Internet Marketing Creates Big Data and Big Headaches for Business

In the Internet and social media marketing space content is king but the data that is generated by that content in the next in line to the throne and many would contend is the “real” king. In fact, unless you can truly monitor the impact of all the great content your company has produced then you can only really say that you have produced great content. News flash: Great content doesn’t make the cut in C-level business discussions, revenue and profits do.

What is happening is that businesses have more data than ever at their disposal but it’s not manageable thus it can almost seem useless. It’s like having a huge uncut diamond but having no way to refine it to the point that it realizes its true market value. A recent study by Connotate as reported by eMarketer shows that companies are wrestling with this problem every day. Heck, 21% of the people polled couldn’t even define big data!

The following chart lists the challenges that companies are seeing with regard to the amount of data they have at their disposal yet can’t seem to wrestle to the mat. I think you could actually substitute the word “excuses’ for “challenges” but that’s just me.

It’s almost impossible not to chuckle when you read that data aggregation managers find social media to be a problem because of the variety of data sources etc while social media is the marketing darling of the foreseeable future that they are not going to be able to outrun.

So what’s the net result of this over abundance of data? It’s pretty funny actually if the next chart is to be believed. For all of the information collected about customers and their behaviors big data boils down to a way to keep an eye on the competition for most while the revenue generating side of it slides down the scale. Why? Because it is hard to measure while there are market ready tools that can listen to what the competition is doing (tools like Trackur ).

So while marketers are busy outrunning themselves to play with the latest and greatest toys that simply generate more data, the infrastructure behind them is ill-prepared to handle that data thus, in many instances, rendering it useless. An Internet and social media marketing conundrum wouldn’t you say?

If you are looking to find the next “killer app” find a way to solve this issue. There is NO larger problem in the Internet space than not being able to utilize the massive amounts of data that is available to marketers and businesses in general.

What’s your take?