If you want to start making better decisions for your business, here are a few effective ways you can start doing it with the help of data.
1. Business Planning
When data was not yet as accessible as it is today, gut feelings and intuition were often the sole deciders for a business move. Of course, there would be some help from surveys and focus groups but even that couldn’t be trusted since they were heavily biased.
With the help of data, you can make smart decisions for your business, all while reducing risk and saving time. No need to wait for months or years to do business evaluations when you have all the information you need to make that important decision.
In addition, you can set it so data and reports can be accessed by select people in your organization. With your team having access to these insights, each employee becomes empowered to do their part in helping the company succeed. You can even use this data to gamify and motivate your team members to reach their goals.
2. Advertising
By applying data-driven decision making to your business, you can fine-tune your advertising efforts to create the right message that reaches the right people. These days, there are already tons of data available even with just one social media post! Seemingly irrelevant details such as the number of clicks or the words you use in your copy can be optimized so that every single cent you spend on an ad campaign is money well-spent.
3. Segmenting Clients
Consumers are more likely to engage with your business when there’s a touch of personalization. A way to achieve that is through segmentation. This is where you group clients based on certain factors like age, sex, location, educational attainment, and much more.
Sending canned marketing messages just won’t do anymore. If you want to reach your audience, you have to make your message relevant to them. For example, with email marketing, you can segment your list so that members who have been with you for a year get a free coupon. Meanwhile, those who have just subscribed to you can get a 5% on their first order.
This is just one of the many ways you can personalize your marketing efforts with the help of segmentation. The more data you have about your customers, the better you can market to them.
4. Satisfying Customers
You’ve delivered the goods. Now, it’s time to figure out whether your customers are happy with your product/service or not. Thankfully, data helps make it easy to figure out. However, before you can get that valuable data, you need to have avenues where customers can leave their sentiments. Some examples would be forums, review sites, feedback forms, and surveys. Using this information, you not only improve your customer service but also your business model.
One company that’s really good at using data to enhance customer interaction is Southwest Airlines. They go as far as analyzing the speech of one-on-one interactions between their staff and the customer to identify areas of improvement.
5. Automating Repetitive Tasks and Decisions
It’s hard to imagine today’s most successful businesses run without automating their rudimentary tasks. For example, Amazon with restocking their products. You can do the same for your business by automating certain processes too. Stop wasting your employee’s time and mental energy on tasks that can be done by a machine. This doesn’t mean that you should replace your staff with computers. It just means more time for your team to use their skills effectively.
6. Hiring Staff
For small businesses, sorting through dozens of resumes isn’t exactly a good use of one’s time. Instead, why not outsource the work to a machine-learning algorithm which can identify success factors for the position you want to have filled.
Once all the tire-kickers have been removed, you can focus on the most qualified candidates whose potential can only be determined by a real human being. You can’t really completely automate the whole process but at least you save time during the preliminary stages of the hiring process.
Data is very essential for running a business nowadays. Make sure to secure it with backup and recovery or at least have a disaster recovery plan. That way, if anything happens, you can be at ease knowing that all that hard-earned information can still be recovered.
Has there been other ways data helped you make wiser business decisions? Share your thoughts in the comments.
