Using Big Data to Boost Your Small Business Performance

Data mining is not only for multi-national corporations with billion-dollar budgets. As a number of industry journals have recently pointed out, data analytics is undergoing a sea of change. For the first time in history, analyzing gazillion terabytes of information generated from cash flow, sales transactions, and other business dealings is not just possible for small businesses, but it is actually profitable as well.

This new phenomenon known as “Big Data” essentially refers to any treasure chest of information that is too large to handle with a basic Excel spreadsheet. This data can include global social media trends, customer search queries, annual sales compilations, and any other vast sources of data that can be used for business intelligence. In the past, businesses only used a tiny fraction of the data available to help direct business decisions. However, thanks to the rise of Google Analytics and other analytical tools, smaller businesses can finally observe the broader spectrum of data to help optimize their business.

With that being said, here are some specific ways your small businesses can utilize “Big Data” just like the big boys of business and commerce.

Sign Up for Google Analytics

This should be an obvious no brainer, but any business operating in the modern world should be utilizing the Google Analytics platform, especially if they operate in the realm of e-commerce. Google Analytics is a completely free service that provides you with an unbelievably high amount of customer data that you can use to your business's strategic advantage. This data can include the pages of your business website that receive the most traffic, how long visitors stay on each page of your website, where the visitors come from, where they go once they leave the site, and what ads and promotions are likely to lead to conversions.

Harness Financial Management Software

In addition to utilizing helpful online tools for customer tracking, QuickBooks and other financial management software can be used to mine data and perform internal research. This software allows your business to track inventory and optimize sales orders, review small business financing trends, determine price changes through a review of the transactions history, and even help monitor your cash flow to make future fiscal and growth decisions.

Utilize Retargeting

Smart marketers and business owners realize that knowing a customer’s behavior on their site is one thing, but knowing their other online habits can be a virtual goldmine. Thus, an increasing number of business owners are using cookies to track their customer’s activity away from their website. Cookies are basically little tracking devices that are stored on a person’s web browser, allowing you to gain valuable insights into your customer’s online behavior. Cookies can even be used to display personalized ads to each visitor.

Embrace Social Media

Social media is a “Big Data” goldmine. At any time, there are millions of tweets, hashtags, comments, posts, and status updates occurring on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and countless other social media networks that small businesses should be researching and taking advantage of to boost their sales. In addition to Facebook’s free “Insights” tool, there are other free and paid social analytical tools available that allow you to track a host of social media data occurring across the Web.

Your business does not need to be on the Fortune 500 list to use “Big Data.” By incorporating these data analytic tools into your workflow, you can witness how deciphering a sea of internal and consumer data can help optimize and grow your business. It may seem foreign at first, but by embracing “Big Data” and these tools, you will be able to better target your product offerings and marketing to expand your brand in no time at all.