How Small Businesses are Winning w/Data Analytics

Without a doubt, big data has taken over. Not only has it been a significant game changer for large businesses but it boasts considerable economic and competitive advantages for small businesses. 

Chances are you’ve already begun incorporating big data analysis to evaluate exactly where your business is propelling in the face of cut-throat market rivalry. And that means you might have already started integrating a couple important big data analysis tools to harvest important insights and gauge market trends.

According to research posted by Nielson, it was conclusively identified that overall, more than half of the 2,000 businesses surveyed in the US incorporated big data tools to discover new trends and business opportunities. If you’ve yet to incorporate data analytics and add it to your business toolkit, forget staying ahead, you’re already behind.  

Skipping the Technical Jargon

Why is big data analytics so important? If you look past the various technicalities of big data analysis, you find that there is one underlying concept and goal – market opportunities and advantages. Big data analysis efficiently and effectively enables you to learn from your business’ data, turning raw data into information that drives strategic decision-making in the future. While it isn’t much of surprise that large businesses across the globe have already been indulging in big data - what many don't know is its potential for boosting the efficiency and marketability aspects of smaller businesses.

So what does this mean? If you own a small business, your capability to succeed against larger businesses is becoming more and more of a reality. In the past success has more or less been driven by your intuition to provide topnotch customer service. However, big data is consistently altering the business battlefield and the playing field is being leveled.

The Real Benefits of Big Data for Small Businesses

Here are some of the reasons why small businesses have poised themselves for victory against harsh competition using big data:

Transparency of Information

Big data analysis and evaluations expedite information processes, making it conveniently accessible to small businesses, and that too in real time. With a plethora of business tools developed specifically to harness user data, small businesses can now in the blink of an eye, gather all information pertaining to customer behavior. With valuable customer and market insights, a small business can articulate and implement efficient and effective market strategies to enhance both short and long term prospects.

Monitor the Outcome of all your Business Decisions

Decision making is of the utmost importance in any business. And we’ve heard time and time again that “risk drives business.” Knowing the outcome of decisions made leads to more effective decision-making in the future. This is specifically where big data will help you the most. It will allow your establishment to track and monitor the results of your marketing strategies, get a bird’s eye view of the factors that have worked in your favor, and it eliminates the possibilities of risks posed by other decisions. 

Big Data Will Help you Develop High Yielding Products and Services

By using big data analytics, there are 3 fundamental elements that you will be able to efficiently comprehend:

• All current needs of your prospective clients/customers
• How well your products or services meet the demands of your target market
• Changes that need to be made to propel your operational efficiency and improve your services

Big data analytics can help you test the design of your products to evaluate potential flaws, potentially affecting your bottom line. Not only does big data analytics help you sell, but it poses a huge potential for a boost in after-sales services, which primarily include customer support and maintenance. 

Data analytics has a lot to offer small businesses.  To sum it up in a single sentence, all businesses can enjoy the advantages that limitless amounts of big data analytics bring to the business battlefield.

The Wolf Pack

"A wolf pack: the first 3 are the old or sick, they give the pace to the entire pack. If it was the other way round, they would be left behind, losing contact with the pack. In case of an ambush they would be sacrificed. Then come 5 strong ones, the front line. In the center are the rest of the pack members, then the 5 strongest following. Last is alone, the alpha. He controls everything from the rear. In that position he can see everything, decide the direction. He sees all of the pack. The pack moves according to the elders pace and help each other, watch each other." - Uknown

Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently

What I'm Reading

"We have no choice but to think together, ponder together, in groups and communities. The question is how to do this, how to come together and think and hear each other in order to touch, and be touched by, the intelligence we need."  - Jacob Needleman

I've recently picked up the book Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently by Dawna Markova, PH.d. and Angie McArthur in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of what I call "Diversity of Thought".

I've become interested in this subject due to my experience being a part of a team that included very smart people with diverse creative/technical skills, backgrounds and educational experiences who have succeeded at solving a very complex problem. The great thing about this team was the leader's ability to recognize the "Diversity of Thought" in the room! 

She understood that each professional brought with them their experiences from past complex problem solving projects to work together to create something great...and we did!

The question I have is...If your team thinks like you, looks like you and never challenges you to think differently...how innovative can you be?!?

People are most comfortable working with people who are just like them, which smothers "Diversity of Thought"...How do we make ourselves uncomfortable in order to do the great things that are required of us?

Choosing Your Inner Circle

The type of friends you have in your inner circle significantly define your success or failure. They largely influence the progress you make towards achieving your dreams. 

"Show me your friend and I will show you your character." - Unknown

The 8 People You Need On Your Team:

CREATORS

Your inner circle is weak without creators. Creators are builders. Builders motivate. They help you maintain hope for the future. They help you build an unshakable faith in yourself and your dream. They help you become conscious of your strengths, skills and talents, and they advise you on how best to nurture and use them.

CHAMPIONS

Fighting to reach your dreams is like running a marathon for a medal. It’s only champions who get the medal. Championship is contagious so you need to have champions in your inner circle. Champions stand up for you and your beliefs and they praise you to everyone else they know.

COLLABORATORS

Collaboration is a success secret. You therefore need to have in your inner circle persons who share similar interest with you. With these friends you can create a common destiny. Collaborators are the kind of friends you are most likely to spend most of your time. 

CONNECTORS

Your ability to meet other people that will help advance your goals and dreams is tied to the presence of connectors in your inner circle. It’s important you recruit connectors into your inner circle.

Connectors get to know you and then instantly work to connect you with others who share similar interests and/or goals with you.

CHARGERS

You need another kind of friends called chargers. Chargers energize and cheer you up when you’re down and always available to boost your spirits. They can be likened to a car battery or a mobile phone charger.

CONSCIOUSNESS – AWAKENER

Consciousness-awakener stretches your viewpoint. They introduce you to new and better ideas and opportunities. They help you to dream big.

COUNSELORS

Counselors are the kind of friend you recruit because of their ability to guide you when you need one. They help you to think through issues and evaluate options.

COMPANIONS

Your inner circle is weak without companions. We all need companions. They are the first people you call, with good news or bad news. They are always there for you. They are the people whose shoulder you can always lean on.

It’s time you surround yourself with people who have great and ambitious plans, meaningful and life transforming purposes, and big winning targets and dreams. Who is your starting 8?

6 Tips to Improving Measurement for Non-Profits

Your mission. Be able to articulate how PR and marketing efforts support the organization’s mission. How do your daily activities help accomplish the mission, be it raising money or finding volunteers?

Stakeholders. Nonprofits have many stakeholders, including volunteers, donors, sponsors, employees, and the people they service. It’s essential to concentrate measure results involving each category of stakeholder.

Metrics. Select at least three specific metrics for analyzing various categories of communications including email, marketing, public relations and social media. Select metrics that are quantifiable, with a number such as an amount of money or percentage and that can be compared to another number such as past performance or competitors. It’s also vital to include date by when the goal will be achieved.

Leadership. Obtaining support for measurement from the organization’s leadership will make life easier both immediately and over the long term.

Current data. Surveying departments can reveal data and tools you already have. Nonprofits often have more data than they think they do.

So what? Asking “So what?” can provide context to data. So social media activity spiked one month and donations spiked the following month. So what? Determining why it spiked and learning how to repeat the performance makes measurement valuable.

5 Metrics Every Small Business Should Track and 5 They Should Not

There is a wealth of data that small businesses can and should be tracking in order to ensure that they are properly armed to make better business decisions.

But which metrics should you track?

All of them?

No!

If data isn’t actionable or useful, don’t waste your time. A KPI is a key performance indicator – the metrics by which you measure your success. It’s a good idea to decide on the metrics that you care most about and put them together in a dashboard to make tracking easier/quicker.

DON’T: OVERALL TRAFFIC

Overall traffic levels are easy to track, but for a local business they are not helpful. More important is local traffic. Sure, national traffic might also matter, but tracking your traffic levels across the board is a waste of time.

Instead, monitor traffic segmented by location, so that you can see local traffic, national traffic and maybe even international traffic separately.

DO: TRAFFIC SOURCES

Where are your users/how are they finding you? If you’re getting traffic from India, it’s probably not converting. Filter out irrelevant traffic, figure out who are your most relevant visitors (probably the ones in your local area)…

And then consider where that traffic is coming from. Search engines? Local listings? Referral from other websites? Once you know where your best visitors are coming from, you can hone your marketing efforts accordingly.

DO: PHONE CALLS

Tracking phone calls is tricky, but possible, and for many businesses it’s the most relevant conversion metric. This is especially true for businesses that take bookings over the phone.

There are loads of services which allow you to track phone calls through your website analytics.

DON’T: COMPLAINTS

Should you listen to customer feedback? Absolutely.

But tracking complaints isn’t a useful KPI. Complaints are not representative of your entire customer base because they only come from the customers who are not happy.

Use customer feedback to improve your service, and absolutely respond to complaints and fix problems. But using complaints as a KPI will just get you down!

DO: CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE

Track your ROI on marketing campaigns makes sense. But unless you are tracking your customer’s lifetime value you can’t be sure that your ROI is accurate.

Tracking metrics related to repeat custom in order to estimate how much a new customer is truly worth to you. It’s not easy to track, but if you can do it, you can make better-informed marketing decisions.

DON’T: DEVICES

Local businesses have more mobile traffic, right?

Probably, but does that mean that tracking device usage is helpful?

If your website is not mobile friendly you may not get as much mobile traffic as you should. So you don’t get many mobile viewers, it might mean that your customers don’t use mobile devices, or it might mean that your site isn’t attracting mobile users – it’s hard to be sure.

Instead, track metrics that show you whether mobile users are being well served by your website.

DO: MOBILE/LOCAL RANKINGS

Tracking your SERP rankings is a popular strategy and it probably makes sense to do so. But are you tracking rankings for mobile/local users?

Google results are personalized based on location and the device you are using. And for a local business that is important. There are various ways you can track your rankings within a local area, and those are likely to be your most important ones.

DON’T: FACEBOOK LIKES

Getting Facebook likes (Retweets etc…) is nice and something to shoot for. But it would be far more helpful to track click through rates and how much traffic those platforms are sending you.

Looking at which posts historically get the most likes can be a useful way to hone your strategy, but tracking Facebook likes as a KPI might not be as helpful.

DO: TOP PAGES

Which pages on your site are most popular? This gives you a clue as to what your customers are looking for.

For example: If customers go straight to the contact page, it may mean they just want a phone number. You can use these clues to improve your navigation and make your most important information easier to find.

CONCLUSION

I’m not trying to tell you what to track, but to think about each metric that you do track. Which KPIs matter to your business might not matter to another. There’s no one size fits all answer.

Think carefully about which metrics truly impact your bottom line/are actionable. Put all of those metrics in the same place so that you can monitor them quickly and easily.

Small Business and Advanced Analytics

According to McKinsey research, by 2018 the United States will experience a shortage of 190,000 skilled data scientist and analyst. While most small business are not able to employ a full analytics team to manage the large amounts of data being collected during the day-to-day operation of their business, many have the ability to hire a consultant to complete specific tasks as needed. What tasks can a Data Analyst/Scientist assist you with?

1. Building a Customers Database
2. Analyzing Current and Potential Customer Information
3. Creating and Automating a Daily/Weekly/Monthly Dashboard
4. Providing Quarterly/Annual Business Reports
5. Providing Data Driven Consultation When Making Strategic Decision Concerning:
   1. Expansion
   2. New Products
   3. New Markets
   4. New Customer Base
   5. Cost Reduction

We use the same skills that we provide for fortune 500 companies everyday to assist small businesses with making sound data driven advise using the data already being collected. 

72% of Senior Marketers Consider Data to Be A Strategic Asset...

GLOBAL — 72% of senior marketers consider data to be a strategic asset, according to new research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). 

Despite this, more than half are ‘only just starting’ the process of giving it a central role in their marketing. 

The study is based on responses from 32 companies with a global annual marketing spend of $35bn. It found that 31% of companies described themselves as advanced or highly advanced in the adoption of data-driven marketing (DDM). 

However, 56% of respondents recognised that they were still early in the journey, describing themselves as in the initial planning stage and yet to deploy a DDM strategy. 

There was also a range in confidence in analytics observed: half were ‘somewhat confident’ and 27% ‘not very confident’ in their ability to identify ROI via data analysis. 

Despite this, 89% of respondents expected to increase budget for analytics and insight, with the goal to evolve the analytics function from historical reporting of what happened to more predictive and prescriptive approaches. 

“It’s no secret that data has become important for marketing purposes, though it’s interesting to note that even some of the world’s biggest companies are only at the early stages of delivering data driven marketing strategies,” said Matt Green, senior global marketing manager at the WFA. “Data consumption is set to increase rapidly and with that sophistication - clarifying how data will be used and how consumer privacy will be protected, should be a fundamental component of a brand’s strategy as it advances into DDM.”

By Bronwan Morgan

The original article can be located at: www.research-live.com

Marketing Metrics Made Simple

Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on Investment (ROI) or Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) equals the gain from a program minus the cost of the program, divided by the cost of the program.

ROI = (gain - cost) / cost

For example: Let's assume that you started a new (incremental) advertising program, that it cost $50,000 in its first year, that it promoted $600,000 in incremental sales during the same year, and that the gross profit from these sales was $200,000.

If you subtract your incremental advertising dollars ($50,000) from the incremental gross profit generated ($200,000), you see that you have generated $150,000 of net operating profit.

Stated differently: the effect of your advertising added $200,000 to operating profit, and the cost of your advertising subtracted $50,000 from operating profit, for a net increase of $150,000.

Your ROI is ($200,000 - $50,000) / $50,000 = 3 = 300 percent

In other words, on average, each dollar you spent on the new (incremental) program brought in three dollars of profit.

For clarity of presentation, we usually express ROI as a percentage. So, in this case, we say "300 percent" rather than "3."

Keep in mind that a "300 percent" return on investment means the company received revenues of 300 percent of its investment, plus the return of the investment itself. Therefore "300 percent" means it quadrupled its money.

Similarly, "200 percent" means it tripled its money, and "100 percent" means it doubled its money.

Why We Use Gross Profit in the Calculation

Some marketers use sales revenue to measure ROI. But it is much preferable to use gross profit (also called gross margin).

Why? Because if you use gross profit, you will be speaking the conservative language of your CEO and CFO.

Here is a detailed example:

Let's say you have invested $100,000 in a campaign and you have identified $500,000 in incremental sales that resulted from that campaign. You can prove it from the leads you have tracked. That's good.

But if you calculate ($500,000 - $100,000) / $100,000 = 4 (an ROI of 400%), you will be overstating your ROI.

You are ignoring the cost of goods sold (COGS), also called "cost of sales." As the accounting world sees it, your company's incremental gain from those sales is this:

Revenue - COGS = Gross Profit

So, to talk the language of your CEO and CFO, you need to know the gross margins on the kinds of items sold (which you can probably get from Sales or Accounting). Then, you can make a calculation like this:

Sales revenue ($500,000) minus COGS ($200,000) equals gross profit ($300,000).

Gross Profit minus the Cost of Your Campaign, all divided by the Cost of Your Campaign, equals ROI.

($300,000 - $100,000) / $100,000 = 2

The ROI is 200 percent.

So, whenever you measure ROI, inquire into the COGS. In exceptional cases, such as the sales of services that have no direct costs, you won't have to figure in any cost. Be guided by what Accounting says.

What I'm Reading...

A Leader’s Guide to Data Analytics by Author Name (@KelloggSchool) – Kellogg School
In recent years, data science has become an essential business tool. With access to incredible amounts of data—thanks to advanced computing and the “Internet of things”—companies are now able to measure every aspect of their operations in granular detail.

But many business leaders, overwhelmed by this constant blizzard of metrics, are hesitant to get involved in what they see as a technical process.

For Florian Zettelmeyer, a professor of marketing and faculty director of the program on data analytics at the Kellogg School, managers should not view analytics as something that falls beyond their purview. “The most important skills in analytics are not technical skills,” he says. “They’re thinking skills.” Managing well with analytics does not require a math genius or master of computer science; instead, it requires what Zettelmeyer calls “a working knowledge” of data science. This means being able to separate good data from bad, and knowing where precisely analytics can add value.

Image Credit: Yevgenia Nayberg

Read the article: http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/a-leaders-guide-to-data-analytics