine leads and ultimately customers.

In revamping Tellabs.com, Stenitzer identified that

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