Where Is The Human In The Age Of Data?

Numbers are a great attraction.

The core of nearly every business function is data, and nowhere more so when it comes to Marketing, Finance and Product R&D. Without the numbers, no way are we going to get our reports done. Without the numbers we don’t know where to align our financial budget for the year. Without specific consumer behavioral data, we run the risk of squirreling precious dollars down the drain researching and manufacturing a product that benefits no one. That’s why we pay agencies to work through the methodologies of obtaining the necessary information. Traditional media, social media, online, offline, one-to-one customer surveys and so on, it is all done.

All that information is valuable, make no mistake about that.

It does get easy to focus our attention to the overwhelming amount of numbers, figures, statements and conclusions. When that happens, the information is nothing more than a spreadsheet if the centre of all that is lost.

I’m referring to the Consumer.

The Consumer has to be at the heart of all the data you’ve accumulated. Because that’s what your business is really about, isn’t it? Your Consumer. Your Customer. It leads us to this next question- How then, does one marry the two together whilst achieving the required outcomes?

Through Content.

To me, Content is what drives behaviors. Content is what attracts your audience in the very first place and then makes them your prospects before becoming your customers and your evangelist eventually. Content is what keeps them with you every step of the way as they progress through the funnel.

When it comes to data collection, Content drives response- and this response- however it is, negative, positive, etc.) is in fact what consumer behavior exhibits. With audience-specific content, consumer behavior becomes predictable. Yes, predictable.

Content ---> à Response ---> à Behavior Pattern ---> à Data

Let’s say you’ve got a product that you’re about to launch and you have to know how well it is going to do in the market. You create audience-specific content based on your understanding of your customer, or as some will put it, demographic-specific content that will evoke a response.

 

From the historical data you can predict whether they will buy your current and future product, whether they will not. You can predict who will buy it, when they will buy it, why they buy it and whether they will tell others about it. You can predict how more of your product they will want to own or if they will never use it again. With these data, you know where to allocate the budget and what kind of content is required to trigger the desired response. All these predictions will translate into actual behaviors, and those behaviors will confirm the data if you release the correct content. In other words, data becomes nothing more than a tool to guide and tell the companies what kind of content the consumer is demanding, and the confirmation to the BIG data is what the consumer buying behaviors exhibit.

It’s a cyclical thing. Well-known products often go through the data mill as a form of check and balance pretty frequently too. After all, buying patterns disappear, demographics do change, buyers change their minds, whatever. You can do all the psychological and sociological predictions and there will always be an anomaly somewhere. There will always be new preferences. All of which formulates new data, which then creates further need for product development and content creation.

It is vital for brands not to over rely on the science of numbers alone though. Despite what might appear to be an overwhelming confirmation of a certain behavior, a balance between those figures and your own instinct has to be achieved. Hollywood studio executives do this from time to time. Occasionally a character in fact gets scripted in halfway during production or the movie goes for reshoots after filming completed because fans demand for it, despite the fact that the big data predictions report on the executives’ table may say its very well positioned otherwise.

Nothing replaces paying close attention to your prospects and following your instinct. Making business decisions based entirely on the numbers leaves the human element out, and with that, the experience and emotional resonance you need with your consumers themselves.

After all, if the machine after gaining self-awareness can shed tears, your customer is really, just human?