Years ago, asking your customers face-to-face questions was the only way to get to know them and understand their behavior. Today, the Internet puts at your fingertips a real wealth of information.
In this article, we'll explore how online data can be used to grow your business, and how to combine online and offline data to achieve maximum results.
How online data can be used to grow your business
Data collection and analysis should be a major part of your business strategy, and it should regularly take into account your overall approach; The more you understand your customers and your business, the more successful your marketing efforts will be.
And since we're surrounded by so much information, it's important to have a clear and targeted strategy to get the answers you're looking for. One good way to do this is to divide the numeric data into two main data sets:
1. Quantitative data
Quantitative data that can be measured numerically, such as the number of people who visit a website, or the amount of sales a website makes in a month.
2. Qualitative data
It's meta information that you can't put a number on. For example, it might include people's opinions about a new product, their feelings, or the language that visitors use on social media when talking about the brand.
The right approach varies with the different information and its relevance to the nature of your business.
For example, if you want to know how users feel about your products or service, adopt a qualitative approach and ask them directly.
If you want to know a quantitative piece of information, such as the amount of time a visitor spends reading one of your blog posts, use an analytics tool to review that specific metric.
The combination of quantitative and qualitative data usually provides a clearer overall picture.
Where can you find all this data?
Quantitative data is usually extracted from tools such as Google Analytics or from analytics provided by most social media platforms. This can be great for finding information about demographics, search habits, and customer funnel in your digital platforms.
As for the collection of qualitative data, it is often done through direct communication with visitors, through the comments section of your website or through an online survey.
Combining different forms of data is a great way to differentiate between successful and unsuccessful strategies, and can give you valuable insights into the people who interact with your business.
How to combine online and offline data to achieve maximum results
The data extracted from the Internet may complement your offline approach, as data is usually collected offline purposefully through a survey of store customers, for example.
While online data is collected on a larger scale and more quickly, for example by conducting social media surveys, the combination of these two types of data allows you to access the largest amount of information quickly and easily.
This enables you to make informed, informed business decisions, from determining when to share a specific post on social media, to finding out what products customers are interested in.
As for your business, try to combine quantitative and qualitative data to get a clear summary of your activity.
Think about the benefits of digital data and make sure you're collecting the data you need to make the biggest decisions about your business.
If you haven't done so yet, you should add analytics to your website, it is one of the best ways to start collecting data.
This will give you some good background information to draw from, and allow you to add tweaks and improvements to your strategy.
See: How to Extract Actionable Advice From Your Data