Big Data for Small and Medium Businesses

I just spoke at MarketingProfs B2B Forum, where they had some fantastic sessions on topics including creativity with Allen Gannett (super interesting!), as well as some fantastic sessions on the trends that are driving B2B marketing into 2019 and 2020.

My own session was on how to take “big data” and make it actionable through behavioral economics. After sessions like this one, I often get asked how small/medium businesses (or those with limited budgets) can take advantage of big data or at least medium data sets that are available to them. Here are three key things to consider:

Do you measure the right information?

You would be surprised how many large organizations I have worked with over the years do NOT measure the basics of their audience: they don’t track IP or account addresses to match their audience’s online consumption data with their purchase behaviors. In other words, they don’t really know who their customers are on different platforms. If you have a digital-heavy marketing presences, having smart analytics across different devices and incentivizing your audience to log into their accounts for additional content is key.

Even if you’re more conservative with the amount of data you track on your audience, consider what kind of purchase behaviors you wish your organization could track. I bet you have 10 items just off the top of your head. What’s stopping you from measuring those items?

Is your data interconnected?

Many organizations don’t connect customer service records with purchase behaviors, with online accounts.

Now often this is because their organizations’ systems are legacy-based, but there is no time like the presence to invest in your organizations’ systems to get more information out of them.

If you could query a larger cross-functional data set, perhaps you’d find out that the customers who shop the most are also the ones who engage with your social media ambassador program. Or perhaps you would be able to distinguish between the different regions that you service and see what products are most relevant in each marketplace. If we don’t have that information (united), we can’t get this type of information out of it.

Beyond that, it takes a smart, thoughtful analyst to look at the information. The key to a good analyst isn’t just being able to use the tools to generate reports, but to ask smart, thoughtful, insightful questions. It’s about coming up with good hypotheses, not just good charts.

Do you have the right visualization tools in place?

Now, more than ever, it’s important to empower yourself, your team, and your company with the right tools to help you make heads-or-tails of the data. And you don’t have to be a power user of advanced suites like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI.

Small and medium businesses can take advantage of tools like Databox or Google Data Studio (which is admittedly a little bit advanced), which have pre-built templates that you can populate and engage with.

Are you measuring the right performance metrics? Let us help you with a marketing data audit.