It is estimated that around 463 exabytes of data will be generated globally each day in 2025.
Business is more competitive now than ever before, and while most people don’t realize it, one of the best ways for a business to grow is for it to leverage data.
A lot of businesses don’t do it, but leveraging data is the key to growth and success. If you want an explanation of why this is the case, keep reading.
How to Access and Leverage Data
Most people don’t know it, but data is one of the most valuable assets around. Almost everyone who uses the internet in any capacity has given out data which, if accessed and used correctly, can help your business succeed and grow.
The difficult part is finding and obtaining this data in a way that is useful to you. This means you need a method of extracting, processing, analyzing, and deriving insights from the data available.
A very basic way of doing this would be to copy and paste the data, but as you can imagine this would be a long and arduous task, and definitely not worth the time it takes.
The most suitable method is known as web scraping. This is an automated process you can use to collect data and present it in a way that is suitable to you. Several tools on the market can do this, so deciding on the right one will depend on your specific needs.
What You Can Leverage Data For
Data can be leveraged for several purposes. The data you collect and the nature of your business will determine the best way to use it.
Competitive Advantage
If used correctly you can use data to put your business a step ahead of the competition. Having a detailed dataset can help significantly with decision-making.
This can be done in terms of financial factors such as budgeting and pricing strategies. You can also make certain forecasts and predictions to help plan for the future.
Another thing you can do is try to improve customer experience based on the current viewpoints of your users.
All this can help you meet the needs of your customers before competing businesses, potentially pulling in a wider audience.
Marketing Strategies
When implementing strategies such as email marketing or social media marketing, knowing how customers react to it can help you adjust things and make improvements.
By knowing what customers want you’ll also have an easier time targeting new customers. You can market products and services in a way that will drive purchases towards your business.
Pulling in new customers is much harder than retaining existing ones, so you want to keep your current customers in mind. Take into account the data from areas where you are getting the best results, and implement that into your other marketing methods.
Analyze search and purchase patterns to see what people are looking for, and adjust your marketing accordingly. If a certain strategy seems to be getting better results, implement a similar strategy across other areas of your business where suitable.
From here you can even identify new products or services that you could offer which your customers would react well to.
There are several areas you can track to get this data:
- Views/shares/likes
- Time spent on your website
- Email open rates
- Click-through rates
- Coupons/offers used
- Surveys
Improved Business Outcomes
The processes and efficiency of a business determine the business outcomes. This is something that businesses always strive to improve. Using data to help with this involves focusing on specific aspects of the business and building upon them.
The quality of products and services is key to the success of any business. analyzing data from customer feedback, sentiment analysis, social media monitoring, etc. can give an insight into what customers think about what you offer.
Leveraging this data allows you to make improvements where needed, and ultimately offer products and services that are exactly what the customer wants.
You can also work to improve business strategies and overall productivity. Assessing the resources used and determining which areas need improvement allows you to keep all areas of the company working as effectively as possible. This means the best possible output for the company.
Software development companies can use data to test programs they provide. Quality Logic software testing involves using data to run possible scenarios and predict how users will react while using their programs. Testing in this way is incredibly efficient and improves the quality of the final product.
Creating Value
The wide use of the internet changed the way that many businesses operate. One of the main reasons for this is that people can now purchase similar (or even identical) products from a number of different businesses.
If you want your company to succeed, you need to give customers a reason to choose you over the competition. The best way to do this is to provide value. Getting customers in is one thing, but you need to give them a reason to stay.
Amazon and Netflix are perfect examples of this – they provide a lot more convenience than their competitors, which keeps customers coming back. Features like wishlists and recommendations help them to stand out.
Leveraging data to help customers make the correct purchase decision is a great way of building trust and will give customers a better perception of your company.
Becoming a Data-Driven Organization
A data-driven organization leverages data to make major decisions and builds its company based on the insights gained from data.
To achieve this there are several things that you will need to do:
- Invest in advanced web scraping tools
- Make data collection and compilation a regular aspect of your business
- Base decisions on the data gathered
- Appoint a Chief Data Officer to oversee data leveraging
- Keep an open mind and shape things around data rather than gut decisions
- Implement automation tools to make data gathering and analysis simpler
Is It Necessary to Leverage Data?
While it is not essential to leverage data if you want your business to stand above the competition and continue to grow you should definitely push for it. If you decide not to, and rival businesses do, there is a good chance you will be left behind.
If you’re interested in reading more business-related articles check out some of our other blog posts.
