There are multiple reasons why a business might not experience growth. The good news is it is never too late to fix it. Welcome to the ongoing series where we navigate what may be going wrong and why your business isn’t growing!
In fact, it isn’t necessarily that data analytics is keeping your business from growing, rather, if you’re NOT using data analytics in your business yet - you should be, and that’s the case we’re making for businesses today, no matter the size. Today we‘ll be reviewing data analytics, what it is, and why it’s important for the growth of EVERY business.
What is Data Analytics?
Data Analytics is a systematic collection of overall data and statistics. It is often used to recognize patterns, which in return can help with decision-making. A good example is deciding whether you should get coffee on your way to work. The last two times you tried to get coffee, you were late to work by 15 minutes - ouch! Based on that pattern, you have now made the decision to leave the house 20 minutes early, so now you have enough time to get your favorite Latte (with an extra shot of espresso) and make it to work on time.
In data terms, by learning more about patterns that cause undesired effects and then finding patterns that produce desired effects is where data analytics comes in. Data analytics can help you find those patterns to enhance your company’s performance and reduce costs by identifying and creating efficient business methods. Which can lead to growth!
The Four Main Types of Analytics
It’s important to understand the different types of analytics to know how they can help your business improve to achieve the growth you’re looking for. So let’s dive in!
- Descriptive - the process of collecting previous and current data to identify relationships and patterns. Think of this as the “what happened?” stage. This is where tools like Google Analytics are helpful.
- Diagnostic - this is the process where data mining and correlation usually occur to find out “why did this happen?”
- Predictive - this is where you can take the historical and current data along with strategic techniques to predict future outcomes of decision-making. Tools such as decision trees and regressions are often used in this process. Many analytic tools allow you to create these views.
- Prescriptive - this is advanced analytics to examine data to answer the question “what should be done?” and “what can we do to make (insert strategy) happen?” This is where our team steps in to help!
How to Use Data Analytics to Boost Your Business Growth
Where can you find this data, and how can you start your analysis? Well, you’ll be surprised to know that you can find and use this data from your spread sheets, social media platforms, website, or even Google. You can take this data and enter them into dataset software which can then run the analysis for you; this can be a lot of work and really expensive with varying results. OR... (shameless plug) you can hire a team that can help analyze that data for you and provide prescriptive next steps - perhaps The Social Robin! 🥳
For a better example of how analytics work, take a read on how analytics works for social media platforms.
A lack of business growth can be attributed to a number of reasons, but the lack of using readily available data from your website, social media accounts, or any other available data that you have about your business is the first step to understanding key information about what might be lagging behind in your business. Data analytics is vital to any company’s success, and if you haven’t begun collecting data - now is the time to start! To learn more about how The Social Robin can help you with collecting and analyzing your company’s data reach out to us via our site or our handy text line!