A panel called "How Big Data Helps Convert Fans Into Customers" at SXSWi.
(Editor’s Note: Rob Anderson, director of content strategy for Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods advertising agency in Little Rock, is on the ground at South-by-Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. He and his team are filing regular reports throughout the week on what’s hot at this influential annual conference.)
“There has to be an algorithm that will make that actionable, but what does that mean from a UX perspective?”
This is the type of question you’ll hear on a random street corner during South-by-Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), the mammoth annual tech and communications gathering in Austin, Texas.
SXSWi is all about trends. In fact, the event organizers are kind enough to offer a “Trends” page on the conference website before the first panel has even convened. Two trends for 2015 are content marketing and “big data.”
What do content marketing and “big data” mean for advertising agencies, brands and businesses trying to attract customers? An assembly of experts attempted to explain in a number of sessions during the opening day of SXSWi.
Here’s a short roundup of some of the more interesting observations.
An Expanding Sea of Content
During a session titled “Simple Ways to Massively Increase Your Content,” it was pointed out that in 2008 there were 1 trillion indexed pages in Google search, but there are now 67 trillion indexed pages. What does that mean? It means that there’s a lot of content out there and competition for attention is at an all-time high.
During the same session, speakers from NBC Sports Media Marketing and Oracle Marketing Cloud explained that marketers and businesses that are creating digital content (for websites and social media) should “stop trying to be amazing and start trying to be useful.”
In other words, consider what your customers or fans want and expect from you and provide them with content that may actually help them in some way.
Grappling with ‘Big Data’
What is “big data” anyway? That was a question the experts on the panel called “Big Data and AI Need Each Other, and You Need Both” attempted to answer.
Maher Masri of management consulting firm McKinsey & Company defined big data as “data so large that it requires new technologies or techniques in order to make it useful.” He explained this by explaining that an individual baseball game can create 20 terabytes of data, but without the technology around to decipher, organize and make it actionable, this information wouldn’t classify as “big data.”
The panel also explained that “artificial intelligence” (AI) is what is required to get the most out of big data. Panelist Manoj Saxena, known for “big data” work at IBM, said that AI brings “a different way of thinking, not much unlike hiring a new team member that brings a different outlook or way of doing things.”
The Digital Genome
In a session titled “How Big Data Helps Convert Fans Into Customers,” a panel of representatives from the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, Turner Sports and Bon Jovi Management explained that now is the time for businesses and brands to “build their digital genome.”
In other words, they should use data they’ve gathered on customers to segment fans and advocates, correlate their interests, draw insights, then partner with other companies or groups that have similar interests or goals in order to efficiently deliver content based on interests.
Bon Jovi Management uses data to help better define the value of a fan or potential customer. In other words, they are able to define Bon Jovi fans based on their interests and needs. Data informs how they approach the user. If someone is interested in new apparel, they don’t send them e-mails for older, clearance items.
More to Come
This weekend, we’ll have more on the intimidating (for many) topic of “big data” and what marketers and marketing firms need to know about it. We’ll also cover major speakers, such as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and sessions on digital content, social media marketing and start-ups and entrepreneurialism.
(You can follow Rob at SXSWi throughout the week on Twitter @RobWAnderson and @WeAreCJRW.)
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