The Dark Side of Data: The 5 Secrets to Profitable Customer Insights

Ever feel you are drowning in data but still don't know what to do with it?

Now prepare to be amazed. You are not alone. A mere 0.5% of the world's collected data is ever put to productive use.

Despite being data-rich, most businesses are actually very insights-poor, failing to harness the true potential of the vast, untapped resources at their disposal. It's every one's dark little secret.

So instead of following the crowds of businesses chasing the "holy grail" of AI and data tools, I want to clue you in to the massive opportunity - the underutlised 99.5% of data, known as "dark data," - where the real customer insights are buried.

Dark data, in my view, encompasses five distinct realms, each with its unique value and a strategic path to unlocking profitable customer insights:

The 5 Types of Dark Data

1. ‘Untapped’ Dark Data: The Low-Hanging Fruit

This is the traditional definition of dark data. It's data your company already owns but isn't utilizing—log files, ad server data, open-end customer feedback from surveys, dark social (e.g. slack, member communities, internal communications), sales or customer support transcripts, AI notetaker meeting transcripts and more. 

This is the low-hanging fruit companies should start with before getting new data, as it will save you a lot of time and money. Using LLMs to analyze this data first can yield quick wins and valuable insights without significant additional investment. 

This type of data is useful for quickly identifying areas for optimization, uncovering hidden patterns in customer behavior, and finding new opportunities within existing operations and offerings. 

You can also use it to improve customer experience by analyzing feedback, optimize marketing campaigns through website analytics, and enhance product development with product usage data. Please eTnsure you refrain from including confidential or personally identifiable information for privacy and ethical considerations.

2. ‘Unscrapped’ Dark Data: The Public Goldmine

The second source of dark data is the publicly available data on the interwebs.

The internet has revolutionized our understanding of human desires. Once upon a time, this data was hidden in individual minds, but this information is now openly shared online as public social media posts, forum discussions, product reviews, memes, searches, images, videos, podcasts and other ‘digital exhaust’, creating a vast public goldmine of customer sentiment, preferences, and emerging trends.

This vast public goldmine of customer sentiment, preferences, and emerging trends is also often overlooked.

Every search query, tweet, Facebook like, Amazon purchase, or Twitch stream, represents a valuable data point waiting to be mined. This user-generated content provides an unprecedented window into unfiltered thoughts, needs, and behaviors, akin to a real-time focus group of millions. It offers a glimpse into the collective consciousness of your customer and prospect base.

However, companies often leave this treasure trove of dark data ‘on the scrap heap’. From launching data-driven products to identifying emerging trends, the potential of unscrapped data is immense. 

So after exhausting internal 'untapped' data, companies should look to the vast public data exhaust to understand organic customer sentiments, spot emerging trends, and identify unmet needs. This is invaluable for product/service ideation, capturing voice-of-customer insights, and getting ahead of market shifts.  This is also a high-priority area for understanding your target market and identifying unmet needs. You can conduct “netnographic” market research by analyzing social media conversations, online discussions, comment sections and online reviews to gain competitive intelligence and spot trends or emerging interests.

There are also many free tools out there to scrape,  aggregate and analyze this data, so we can move beyond intuition and guesswork to understand how people interact with the world, predict trends, and make data-driven decisions to fuel innovation and business growth.

3. ‘Unwrapped’ Dark Data: The Deep, Emotional Layer

The third area where businesses often remain "in the dark" is qualitative data.

While big data tells us the "what," qualitative data reveals the "why" behind customer behavior. It provides richer insights into human emotions, motivations, and their cultural context.

This rich data has traditionally been gathered through more costly, expert-led ethnographic research but now multimodal AI can now "unwrap" these rich qualitative insights remotely and at immense scale from videos, images, and hold AI-moderated conversations in multi-languages.  Moreover, AI can tap into vast knowledge bases that were previously difficult to access and analyze spanning human, social, behavioral, and neuro sciences, as well as other 'lost' timeless wisdom that hold universal human truths.  

Although it requires more sophisticated analysis, the insights gleaned from unwrapped thick data can be incredibly powerful for understanding the emotional and cultural drivers of customer behavior and contextual cues.  Companies can use this type of dark data to create detailed customer journey maps, develop rich customer personas, and build brands and messages that resonate emotionally with your audience.

4. ‘Unmapped’ Dark Data: The Future Frontier

This category is when we venture beyond the ‘untapped’, ‘unscrapped’ and ‘unwrapped’ data we already possess, and use the predictive power of AI to offer a glimpse into the future. 

When used purposefully and intentionally, AI can help us delve into the unknown, uncovering insights that guide us through uncharted territories. By simulating potential scenarios, forecasting trends, and testing hypotheses with synthetic data and personas, AI enriches strategic decision-making and fuels innovation.

Vision-led businesses can use AI to construct diverse "what-if" scenarios, anticipating outcomes and preparing for various futures, from market fluctuations to technological disruptions. Furthermore, AI enables pattern and trend identification, providing valuable insights for resource allocation and strategic planning. Generating artificial data and personas allows for risk mitigation and the fostering of innovation by simulating customer responses, stress-testing and validating ideas, hunches and strategies, to anticipate and prepare for challenges before launch.

By embracing this uncharted realm of unmapped dark data, we can harness AI's predictive power to shape a future that aligns with our goals and aspirations.

5. ‘Uncapped’ Dark Data: The Human Element

The most profound, yet often overlooked, source of dark data lies within us —our minds and bodies. To truly understand human behavior and drive innovation, we must "uncap" our understanding of data to include the full spectrum of human experience.

The human brain, a data storage and processing powerhouse, possesses immense potential with its neuroplasticity, energy efficiency, and connections to gut and heart intelligence. Moreover, the vast storage capacity in one single gram of our DNA rivals the total storage capacity of all the world's data centers combined.

Big data is not the complete truth. Big data represents merely the final output of a complex chain of cause and effect, originating from environmental triggers that spark thoughts, emotions, actions, and ultimately, results (or data points). 

However, in business we are often taught to limit our understanding of "data" to the left-brained realm of numbers, logic and analysis. 

By doing this we essentially “cap” our knowledge of people to the 4% of data that can be measured or modeled through the external senses.  At the same time we overlook the remaining 96% dedicated to intuition, creativity, feelings and emotional intelligence—key drivers of human behavior.

To truly understand people and drive innovation, we must "uncap" our human potential, embracing and respecting the full spectrum of inner senses like meaning, causation, and creativity as forms of data too.

Business leaders can facilitate this transition by leveraging AI as an extension of our will and creativity, utilizing it as a strategic partner or advisory board to fine-tune our own inner LLM by:

• Using The Power of Intuition: Intuition is not just a hunch; it's a culmination of subconscious data processing. Businesses can cultivate this by encouraging employees to trust their gut feelings, supported by data-driven insights.
• Develop Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: Leaders who understand and manage their emotions effectively create more collaborative and innovative teams. By promoting empathy and self-awareness, companies can improve decision-making and problem-solving across the organization.
• Embracing Creativity and Diversity of Thought: Creativity isn't just for artists; it's the engine of innovation. Businesses can foster creativity by encouraging diverse perspectives, creating safe spaces for experimentation, and rewarding out-of-the-box thinking.
• Recognising The Mind-Body Connection: Our gut bacteria play a surprising role in our mood, decisions, and even our cravings. By understanding this connection, companies can create products and experiences that resonate with consumers on a deeper, physiological level.
• Understand Universal Patterns and Archetypes:  Universal archetypes like the Hero, the Lover, or the Sage are recurring patterns in our collective unconscious. By understanding these archetypes, companies can craft narratives and brand stories that deeply resonate with consumers on an emotional and psychological level.
• Acknowledging Ancestral Wisdom and Epigenetics: Our genes carry a wealth of information about our ancestors' experiences and predispositions. Understanding that this data exists can help us develop more personalized solutions or even create more targeted marketing campaigns.

By embracing the uncapped data within ourselves, we open up new avenues for understanding our customers, driving innovation, and creating products and services that truly resonate with the human experience.

Some Parting Thoughts ...

The Creative Power of Darkness

Most transformative ideas and creative breakthroughs emerge not from the well-lit realms of structured knowledge, but from the fertile darkness of the unknown. 

We see this in everything. The dark womb of the mother nurtures new life, the rich soil of the earth fosters new growth, and the vast expanse of the universe emerges from dark matter. Similarly, the depths of our minds, where dreams and intuition reside, are the birthplace of our most creative ideas.

Embracing this darkness is also essential for unlocking the true potential of data. By venturing into the uncharted territories of untapped, unscrapped, unwrapped, unmapped, and uncapped dark data, companies can tap into a wellspring of innovation and discover insights that would otherwise remain hidden.

The Path to Profitable Insights

The path to unlocking profitable customer insights from dark data begins with a strategic approach. 

Start with the low-hanging fruit of untapped data, then delve into the public goldmine of unscrapped data. As you progress, use conversational and observational AI to incorporate the emotional layer of unwrapped thick data and explore the future frontier of unmapped data. Throughout this journey, remember to tap into the uncapped data of your own human intelligence to guide your efforts.

By embracing the full spectrum of dark data and leveraging the power of AI in conjunction with human intuition - visionary businesses, innovators, and changemakers can uncover a world of customer insights, drive innovation, and solve complex problems in unprecedented ways. 

The future belongs to those who dare to venture into the darkness and harness the transformative power of data, both within and outside of ourselves.