Big data can be a nightmare for many marketers. With a high volume of incoming customer information, this can often mean added stress and extra costs for most professionals. Yet despite the challenges, this data can be a vital resource for boosting corporate marketing activity. It can provide tangible competitive advantages and remove the guesswork by identifying customer behaviors, habits and demographics if used properly.  In order to achieve this success and access the right information, marketers must begin by asking the right questions and follow it up by identifying the right actions that best fit the goals of the company.

Here are three questions every marketer should ask of their big data.

1. What are the goals?

To begin, it is extremely important to define the purpose of any big data campaign. A campaign without clear goals is most certainly going to fail and end up wasting company money. Is the objective more about improving brand identity or increasing sales? And what data is needed to achieve this business growth?

2. Where is the required data?

The next important step is to determine where the needed data resides. It may, in fact, already by available to the company, or even reside in internal CRM systems or other databases. It is important for brands to identify what is missing before building a big data campaign. Once you know where the data resides, you can work on the process of pulling the right data for your goals.

1. How can you leverage the data to increase your competitiveness?

According to some studies, companies that don’t have proper big data strategies in place are more likely to remain less profitable than their competitors. Therefore marketers should ask themselves what data could be useful in order to obtain a competitive advantage.  With a well-run analysis, it should be easier to meet customer needs and wants, leverage sales and increase profits. Competitive advantage can also be found by answering the following questions about your competitors: what are they doing better than you? And why are some customers choosing their products instead of yours? These answers may be found by analyzing social media posts, for example.

Marketers should know the old business adage that says that about 20 percent of customers produce 80 percent of revenue.  It is most important to understand that the goal should not be to obtain a thousand more customers, but to satisfy the ones that bring in the most revenue and understanding what their key traits are.

Overall, every marketer should be asking these questions: What is the purpose of my Big Data campaign? What are my objectives? What data do I need to grow my business and the tools to gather it? What data can give me a competitive advantage? Who are my 80/20 customers and how can I create more leads? With the right resources and tools to answer these questions, every marketing professional can succeed in the world of big data.