Refined social data changes everything you ever thought about marketing

September 24th, 2009

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21782644@N04/3191535692

This is the basis for my presentation @ Monitoring Social Information

In the near future wars will be fought over scarce resources; water, oil, and food. The other war that will be fought will be over data. Especially data that enables people and businesses to find each other when they need each other the most.

Today in the networked society we leave data trails; plumes of information, the personal exhaust from our digital interactions, these are the shadows and footprints of our daily lives. Which companies are so desperate to harvest, aggregate and refine into valuable social intelligence, which they hope will offer them significant commercial returns in revenues and competitive advantage.

Data is the exhaust of our personal interactions, leaving trails, shadows and footprints

Data is moving centre stage in the highly competitive world of marketing and commerce. Yet, your destiny with data is complex. Because, there are legitimate concerns raised about who actually owns that information. Privacy issues become a key battleground when our identities can be pieced together via data flows. Our presence, proximity, and identities all become part of the massive flows of communication data that are awash in the world.

But data can also deliver products and services that really enable us as people to make better transactions and decisions. People might be prepared to make their data available to certain companies changing the relationship between business and customer – trust could be built by ensuring one is delivering the most appropriate message to the most appropriate audience. On the Harvard VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) site, they write,

Relationships are voluntary.
Customers are born free and independent of vendors.
Customers control their own data. They can share data selectively and control the terms of its use.
Customers are points of integration and origination for their own data.
Customers can assert their own terms of engagement and service.
Customers are free to express their demands and intentions outside any company’s control.

These can all be summed up in the statement Free customers are more valuable than captive ones.

Dataportability (here) and (here) will also a word that will be used as frequently as Social Media – believe me.

This means companies interested in marketing to drive commercial success, or companies using data to enhance their business models must rethink how they create value. Because in the search economy, where we are pulling on information, actively seeking it to enable us to make and take better decisions and transactions. The old way of doing things just wont do.

There are some white papers on data and marketing here

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