When starting a business, every entrepreneur expects to have it grow in terms of numbers of customers served, number of outlets, range of offerings, revenue and profits, and so on. However, expanding a business is not easy, and it calls for a lot of dedication, much prior planning, and understanding. You must identify what the needs of your customers are, meet these needs in the best way possible, and give the customers a reason to come back to your business by exceeding their expectations. Your business must also know where your customers are located, and how to reach them with information. To identify potential customers, where they are located, and the most effective method to reach them, you need to use data, which should be analyzed to draw conclusions and come up with plans of action.
In this era of great expansion of online space, you should also have a significant online presence and market your business and its offering there. You may need to make use of digital marketing companies to succeed in this online space, as these companies have vast experience and resources and deliver great results. The following are some ways you can use analytics data to grow your business:
Planning for Expansion
There are instances where enterprises plan on opening a new branch, office, outlet, store, or any other business center in a new place. Such businesses may have lots of data on increasing customer numbers, delivery or distribution channels and schedules, maintenance of equipment and machinery, and other things. You can use this data to come up with elaborate expansion plans and so much more. For example, some POS systems can aid in data tracking as granular as inventory management. Then, you can incorporate visualization and dashboards, and look at them in more detail using business intelligence and reports. Also, you can further study the results and utilize the information to come up with an expansion plan.
Identifying Your Audience
To prepare, you should investigate the current customer data. You need to get to know the views of the people with regard to your brand and the areas of the country that have these varying views. Social media analysis, which is possible with business analytics, can also be combined with internal customers’ data to come up with a profile of your current and future (potential) customers. From this analysis, you can define your ideal demographic. You can gain even more insight when this demographic profile is compared with the available census data. This way, you get to know the parts of the country where you will have a good customer population. Moreover, the data can enable you to dig for further information, such as your competitor’s information. Armed with such crucial information, you can concentrate your effort on where you have good customer potential and opportunities for growth.
Formulating Your Marketing Campaign
From the information gathered about your target audience and competition, and findings made from business analytics, you can come up with an appropriate message for the target audience as a part of your top-notch marketing campaign. The data analysis can also help you to concentrate your brand details or the message’s tone in order to suit customer preference or to do the best promotions that will set you apart from other players in the market. Analytics allow you to make use of data to make prudent decisions, concentrate on the right market or niche, and make business growth decisions based on facts.
Better Supplier Management
The data analysis on customer complaints and request for refunds or exchange of purchases can allow businesses to discontinue suppliers whose goods are frequently linked with these issues. It is important to ensure customers get high quality products, which saves you costs on handling customer complaints and any possible bad publicity.
Enhanced Product Management
With millions of products that a business can bring to the market for its customers, it would make sense to know which among the products or a combination of products are popular in a region or during a given season. Data analysis can help the business to target the right product or combination of products at the best time, which can result in higher sales and consequently higher profits.
Reduction of Operational Costs
Data analysis draws the attention of business ownership or management to specific issues like abnormal demands that may call for an increased labor force and other support services. A good example is the flower industry, which registers a booming business during Valentine’s Day or other specific occasions and thus calls for increased labor. The use of a flexible labor force and other cost drivers help to reduce operational costs, which is based on data analysis that allows businesses to know the optimal level of resources to employ.
Formulating a Great Business Plan
The interaction with data on a real-time basis when running a business helps you not only to know what is happening at that particular time, but also to be well informed as to how well you are performing. You can employ business performance solutions to break down the data to get a grasp of the trends and projections of sales, growth, and other aspects. From the findings, you can come up with a comprehensive business plan to take the business or the franchise to the next phase. You can plan based on facts like the right location in which to spread your business.
Capitalizing on Customer Value
Data analysis can help you to pinpoint customers who will most likely come back and do repeat business with your company, thus allowing you to know where to place most of your marketing investment. Due to the stable long-term relationships established with repeat customers, you increase their value to your business, and most likely they will increase their level of repeat business.
Conclusion
Data is such a precious asset to business, and proper analysis of this data—as well as timely implementation of the insights that are gained from it—can transform a business in a big way or put a new venture on the right course to take off and prosper.
