How To Gather and Use Data on Your Customers

Many businesses today use extensive data to help inform their product designs, marketing, financing and much more. If you want to be using more customer data, you may be wondering how to start. The following steps and techniques will enable you to gather and use customer data for your business.

1) Set Data Goals

Before you begin collecting or analyzing data, you need to set some goals. These are the questions that you hope to answer and the outcomes you hope to achieve. For example, you may wonder which group of customers are most likely to buy a certain product so that you can target your marketing accordingly.

Consider writing SMART goals for your objectives. These are specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and time-bound. Then, create questions that you need to answer to be able to achieve your goals. Gradually, this process will help you create the foundation for how you will collect, organize and analyze your customer data.

2) Collect Data From Your Current Customers

One of the most readily available pools of data is your current customer base. You can collect information from them using several methods. Perhaps the simplest is with your order form. Whenever someone wants to make a purchase, you are already gathering some information on what they buy, when they buy and how.

You can request contact information for convenience and programs such as loyalty discounts. You can also offer them access to valuable information such as a webinar in exchange for filling out a contact form.

3) Conduct Primary Research

If you want to expand upon your data about your current customers, you may conduct some primary research. There are many methods for doing this including surveys, focus groups, interviews and more. Think about the problems you would like to address with your research. That should guide how you structure your process.

Often, it is beneficial to incentivize your research participants in some way. This may be in the form of valuable information such as a white paper in exchange for a short survey. You can also provide financial compensation for participating.

4) Gather Additional Data From Secondary Sources

There are numerous market research resources you can use to expand your data pool. These sources are often less focused than the data you collect yourself. However, they are also more readily available and likely more expansive.

Finding the right data set for your needs is the key challenge of gathering data from secondary sources. In some cases, you may find research that is highly relevant. In other cases, you may need to interpret your data significantly. This is how big data operates. Organizations have huge sets of data that they can draw inferences from even when the data doesn’t directly address their questions.

5) Get It All Organized

Of course, the challenge with all this data is getting it all organized. This where solutions such as data wrangling become important. By automating some of your data management, you can get your large data set into a much more organized and easier to use format.

You may need to purge some data and you may need to fill in some gaps. Additionally, you will likely need to combine more than one source together. This can require wrangling to get everything into a consistent and usable format.

6) Analyze Your Data

Once you have your data together and organized, you can begin analyzing it. Depending on the questions you set out when you began the process, your analysis methods may vary. However, you should strive to interpret your data in a way that illuminates the solution to your business goals. At this point, you will be ready to make some decisions about how you want to grow your business.

Get Started

You can achieve a lot with the right data. As you get more comfortable with the above process, you will get more and more from your data sets. So, get started answering your strategic questions.