Harnessing the Power of the Data Driving Today’s Businesses

If there were a tool at your fingertips that would bring about the desired ROI and strategically targeted outcomes for your enterprise, would you use it? Of course, you would. It would be unthinkable not to in today’s highly competitive business markets.

The good news is that data can be that tool. But just like any other expensive or delicate piece of physical equipment, you want it used only by those with the knowledge and training to protect it and keep it running at optimum performance.

The Symbiosis Between Data-Driven Businesses and Consumers

Consumers know their data has value. Your customers either directly or tacitly agree to give up specific information about themselves and their purchasing histories. They also rightly expect that their valuable data will be carefully protected and precautions taken to prevent the data from hacking or mishandling.

Customers also expect to receive something of value in return for allowing companies access, e.g., an easy, streamlined shopping experience, discounts on purchases, or special reward programs or rebates. Thus, a quid pro quo relationship exists between the customer and the company mining their data for profit.

Why Your Data Isn’t Optimized

The typical story of data-driven business models in 2022 is that the data is being collected. But the collection methods are ineffective and stop far short of meeting the data-driven business goals that should already be in place.

Even when data collection systems are well-positioned, they can cast too wide a net to be useful. Simply gathering information for the sake of acquisition is pointless, expensive, and puts that consumer data at unnecessary risk of being breached. Instead, companies should focus on closing the gap between what they invest in the data they gather and the specific outcomes they target.

Data-Driven Business Strategy as a Power Source

For data-driven decision-making, business analytics should focus on three strategies – access, enablement, and workflows. Companies must be able to efficiently access the data they collect. Limiting this access to the corporate marketing and sales teams and those with stakes in the business lowers the risk of data breaches.

Data can be manipulated and enabled to effectively run your business operations. However, for it to power your business into the next quarter or quarter-century, it must be streamlined into existing business practices and workflows.

How Will Data-Driven Decision Making in Business Rev Your Company’s Engine?

Use the data you collect to deal with specificities and not generalities. Here, you want precision targeting of the right demographic groups walking through your brick-and-mortar doors or clicking on your online portals. If you take a scattershot approach, you might get traffic – but to what end? If that traffic doesn’t transfer to sales and customer usage, all you have is an expensive failed investment of time and resources.

Your data-driven business insights should be quantifiable and your ROI clear. By knowing the outcomes your customers expect from direct marketing campaigns when they enter your store or click onto the portal, you can have the inventory available and accessible. Then, seal the deal with a streamlined point of sale transaction.

Reporting Data Can Ease Navigation

In real estate, the mantra has always been, “Location, location, location.” However, for data-driven business models, it could be “Marketing, marketing, marketing.” The tricky part is targeting the right customer segment and determining what turns a click-through into a conversion.

Mining your enabled customer data should provide clear feedback about the success or failure of a strategic marketing campaign. When data is reported promptly, swift feedback should follow. Integrated analytics direct actions based on feedback loops to identify problems and recalibrate strategies. This, in turn, creates a smoother navigational experience.

Is Your Business Data-Driven?

Your marketing department needs a user-friendly, data-driven business optimization interface where the data flows organically and can be coordinated and personalized swiftly and without any glitches slowing down the process.

If you know that you have greater peak portal click-throughs to conversions on a Tuesday from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., your business will be better served when you can determine why that is so.

It could be something as simple as a couple of back-to-back shows on the TV line-up that inspire your targeted customers to log on and purchase something they saw their favorite character wear, drink, or eat. But knowing the “why” enhances your ability to duplicate those factors at other times in hopes of generating those same results.

Employ the Right Tools to Interpret Data

You might wonder why your website traffic drops off sooner than you like and doesn’t lead to conversions. You’ve scrutinized the issue in team meetings and brainstormed solutions for a data-driven business strategy to no avail.

In truth, it might not be a complex matter at all. Something as basic as a landing page that is too long can cause website traffic to jump ship because they lose interest in its length. If you want those click-throughs to become conversions, your marketing team can run a scroll map and a heat map for weeks to show where website visitors click and scroll the most.

It is within that sweet spot that your most essential tools should be. The CTA, order forms, and subscribe buttons must be easily located in this zone for maximum sales. Landing page text that extends below the sweet spot might need to be omitted entirely or heavily edited and relocated elsewhere.

Making Your Data Work for You

Learning about marketing trends and tools allows you to train your team to interpret the collected data correctly. You can then put these findings to work for you and your business without any unnecessary exposure of your customers’ data that could leave you open to liabilities. At the end of the day, business owners must confront any problems head-on and assert their ownership and mastery of the data collected from website traffic, customer browsing, and sales.

Otherwise, you waste far too much money, time, and resources trying to grasp the elusive factors that prevent your business from reaching the targeted customer groups you seek to attract.