“Data is the new oil.” — Clive Humby
Infact, good data forms a base to many business operations, product building, team building, marketing, etc.
In this blog, we will take you through 5 key benefits of data for startups success. Furthermore, you learn about different ways with which you can extract data to use.
5 Key Benefits of Data in Startups
Data can help you out not only in major aspects of business but also in minor ones. It’s an asset for the companies with millions of customers, subscribers or users. It’s a driving force for companies into the future.
However, here are the five key benefits of Data for startup founders:
1. Patterns & Trends
Analysing big data can help you identify patterns and trends that you might not be able to see otherwise. But, as a startup, you may not have sufficient data yet. In such scenario, data from the market, competitors (if accessible) and other research agencies proved to be of good use.
As a result of this data analysis, you’ll be able to capture trends quickly and improve your products and services, and business patterns much more effectively.
2. Operational Efficiency
Sometimes we end up spending too much resources on almost everything. However, identifying the most profitable areas and prioritizing them can lead to more profits. Startups can leverage data to streamline and optimize their operational processes.
Moreover, data can help you identify the weak points that need more attention. Hence, you’ll be able to invest equally in the aspects most likely to succeed. This helps to reduce costs, eliminate redundancies, and enhance productivity.
3. Users or Customers Behaviour & Feedback
One of the most important aspects of business are customers and their feedback. Therefore, it’s necessary to track user behavior and modify the products and services accordingly.
Data provides startups with valuable information about their customers, including their preferences, behaviors, and buying patterns. By closely studying customers data, startups can personalize offers, tailor marketing campaigns, and improve customer service.
This leads to higher customer satisfaction, increased sales, and improves the business processes by targeting the right customers with the right products or services. In simple words, analyzing user behavior helps you create better products that meet their needs and expectations.
Learn more: How to identify your ideal customers?
4. Predictive Analysis
Consider a situation where your startup is going an unknown way. Would you ever know the destination without a plan or prediction? Not at all!
Data can be used to develop predictive models that help startups anticipate future trends, demands, and potential risks. Predictions can be greatly contributing when it comes to the short-term in long-term success of your start-up. It not only helps you determine a plan to generate revenue but also to retain your customers.
5. Decision-making
Decisions related to product development, customer acquisition, and marketing strategies work the best when based on data. Such crucial decisions must not be taken on the basis of one’s intuition.
Therefore, always consider data from customers, industry competitors, and marketing analytics when it comes to decision-making.
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Where To Get Data Points From?
After we’ve known the benefits of data for your start, the next question is, where do you get all this data from? Is it from interviews, surveys, or social media, or directly from customers? Let’s look at the 4 key sources to extract data from.
1. Surveys
Online surveys and interviews can reveal a lot about what a customer thinks about your brand or its services. Simply, surveys are the best option when it comes to gathering feedback on a large scale.
Moreover, online surveys are confidential and so, customers stay comfortable and honest. Thus, it’s a great way to do thorough market research.
2. Social Media Platforms
‘Social media listening’ is a crucial part of marketing and also, in data gathering. In simple words, people like to share they are opinions on social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter. Keep your close eyes on your targeted audience on these social platforms.
What they share about your brand says a lot about your brand reputation in the market. So, use the data from social media and its potential.
3. Financial Data
To predict how long your startup may take to perform well, financial and sales data is helpful. Financial data will help you gain insights for the potential growth in your startup.
In addition, it will also help you understand the deep, pressing issues that must be addressed in order to maintain the revenue flow.
4. Sales Data
Now, coming to sales data, it will help you determine the demand of your product in the market. If you offer physical products, you can gain the sales data from retailer stores. However, if you are a digital business, digital analytics are available most of the time.
In the case of spiked or dropped sales, this data will help you decide whether the marketing efforts are enough or not. If not, you can discuss the team to dig out other strategies to reach more people and get more sales.
Final Words
Since AI is dominating most of the industries, it will also be contributing to data analysts to discover insights and find new patterns. Hence, data analysis would go on to be one of the important aspects for the startup success.
Moreover, data gives a clear way to walk on that can save your resources, time, and efforts to scale up. So, are you taking a step to finally listen to what statistics say?
Read more: Some FAQs for startups.
With over two decades of experience in the software technology arena, having worked in multinational and SME companies in India, USA and Singapore in the capacity of programmer to CTO – I felt now was a good time to give back to the world what I have learnt in this journey. Even if it ends up benefitting a few of my readers by giving them insight or solving a technical issue, I think I will have achieved my mission!