BIG DATA  Good data management = productivity and profits. It enables you to measure user activity in more detail, use data and analytics to inform decisions, profoundly reshape your business strategy and change the way you compete. 

 

In the clip above, "Competing through data," an MIT professor, a data entrepreneur and Butler U's basketball coach offer their "big data" game plans. 

 

Investments in technological infrastructure and the skillset needed to put the data to work for your business are key. That skillset is not just analytical, but also a willingness to look at data in a new way. You no longer want to use data to confirm decisions already made, but use it to learn new things and to discover the right answer.  

 

TAG MANAGEMENT  Tags are pieces of code or pixels placed onto web pages that enable the tracking of visitor behavior and provide useful data for more targeted marketing and promotional offers. 

 

A massive amount of tags can be created from various marketing and media efforts, and a good tag management system that supports both tag management and analytics is a priority for sophisticated marketers today. 

 

There's a lot to know and understand in this red-hot space, like the evolution of tag management (more HERE) and how to use tag management and comply with privacy standards (more HERE). A great blog, Tagman, publishes news about this fast-moving topic on a daily basis.

  

GOOGLE SECURE NATURAL SEARCH KEYWORD REMOVAL ACT  In order to protect the privacy of users who are logged into their Google accounts (Gmail, et al.), Google said it "...will no longer report the query terms the user searched on to reach (a) site." 

 

This will have big implications for marketers who will no longer be able to view the keywords used by visitors that come from Google organic search in their web analytics reports, very valuable information for optimizing a website.