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Big Data is becoming an even bigger deal. And when things get big, it gets more important to stand out from the crowd.

Just this week, a group of Silicon Valley investment superstars, including Ron Conway and Andreessen Horowitz, announced another fund, Big Data Elite, targeted at Big Data start-ups.

 At Write Angle, we’ve done a number of projects for companies in the Big Data realm, including Sumo Logic, Glassbeam and Sensage (now Hexis Cyber Solutions). What’s clear to us is that the term “big data” means different things to different people – which is another way of saying it may mean nothing at all without the proper context. Big Data applications and analysis services run the gamut from information security to customer support to consumer marketing to social media.

As the volume of hype becomes deafening in the Big Data arena, it’s easy for a young company to be grouped together with other perceived players despite having little, if anything, in common with them. Market analysts, journalists and potential customers may not have clue about who does what in which space – or even if the space exists.

Would-be Big Data players must ensure that they differentiate themselves in terms of what market they’re targeting and how they serve that market better than anyone else. If you’re not continuously informing your market about who you are and what makes you worth paying attention to – with constantly refreshed content across your media platforms – competitors who articulate a more compelling story will surely pass you by.

iStockphoto, scanrail

Communicating what makes you different in the Big Data analytics market has never been more important than right now. The sheer number of exhibitors staking a claim in the Big Data bonanza at the Strata Conference underscores how quickly competition is emerging in this market.

 This week’s conference showcased a veritable Who’s Who in the industry today, including one of our clients, Glassbeam.  Distinguishing itself among the throng of Big Data players, Glassbeam develops big data applications that help companies improve their business and IT operations by intelligently extracting strategic and tactical insights from huge amounts of multi-structured machine data by way of pre-packaged applications.

 To communicate this market position, we helped Glassbeam by preparing fresh web content, creating a product-management solutions brief, a white paper on multi-structured data and a strategic case study featuring Aruba Networks.

 As the competitive landscape become further cluttered with more vendors, claims and counterclaims, credible content  that sets a vendor apart from the crowd will only grow in importance.

Jerry Della Femina, legendary ad executive from the “Mad Men” era, insisted his copywriters gather seven times the amount of source information needed on any subject prior to penning one word of marketing material.  A half-century later, we can’t argue.

The time-honored approach paid off again this week in the splashy debut of our client Sumo Logic, a next-generation log management and analytics service competing in the red hot Big Data revolution.  What we generated on their behalf, starting from scratch, amounted to a full menu of short- and long-form content, from web copy to FAQs, datasheets, use cases, case studies and whitepapers.

Sumo Logic made its directive crystal clear: develop compelling content that drives web traffic and craft a story that positions the company as highly differentiated, innovative and above all else, relevant and believable.   To the client’s credit, they demanded high-value content that stands up to the pushing, shoving and “prove it” probes from devil’s advocates: customers, media and analysts alike.

So what’s the key lesson learned? It begins with gathering as much relevant secondary and background material as possible.  Then comes a layer of deep sourcing sessions or interviews with all the key people. Kudos to our client for their enthusiastic collaboration providing direct and extensive access to the CEO, CTO, co-founder and director of biz dev, and the executive sales liaison. It’s here where we extract the primary material.  In these sessions we want to come away with the “ore” that can be processed into high-grade ingots:  the specific, real-world examples of customer struggles and challenges.  We probe for as many viable use-cases as possible.

What we’ve learned over the years is that the stronger the reader identification with these use cases, the deeper the impression and the more compelling the read. Only when we’ve extracted all relevant details do we prepare a tight outline as the storyboard or blueprint of the final product. Each piece — web pages, case studies, whitepapers and more — is a specific chapter in the company story.

The Sumo Logic intro reminded us, again, how perspiration trumps inspiration when it comes to crafting really great marketing content. Content drives marketing and sales today as in no other time.  And somewhere, Jerry D. is smiling.

What’s your content-development process?  How do your mobilize for intros and product launches?