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Data Analytics: Learning from the experience of others.

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It’s no secret that educated choices yield better results than guesswork, especially with businesses. Analytics, the collection, and interpretation of information from a wide range of sources to identify trends are vital to letting your business learn from the mistakes of others, rather than your own.

Streamlining Managerial Choices

Analytics takes info from a specific aspect of a given field, such as sales figures and customer demographics, and compiles it to identify patterns. This identifies market trends in a given industry, region, or timeframe. Using the implications of other businesses’ successes and failures, your startup can avoid unforeseen mistakes without needing to learn the hard way.

Data analysis is great for deciding what course of action your business should take. Figuring out what effect another company’s marketing campaign had on their profits, for example, will guide you as to whether or not your organization should consider a similar method. Some studies have found companies that use data analytics to steer decisions had over 20% higher profits than those that did not.

On an individual level, they can be used to improve your staffing practices. Identifying common complaints from employees from anonymous surveys will give you an idea of which action items should be a high priority. Hiring trends in your area will show which demographics to target for job ads, wages that incoming staff may expect, and frequent causes of employee resignation. Making the right calls for your business based on these statistics will lead to the kind of growth that makes room for new employees while convincing existing ones that your business is worth sticking with.

Identifying Customer Trends

Customers benefit from data analytics as well. Researching market trends in your area will show what services your clientele is demanding, guiding what your company offers. Looking into what groups patronize your industry the most will point directly to who your advertising should target. Much like with employees, identifying common customer complaints will show you the most high-priority corrections that should be made.

Advertising With Market Research

Demographic information is just one way analytics can benefit your advertising practices. Data analysis can show which specific forms of advertising work best for which sets of people, it can identify new markets that an online or decentralized business can take advantage of, and even identify which fonts and formats in ads seemed to have the greatest result.

Analyzing the habits of customers is key to advertising effectively. While sales data can give a better understanding of consumer demand, surveying potential or existing customers will provide a microcosm of data for your area. These questionnaires can cover anything from what charitable organizations the customer supports to what day of the week they typically run their errands. Every datapoint will provide insight into what your company can do to keep getting people through the door.

This information, once collected, can be interpreted and presented in infographic form to reach the largest amount of people on your team at once. Emailing these infographics in jpg format can be a pain, especially with size limits for attached files on many email services. Converting from jpg to PDF is a great way to compile data reports into a single document that is easy to share. Many free tools are available online to handle that conversion for you.

Using data analytics can help your company make good decisions on the first try. Educated guesses are always better than trial-and-error, so make sure to research thoroughly before taking action.

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