A good friend of mine is a math geek (PHD) and is right up near the top of a very large, very public organization. His job is to determine what data is needed and then sends his stats squadron in to analyze data and find trends.
Much of what they find the general public never knows about… it’s just too scary.
What fascinates me about what he does (it sure isn’t the math stuff!) is the power that these anaylatical types hold in their hands.
When they analyze data, they can find some oh-so-useful-and-powerful information.
So when I read an article in reuters.com called Big Data Big Impact, I thought of him and how this all is becoming the lifeline of small business owners like you and I.
Data IS the future.
Knowing how to use it is where you find incredible breakthroughs that can grow your business by leaps and bounds.
Consider a few statements from this article: (reuters.com)
* “…if you use big data to track your sales more precisely, you need fewer salespeople.”
* The McKinsey Global Institute, trumpeting big data as “the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity.”
* “To understand how much data is now at our fingertips, consider a few striking facts from the McKinsey report. One is that it costs less than $600 to buy a disk drive with the capacity to store all of the world’s music. Another is that in 2010 people around the world collectively stored more than 6 exabytes of new data on devices like PCs and notebook computers; each exabyte contains more than 4,000 times the information stored in the Library of Congress.”
* McKinsey believes that the transformative power of all of this data will amount to a fifth wave in the technology revolution, building on the first four: the mainframe era; the PC era; the Internet and Web 1.0 era; and most recently, the mobile and Web 2.0 era.”
So what does this mean to you and I, and all other non-math-stats-geeks?
It means yeeeeeeee haw!
It’s time for us all to get a real grip on our customer data.
It means it’s time to start digging deeper into our customer databases to look for unique trends and commonoalities (imagine if you found out that 63% of your big ticket buyers were fans of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”, or that 51% of your Facebook fans were members of the CPSA).
Think about it!
THAT is power in your hands.
You can customize your marketing and lead generation to find MORE of those people.
You could go to the CPSA and buy ad spots on their site, their blog, and inside their members newsletter.
You could and you should.
I specialize in helping small businesses grow (small business being defined as 75 employees or fewer, most fewer than 20).
That’s you.
That’s me.
That’s where our biggest opportunity is in 2012 folks.
This is something I truly hope you “get” and that you really start tracking customer information better.
Perry Marshal has his new Fanalytix program which helps you analyze Facebook data. I am just starting to test it – if it is even half as good as I think it could be, WOW – that is some SERIOUS power in your hands.
Every single chance you get to talk to a customer, or collect survey data, or do a questionare with them… look for information like books, movies, hobbies, memberships, and associations.
Track them.
Record them.
Look for trends.
…and when you find a trend or common trait… make sure you modify your marketing to capture MORE people like those who already buy from you.
Small Data is just as powerful as Big Data.
But it is up to you to find it and capitalize on it.
Start now.
Troy
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