It’s hard to go through just a week’s worth of web-surfing without stumbling upon talk of Big Data and how it’s supposed to help businesses do better. The “rah-rah-rah” of Big Data is all well and good, but without practical application, it’s all just words. Do you actually have any idea how Big Data can work for you?
In the spirit of providing answers, here are some tips on how you can make Big Data work in and for your business, whether you’re the owner or just have a job somewhere in the hierarchy.
Big Data could mean big sales if the information is properly applied
First, Establish A Data-Friendly Culture
All of the data in the world, as well as all the means of analyzing it, are ultimately useless unless your business has a data-driven mindset. The article “5 Things You Need to Do to Make a Big Data Initiative Successful” explains that a data-friendly company is one “… that values data and utilizes it top to bottom.”
This is a crucial first step. After all, the best way to gain the most benefit from any resource is to make sure everyone has a good understanding and appreciation of it. Everyone in your business who uses Big Data should know how to handle it, who should have access to it, and so on.
Now, as far as practical application goes …
Email Metrics
Despite the rise of texting, email still has a solid place in online marketing campaigns. Big Data, in the context of email, provides you with statistics for clicks, forwards, and open rates. By paying attention to these rates and how they apply to each email blast you send out, you can see which campaigns have the most success and which fall short. By ascertaining the patterns, you can get a good idea of which ideas you should repeat, and which should be tossed.
Social Media Statistics
By consulting social media statistics, usually via dashboards provided by the various social networks, you can learn what the people like. Much as in the case of email metrics, you can track likes, visits, shares, replies, and click-throughs, and ascertain what content is best received.
Whether it’s Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, or another of the many networks out there, it’s a safe bet that you can find most online users there. Social media is popular, and a good marketing professional takes the message where the people are.
Search Engine Analytics
You can use various analytics tools provided by search engines such as Google to see what topics people are researching that are relevant to your business, how often they conduct these searches, even when the majority of these searches are made.
What’s more, you can even track how often your business comes up in a search query over a given period. Web traffic figures can thus be utilized to see how often your company is trending.
Spending Habits
Finally, you can use figures gleaned from Big Data to analyze your customers’ spending habits. Whether it’s from receipts generated by customers who visit your brick and mortar establishment, or from online billing statements, a savvy marketing professional can figure out when people buy more, and what they buy more of.
The quality of information taken from Big Data is only as useful as the means used to apply it. Big Data is a flood of information from a dizzying number of sources, delivered to you with lightning speed. The key is to focus on certain aspects of it (such as the ones mentioned above), use that narrow focus to get a good picture on what your customers are like, and then make informed changes to your selling approach.
