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3 Steps To Incorporate Big Data Into Your Small Business

This article is more than 10 years old.

Small businesses are often late adopters when it comes to implementing the latest trends in technology. One such trend is the concept of Big Data, which is being used to better predict customer behavior and is allowing businesses to tailor their offerings to squeeze more revenue from customer insights.

There is no perfect definition of Big Data, but here's an attempt at the simplest explanation: Big Data is any data that can't easily be structured and queried using standard relational database techniques.

Previously, Big Data was left to the realm of really large businesses.  This was due to the challenges facing small businesses like the lack of resources to be able to collect and store Big Data let alone the ability to effectively analyze it in such a fashion that can can help them be more successful.  Thankfully, small businesses no longer need to be left out of the Big Data world.

Here are three steps you can take to incorporate Big Data into your small business or startup:

Step #1: Round Up Your Data

The greatest barrier to successfully using Big Data to drive business growth is the lack of organization of that data and seeing how it relates to the other data that's being generated.  Combining data from various silos is the first step to taking advantage of the predictive capabilities of using Big Data.Take the average small business that sells products online.  They probably have a setup something like this:

- CRM tool such as Salesforce.com

- Website from a small local website designer

- Website visitor analytics tool such as Google Analytics

- Email marketing tool such as Constant Contact

- WordPress blog

- Standard Web forms for lead capture

- E-commerce product for selling products or taking customer payments online

What is basically a simple setup for a typical e-commerce business shows that data can be in one of seven different places. Most small business operations lack the expertise to combine all of that data, let alone analyze it to get real business intelligence from it.  Throw in social media efforts across Twitter , Facebook and Pinterest and there's a big barrier to small business use of Big Data.

Instead of using various disparate products from different vendors, small businesses can now integrate various tools such as their website, blog, visitor analytics, customer contact management, email marketing, payment processing and social media tracking efforts into a single platform. This automates data gathering and combines it all into one place to make it easier to analyze how data relates across the entire customer engagement process.

Step #2: Test Your Data

Big Data is not a magic bullet and using it doesn't guarantee a positive outcome. However, it's a wonderful tool that can be added to your bag of tricks to increase your chances of success. Small businesses have an advantage over large organizations with the ability to quickly test new methods without going through significant studies or bureaucracy to get a simple test run of an idea approved.

If you've gathered all of your data together as recommended in step one, testing the power of Big Data can be done quickly. Here's one one example of successful Big Data usage by my organization, BannerView.com.

We began an experiment by doing an analysis of our last 12 email marketing newsletters, which covered a period of six months. Each edition of our newsletter is sent bi-weekly and includes several blog articles produced by our staff. We wanted to know which type of articles were resonating with our subscribers so that we could tailor special offers and future content around the most popular subjects with the objective of getting the greatest return from our writing efforts.

The data showed us that our current audience eats up content related to online marketing, more specifically anything related to search engine optimization (SEO).  Those articles received the highest click-throughs, generated the most comments and greatest off-website discussions. Based on this data, we predicted that we'd see a response that was significantly higher than previous offers if we designed a special offer related to SEO. Our prediction was validated and we've also begun to develop new content marketing products to increasing our attractiveness to this audience.

Step #3: Get Educated on Big Data

This step should really be step one, but it wouldn't do you any good if you didn't have the data in the first place. This comes after step two because as an entrepreneur, doing is learning, and everything you do is a test. If you knew with greater certainty that spending your time and money a certain way increased sales, you could start reducing time and money spent on areas that don't drive increased bottom line results. Understanding why your test results are what they are is critical to entrepreneurial success.

The right data can help you make intelligent decisions on what type of content to write, what products/services to offer and help you develop appropriate marketing offers that will drive sales.  Big Data can be a source of insight you'll soon not want to be without.

Mark Cenicola is the president and CEO of BannerView.com, a website development company focusing on helping small to mid-size businesses better use the Internet as a portal for generating business. Mark is also the author of the book “The Banner Brand – Small Business Success Comes from a Banner Brand – Build it on a Budget.”