The Big Data Picture: The Bird's Eye View of Your Market

The Buck Doesn't Stop There

You likely understand that Big Data is really a very (VERY) large collection of data points surrounding all sorts of world events. Mostly, we consider these to be consumer actions such as purchases or even sales inquiries, which nearly every product or service provider can use to better target their end consumers with offers or other pertinent opportunities.

But all too often, we stop here when describing Big Data. Why? Well, for the most part, people see that alone as an immediate value proposition and consider that the end of the conversation. But are what the other advantages surrounding the sorts of business insight that Big Data can provide? If you're intrigued, then you might be interested in learning more about the Big Data picture.

The Big Data Picture

So the Big Data picture can really be summed up with the idea of trends. If you can imagine a consumer transaction (someone making a purchase at a point-of-sale terminal) as a single dot, then zoom outward slowly to a series of transactions at that store, further out to show the store's transaction that day, outward still to show that store's industry vertical, and so on—now you're starting to see unique data points that have their own, powerful impact on SMB/enterprise decision-making, but also... trends beginning to form. You might, for instance, see all consumer transactions for the day (no matter the vertical) demonstrating an increase among one demographic over last year, but a decrease among another demographic over last year. And before you know it, your market has shifted.

How Does Big Data Come into Play?

In addition to local, regional, national and even global trends, there are trends that cover human nature as a species. Okay, so that sounds a bit far-fetched, but we live in some fairly amazing times where the information collected from observing consumers (with the intent of monetizing the intelligence gathered with almost knee-jerk reply) is telling us more about long-term strategies than we might otherwise have learned in 20 back-to-back focus campaigns.

In short, while we have been focused on consumer motivation such as the psychologically driving factors behind use of color in advertising, round-the-bend predictive data can provide insights on when such transactions might take place. Both are fascinating and helpful in building campaigns, but one can more directly drive the conversation around marketing ROI.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

So just as with the concept itself, practical application of Big Data can seem like a "tomorrow thing," but if this is your thinking, then you might want to prep for a hard couple of years ahead. Why? Because offrs has up-ended the access to Big Data and we've built a series of tools to help implement it into your SMB today. Taking the points from above, you can see that small transactions form the structure of a trend and those trends can give you significant insights into the twists and turns in the market ahead. Wall Street relies on this info and it's only a matter of time before someone servicing your industry picks up on this tool too. Will that be you and your team... your brand?

To view the original article, visit the offrs blog.