Is data the next big thing for businesses?
The world is getting flooded with all types and forms of data as around 2.6 quintillion bytes of data is generated every day! Think of this unbelievable amount of data as it is going to increase everyday. The real question lies in how to use this enormous amount of data for your business needs? How to gain valuable insights and knowledge from this vast sea of information? Is data the next big thing for businesses?
Customer Data and Businesses
The key for a successful business is to understand the needs and wants of its customers. These customer insights lead to a better targeting, positioning, product development, sales, ROI and almost all aspects of a business.
Data collection is not restricted to any specific niche, demographic, industry or sector. It has been unanimously accredited to provide benefits for every business.
Let’s explore the benefits of data collection one by one so you can gain a holistic view of why it is necessary for your business.
1. Understanding the market on a deeper level
The most important reason why businesses are obsessed with customer data is that it allows them to tap into the minds of their customers. It is their virtual track of a customer’s likes and dislikes, interests, online and offline behaviours, demographics, transactions, spending patterns, wake sleep cycles and so much more.
This data provides the company with immense opportunities to target their customers at the best time, best place through the best marketing channel. They can tweak their marketing message so it is well received by their customers and optimise customer experience.
2. Maintaining a valuable Customer Database
A business is always looking for effective ways and channels to create, organise and maintain a company’s database. Customer data is an important ingredient in the overall database.
Potential Customer Data
The IP addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of potential customers is liquid gold for the company. The business can reach out to these customers with personalised offers, products and services through lead generation strategies. Brand awareness campaigns can be specifically tailored for this audience. You can send SMS, emails, newsletters and special offers directly targeting these customers.
Existing Customer Data
Existing customers are equally important and their satisfaction level has become volatile in this digital world. Existing customer data needs to be tracked through websites, social media channels, and other forums to keep them delighted at all costs. Marketing campaigns can be tailored accordingly to retain existing customers and build transparency, trust and Brand loyalty among them.
3. Gaining Competitive advantage
The digital landscape has become more and more competitive. With new and emerging startups and SMEs, every company has numerous direct and indirect competition. Innovations and cross industry competition has swiped up many Companies out of business. These Companies need to know the pulse of their customers at all times.
Alongside customer data, a business needs to have competitor data as well. They need to monitor their marketing strategies and customer interactions to determine their next move. As a company If you want to outrank your Competitors, then customer data is a lethal tool in your digital warfare.
4. Creating a holistic Digital Marketing strategy
Digital marketing strategy has now become a core function of any business. When relevant customer data is carefully obtained and analysed it can do wonders for a business. With the emergence in digital trends and strong customer insights, a business can focus on creating the most efficient and cost effective way to reach out to their customers.
With carefully collected customer data, market segmentation can be achieved so the marketing strategies are specifically targeted towards each segment based on their interests and behaviour. Their usage patterns can be determined to achieve autocompletion of payment methods, and forms on the website and preferred devices used on a website. As Marketing tactics and strategies are also evolving with time and need careful understanding of customer behaviour to reach their maximum potential.
5. Leveraging Business Intelligence
Business intelligence is making its waves in the new digital frontiers. But for any sound data analysis they say, “Garbage in garbage out”. If the quality and accuracy of a customer data is not at par, then the whole data analysis process is hampered.
To leverage the benefits of business intelligence the quality of data and the sources of data has to be carefully selected and well crafted for the business intelligence system of the company.
6. Monitoring Marketing performance
Customer data is a true reflection of your marketing effectiveness. This can be determined by the response of your customers towards your marketing tactics, campaigns and promotions. That is why they say that “Customer is the king” has been replaced by “Customer data is the king!”
After you gain customer insights through specialised tools and softwares to check the market effectiveness and performance of your campaigns, you can mould them accordingly. You can also curate future targeted campaigns with customer response and marketing insights data.
7. Allowing Customer Personalisation
Nowadays customers expect more personalisation and customized services and products from Companies. Everyone wants to be different from the rest and thus look out for Brands, products and services that can connect with them on a personal level. According to a survey, more than 63% of consumers say that they expect personalization from Companies in marketing messages, order confirmations, product suggestions, and in their overall communication with the business.
When a company gets access to your customer data through various social media channels, websites and forums, you can build and create specific customer and buyer personas. These personas help in customising products , services and offers tailored fit for a buyer’s needs.
8. Reducing Business Risks
When data is gathered through authentic digital channels and websites, it leads to better understanding of the customer’s needs, wants and demand. A company can thus launch products and services that are targeted towards their customers. The rate of product failure is thus reduced through careful analysis of customer data and behaviours.
A business can create pre-launch surveys and polls to determine the feasibility of their product and service in the product development process to avoid Product failures and reduce business risks
9. Improving Business processes
In the online world, when a person uses the internet, they leave a digital trail of their activities. This data is then obtained, curated and analysed by Companies through various tools and softwares to determine a customer’s online behaviour.
A customer’s digital path or journey is tracked by businesses, either on their own website, social media channels or over the internet in general. This tracking leads to multiple opportunities to streamline business processes accordingly and make the best user experience for their customers. This also allows the company to develop products and services through the business process that has a higher acceptability with the customers. Any suggestion or improvement in the business process can be gathered through customer data.
10. Predicting the Future trends
The future holds a lot of uncertainties for any business and thus need careful planning and strategy formulation. To fuel this planning process, customer data is a vital ingredient. Many innovative Companies predict future use of products and services through existing customer data where they can see increasing or diminishing usage patterns. They determine these patterns though their sales funnels and marketing analysis.
Another way to determine the future is to take the market pulse regularly through market data. Companies that are aware of their industry and cross industry happenings and market trends are more prepared for the future.
Understanding Data responsibilities
It is true that customer data is important for any business, but it is a double edged sword. Customers are now more knowledgeable with their data protection rights and have greater concerns for their privacy.
Any business that is obtaining and utilizing customer data has to be very careful with the data protection rights of its customers. Otherwise they can be in legal battles over data invasion, data breach and privacy of customers. Any data to be utilized should be used anonymously without identifying the integrity of the customer.
Wrapping Up
Customer data is crucial for the survival and success of any company. Customer insights and behaviours are determined by carefully collected data. The importance of maintaining a customer database for potential, new and existing customers can never be undermined. A company can gain competitive advantage if it has access to valuable customer data and create well planned marketing strategies. Data can be used to leverage business intelligence and marketing processes. Customer data can be utilized to monitor digital campaigns and measure their effectiveness to streamline business processes. This data is also used for greater personalisation and predicting the future trends.
