It’s safe to say that in the next ten years, businesses will benefit from data-driven cultures. With that, data implementation will be one of the key competitive distinguishing factors across all sectors of commerce. It’s a big deal. It’s also broadly misunderstood and underutilized.
Analytic software makes it easier than ever before for businesses of every size to make the most of the information available to them. There are now programs that can track everything from who uses your product to how much time they spend on specific parts of your website. These granular, up-to-the-minute data points can help businesses of any size drive their marketing strategies.
It’s not just Fortune 500 companies that have to worry about information management. In this article, we highlight four ways you can use data to grow and enhance your small business.
How Data Can Help You Better Understand Your Target Audience
The best marketing message in the world will go unheeded if it isn’t put before the right people. It doesn’t matter how clever the advertisement for your realtor company is. If it’s being seen primarily by people who aren’t looking for a new home, it’s not going to do you much good.
Not so long ago, marketing used to be about throwing a lot of stuff on the wall and seeing what would stick. Data implementation changes this quite significantly.
By taking advantage of clever analytic programs your small business can benefit from granular data that explains key characteristics of your core demographic. Not only will this allow you to tailor your marketing messages so that your business is put in front of the people that can actually benefit from it, but it will also better enable you to chase the much-coveted “loyal customer”. Loyal customers spend more money more often. With data, you can find out who they are, and use that information to bring more of them in.
Of course, understanding your audience is about more than just knowing their age. Other key pieces of information could include gender, mode of employment, buying habits, and more. In short, the clearer your information, the more vividly you can craft your strategies.
4 Essential Analytics Tools To Scale Your Business in 2022
Competitive data implementation is all about harnessing the right tools for your business needs. Here are four essential tools you can use in 2022 to make improve your business’s scalability and agility.
Google Analytics:
A standard-bearer of sorts, Google Analytics enjoys broad popularity thanks both to its granular reporting and its general user-friendly accessibility. Small business owners can learn how to use this program through free, easy to comprehend video tutorials that are created by Google itself.
From there, they are given access to a host of key metrics that can aid in marketing at both a local and wider spread level.
Data develops in real-time, allowing the user to effortlessly create goals, track conversions and get an in-depth look at their customer engagement levels. Packages are free to start but can advance quite dramatically in price, with premium subscriptions exceeding six figures in price.
Google Ads:
Google also offers an advertisement service called “Google Ads” which allows users to easily create custom marketing campaigns. The program helps with keywords, allowing the user to craft an SEO strategy that is best suited to their product.
Keywords are then analytically tracked, giving the user direct feedback on the efficacy of their campaign. Google also provides more analytics on the broader scope of your campaign, monitoring both engagement, and costs. Google Ads is a pay-per-click service, which means the costs you encounter are directly proportionate to the success of the advertisement.
Hotjar:
Hotjar puts you in the perspective of your target audience, providing videos and heatmaps of how your audience works their way through your website. It also features other analytic tools like polls and surveys that further increase your understanding of how consumers are receiving your marketing messages.
Using Hotjar’s heatmaps and other analytics, you receive a very plain, easy-to-understand look at what parts of your website are doing their jobs, and which parts are going unseen.
Hotjar features a free two-week trial. After that, the subscription costs $99 per month.
Woopra
Woopra is an analytic tool that focuses not just on the efficacy of your ads, but more specifically on customer behavior as they are preparing to make a purchase. Woopra tracks how the customer behaves on your site as they view, and eventually decide on a product, producing behavioral data on cart abandonment, and other factors that quite literally make or break sales.