How Small Business can leverage the benefits and challenges of using Customer Data for marketing

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Why is this relevant for you, as a Small Business? This blog will discuss customer data and why customer data are essential for business success, and their benefits and challenges for marketing efforts.



Customer data is information consumers leave behind as they use the internet and interact with companies online and offline. To collect customer data, you need a Customer Data Platform (CDP). CDP is software that aggregates and organizes customer data across various touchpoints. 


Customer data is a precious asset for a business of all sizes. How you use it will determine your business success. 


The key is to develop a smart strategy and focus on the data that makes sense for your particular business to achieve its goals. A company should ask what they want to achieve and how data can help them get there. I discuss these steps in another blog post here.



There are four types of customer data:


  • Identity Data

  • Descriptive Data

  • Quantitative or Behavioral Data

  • Qualitative Data

Benefits of a Customer Data Platform





Once you have a Customer Data Platform and decided which consumer data is valuable for your business, you can provide a superb and consistent customer experience across channels to give appropriate recommendations, tailored communications, and unlock unprecedented growth. A Customer Data Platform will put marketing in control of the data unification project to ensure it’s focused directly on marketing requirements. A CDP - Customer Data Platform will provide a unified customer view that gathers company data into a single, comprehensive platform. 


 Some of the challenges of working with customer data are:





  • All data collected from consumers needs to be GDPR compliant. 

  • Be transparent and ethical with your customers about the data you are collecting.

  • Make sure your customers are in control of their data. 

  • Ask the right questions.

  • Collect high-quality data

  • Interpreting the data

  • Working with real-time data

  • Bringing all the data together

  • Integration of the data

  • Quick thinking may be needed to adjust the marketing campaigns. 



The takeaway here is not to ignore Customer Data. Daily, global computer users now generate over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, and that figure is only going to grow thanks to the proliferation of the Internet of Things devices. It’s a massive, almost incomprehensible amount of information. And only some of it is useful to your specific, relevant business interests. Ignore it ignores vital opportunities.



Your next step is to invest in analytics. Analytics will help to see where you should support your marketing efforts.



Business must share and make Customer Data Platforms accessible for those who need it, such as the problem solvers and those who can provide more in-depth insight and quickly adjust marketing efforts.



Here you can look at some Customer Data Platform solutions.


If you’re a small business and have a desire to make smarter decisions – decisions rooted in data rather than gut feelings or assumptions, sign up for our master class. This master class is for small businesses that don’t have the resources to employ a third party to analyze big data. We will simplify one tool, google analytics, a free online tool, and show you how to use it for your business. You will learn how to transform reports into business insights to help you make better decisions.


Rejane Stratton


#bigdataanalysis #digital #digitalmarketing #database #dataanalyst #businessanalytics #customerdata #customerdataplatform #customerdatabase #customerdataanalytics

Reference:


Digital Marketing Institute (2019) 8 ways to extract value from customer data. Available at: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/8-ways-to-extract-value-from-customer-data (Accessed: 11 Feb 2021)


Harvard Business Review (2015) Customer Data: designing for transparency and trust. Available at: https://hbr.org/2015/05/customer-data-designing-for-transparency-and-trust (Accessed: 13 Feb 2021)


Marr, Bernard (2017). Data Strategy. How to profit from a world of big data, analytics, and the internet of things. Great Britain and the United States: Kogan Page. 




Location: Dublin, Ireland

Comments

  1. LauraFebruary 16, 2021 at 8:45 PM

    This blog is an excellent read for small to medium business owners. Recognising and understanding the existing data in an organisation is key to interpreting it and leveraging it to drive business growth.

    A masterclass is an excellent idea to help businesses understand the potential of unlocking their data and utlising it effectively. The mismanagement of customer information needs to be carefully avoided, this all comes down to the people hired and ensuring they understand the implications of GDPR miscompliance. I am excited to hear more and no doubt this masterclass will be an excellent refresher if not an introduction on how to manage data in any organisation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Julian CallanFebruary 17, 2021 at 9:29 PM

    Another very interesting topic. In particular I find the various Customer Data Platform offerings out there to be worth researching. Not many of them advertise for Small Businesses so I think this could be a potential growth area. One company I have found, Growth Marketing Advisors (https://www.growthmarketingadvisors.tech/) seem to offer their services to SMEs so they would be worth looking in to. One area that I think will be more and more important is Compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. This can be especially daunting for smaller businesses who may not have the skills in-house to ensure data compliance.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Robert GilesFebruary 19, 2021 at 2:15 PM

    Customer data is a fascinating and valid topic considering the considerable pressure the COVID 19 pandemic has put on SME's across the globe. Businesses of all sizes now have access to a considerable amount of customer data. Business managers must learn how to utilise and harness this data to gain a competitive advantage in the market place. The data gathered can play a crucial role in providing data-driven operational and marketing planning and strategy.

    ReplyDelete

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