Myplanet Digital: Better organizations through technology.

As Mike Loukides put it in a recent post to O’Reilly Radar, “The future belongs to the companies who figure out how to collect and use data successfully” .  But what if you’re non-technical?  Why should you care about understanding the ins and outs of data collection and analysis?  Before I answer that, I would like to first entice you with the tangible outcomes of understanding “data” so that you’ll want to know more.  Understanding how data can affect a business can:  

• Allow you to understand your target demographic before you spend money on direct marketing.
• Allow you to modify your application to understand customers and cater to their interests practically in real-time.
• Facilitate the development of new metrics to help fuel future marketing efforts – both online and offline.

 
Interested now?  Of course you are – this translates to the ability to generate more revenue and minimize the cost of acquisition.  How does this relate to a business owner with a website and a following?  What can you do to tap into this rich, data-filled ecosystem?
 
Step 1: Set the foundation and collect data
 
You can position yourself well by collecting attributes of your target market that will assist in narrowing the scope of the potential audience such as age, income range, etc.  If you can understand who is interested in your product or service, you can focus your efforts on those that care.  This can be done for new business efforts or for existing businesses through campaigns directed at their users or through standard information collected during the creation of a profile. 
 
Your customers don’t want to give you more information than you need.  If having this supplemental information is not imperative to your relationship with them, offer them an incentive to provide it.  Help promote their evangelism and show them you value their input.  Users will respond better to this than to being locked out if they don’t answer them.

Also, install Google Analytics.  It is a free-to-use software suite that (to only touch the tip of the iceberg) shows what pages people view on your site and where they go after that.  You can really understand how effective your web presence is based on where they drop off the sales funnel.
 
Step 2: Make alterations – help your online presence grow with your organization
 
Your online presence can certainly be adjusted in some way to leverage what you already know about your users.  If users don’t respond at all to something, chances are it’s because the value proposition wasn’t strong enough.  At that point, even a lack of a response is still a “response” and it gave you yet more data to use to your advantage.
 
Facebook is a perfect example of an organization that doesn’t just collect basic information but takes it a step further.  The nature of their application is to collect personal details for social networking purposes, but they put that extra input to darn good use.
 
They take into account your education, your likes, your dislikes and even your mood to effectively market their side-bar advertisements to you.  It’s amazing how much more relevant your advertisements can get by simply by using these extra attributes that you already collect to your advantage.  Up, down and cross selling has never been easier considering you can automate these based on what you know about the prospective buyer.
 
Step 3: Determine the next step…and beyond
 
Gone are the days of advertising solely in the newspaper, other conventional print marketing or billboards.  The time is now for recognizing that for almost any product or service that requires more than a second’s thought, people turn to the Internet for their first point of reference.  Even for simple things like going to a nice restaurant on a Friday night, people will use the Internet to help guide their decisions.
 
This is where understanding “data” can help determine where your business needs to go next.  This might mean making changes to your value proposition, offering additional services or creating an iPhone application to increase your organization’s reach and accessibility.  You appreciate evangelism from your users so give back and encourage them to do so by being an evangelist yourself.  Users will respond and give you the feedback you need to mould the future of your business if you simply ask in the right way.
 
Now what?
 
So what’s next?  You’ve read this post and are excited about how you might take your business operations to the next level.   You’ve recognized that you collect half of this data already and could be putting it to good use.  You really want to make some changes and determine those next steps to take.  If even one of these sentences excited you (and they all should), let me know in the comments section below.