As we’ve all seen in the last decade, more and more organizations have started using data to assist in areas such as marketing, product or service creation, cost cutting, process streamlining and so forth. The growth in big data has been a real boon to entrepreneurs of all types but particularly for those running smaller businesses, as it helps them to keep up with larger firms.
Once, only the biggest corporations got access to huge reams of data, but today even the tiniest of ventures can utilize information to grow their business. If you’re not currently taking advantage of analytics to analyze the data that’s available, you’re definitely not building your organization as quickly as you could be.
If you’d like to reduce your workload, enjoy more sales and see an increase in profits, it’s time to get busy reading and analyzing data. Read on for three top ways you can use analytics for business growth over the coming months.
Learn About Your Customers
It’s wise to incorporate analytics into the way you learn about your customers. To sell to people and organizations effectively, you must know a variety of details about your target market(s), including both current and potential customers and how, when and why they browse and buy.
Take advantage of data to work out consumer behavior patterns, such as how consumers learn about your business and/or arrive on your website; the products most searched for; which search terms are entered most; and what times of day people shop.
Today, intent data is used to help businesses generate more sales. You might wonder what is intent data? Basically, this term refers to data that shows people’s buying intentions. It is learned from examining the types of content people browse, which gives insight into what they might be interested in purchasing.
Once you have a variety of consumer information in hand, you’ll be able to better decide which new product or service lines to offer people. The data will help you to work out the best ways and places to market your wares to preferred customers, too.
Analytics also comes into play when you design various business processes and strategies. You can especially make sure your website structure and its functions, and other sales processes, suit the customers you’re targeting. You can also use the data you compile to understand what types of content will be most effective for your marketing campaigns and where you can cut costs by discontinuing strategies which aren’t getting you a good return on investment.
Provide Better Customer Support
When it comes to providing excellent support to your customers (a key element of growing a business), analytics is also beneficial. For example, through big data, you can work out how to better cater to your clients’ needs at every point in the sales process, including follow-up.
You can ensure you and your team interact with shoppers effectively at every touchpoint along the pathway to payment. This covers steps from the initial “meeting,” whether on a website, via a phone call, on social media or in person; through to the customers placing an order; and then, later, the time when you try to entice people to purchase from you again.
With analytics, you can work out the best times of day to have more support staff available to handle customer queries too, as well as which avenues need to be particularly focused on (e.g. emails, live chat, calls, social media questions, in-person drop-ins and so on).
Handle Inventory More Effectively
Another good way to use analytics to build your venture is through inventory management. Once you have more data on hand, you can handle your supplies more effectively. For example, use the information you collect to work out which are the best-selling items you need to stock up on and at what times of the week, month or year to increase inventory to handle surges in orders.
Analytics will make it easier to stop investing your important cash reserves into goods or parts which don’t move and will allow you to spend more money on trialing new products or services. This, in turn, will help you to generate more sales.
These days, programs that analyze data can quickly and easily show you how much stock-on-hand you have of each item, and in what type of combination (e.g. different sizes and/or colors). The software can also make you aware of categories where you’re concentrating too heavily or too sparsely when you last sold an item — which could be a while ago — and how many you’ve sold in total.
