Are You Making Full Use of Your Data?
Data is a gem many businesses undervalue. This is because extracting and making sense of data can be mind boggling. Data nonetheless allows research and development (R&D) to take place. R&D is what enables start up companies to grow into million dollar businesses.
As a business, you need to make full use of your data. If you’re not, here’s what you are missing out on:
Knowing your audience
This is probably the most important aspect as knowing your audience is fundamental. Without knowing your audience, you cannot stir your business in the right direction, your business is sure to fail. Research helps you answer questions about your audience such as; Who are they? What do they want? How do they want it? Knowing your audience allows companies to successfully communicate, while also meeting their wants and needs. Knowing your audience can direct you in finding new customers like your current ones.
Establishing trends and patterns
Data is needed to establish trends and patterns which tells a business everything they need to know when it comes to strategically planning a campaign. There are different types of trends to look out for and analyse. Different trends tell you something unique that is needed for decision making. For example, a travel agency would look at seasonal trends to know when people are booking their holidays so that it knows when to send them special offers and deals.
Creative opportunities
Data allows you to be creative with your decision making without foregoing relevancy. Such decisions can help with competition, finding or creating new Unique Selling Points (USPs), or even adapting to any changes in the market. The right business decisions can help your company grow and increase profits. Creative opportunities make room for User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) to improve in innovative ways which is needed to aid customer affinity retention.
Increasing profits
At the end of the day, all the efforts you put into your business is to increase cash flow. Data will show you how to optimise sales, where to reduce spending, where most sales are coming from and where to better invest your money. Taking all these into account can help to increase profits over the long run.
Problem solving
Every business has its problems. After identifying the problem, data and research can be used to determine the source of the issue and how to solve it, for example, identifying that sales have dropped, research shows it’s because a new competitor has entered the market. Whereas, further research will help you identify possible solutions to remain compatible and retain customers better.
Although having data is important, it just lays the foundation for analysis and interpretation. Being able to make sense of your data is what allows you to take full advantage of it. One must also keep in mind GDPR when gathering data as failure to do so can have dire consequences.
If you are a business with data and you don’t know what to do with it, contact us today! We help companies with their data and research while always remaining ethical and in line with GDPR.
