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What Can Small Businesses do with Big Data?

In this rapidly changing digital environment, the days of customer interaction requiring a physical storefront are long gone. On a daily basis, customers are now interacting with their favorite businesses and brands through e-commerce, social media platforms, digital marketing campaigns and much more. This creates the ability for businesses to gather data from consumers like never before. Small businesses can gain a competitive advantage not only by simply gathering consumer data, but by tracking, measuring, analyzing and turning the information gathered into various business strategies. Let’s start with a few examples of the types of data small businesses should be collecting: • Relevant contact information: It is vital to have the ability to reach out, market, sell, and gain insight from your current customers and potential consumers.

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• User Experience: Understanding what parts of your website, social media pages, marketing campaigns, etc. are the most popular is key. It can help guide the business in making necessary adjustments to more accurately hit what the consumer wants. • Buying Behavior: By tracking buying behavior, a small business should be able to answer questions like: • Are they interacting with us often? • Are they repeat customers? • Are they waiting for deals or sales to purchase? • How likely are customers willing to recommend our service or product? The process of taking raw data and turning it into a tangible narrative can help answer endless questions that can provide important insight and direction for the business. • Why the customer left: Customer turnover is expected, but if you capture the reasons why a customer is no longer purchasing or interacting with your products or services, you might be able to establish new practices for customer retention. Gathering the information is the first step. After you gather the raw data it is a necessary step to convert that into actionable information. The ability to interpret that information can create a major competitive advantage for your business and and help you: • Find new customers • Increase customer retention • Improve customer service • Better direct marketing efforts • Track social media interaction and impact • Predict sales and market trends Gathering consumer data and implementing it into your business strategy is a great way to create a competitive advantage. Taking the first step is key and if you aren’t sure where to start, a great resource is Google Analytics. It is a free software that lets you analyze the traffic on your website. It tracks visitor behavior by outlining where traffic is coming from, how audiences are engaging, how long visitors are staying, etc.