Data mining and Analytics: Yes, this applies to you ! Sales Growth Strategies for Small Business
Anyone watching the NFL on TV has seen IBM commercials touting the importance of web analytics and data mining. However most small business Owners do not know exactly what these words mean and how these techniques can help their businesses. Let’s start with explaining the terms:
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Web Analytics: Tracking the traffic coming to your website and studying it to determine areas of consumer interest.
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Data Mining: Analyzing current customer information to generate more business from existing customers.
In the past, while companies such as IBM built very large, complex and expensive software for enterprise users, these programs were cost prohibitive for small businesses. But with the availability of state-of-art platforms such as Ocoos, these powerful techniques are available to small businesses at minimal cost in terms of cash or time. How can small business firms use these capabilities?
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Web Analytics: Small Businesses can answer two questions with this capability:
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What is the interest level of customers to my various offerings?
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What is the impact of external advertising to my website traffic?
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Data Mining: The key insight driving this capability is that retaining or upgrading a customer is an order-of-magnitude less costly than obtaining a new customer. With this capability, small businesses can mine their current customer base to determine the appropriate timeframe for reengagement (example: tax season) or potential for engaging with other services. An example might be to approach tax clients with personal financial planning.
Taken together, these two capabilities are incredibly powerful tools to gaining understanding of the business and driving new business.
