Using Digital Analytics to Measure Growth in a Business

Using digital analytics is essential to not only measure business growth, but to optimize operations and performance by better understanding both customers and employees.

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Business owners start their work with a vision for how the company will grow. From the day the idea first came into your mind to the grand opening you put together when you were able to kick it off, you poured yourself into making your dream a reality.

Once the business opens, though, you’ve likely found that a lot goes into the daily operations, and you may wonder how you can advance your company when you’re entrenched in the everyday nuances.

Your answer, in a word: analytics.

In this post we’re going to look at using digital analytics to improve your business operations and measure your business growth. Ready?

What is Analytics?

You can classify the information that you gather from your employees, customers, and business partners as data. If you have the right tools to analyze that data and format it in a way that you can easily understand, you can then evaluate where you are and see how to get where you want to be.

Using Digital Analytics for Efficiency

Especially in a new or growing company, time, money, and materials are commodities that you don’t have room to spare. If you can’t keep a budget under control or take too long to finish your projects, you’ll find it difficult to retain both customers and employees.

You need to be able to see where your people are, or should be, and give them clearly defined goals to accomplish each day. If you can make use of analytics tools from your timesheet app or management-run input, you have a better chance of understanding where your people are and what gaps need help to fill.

You should also be able to track your spending with ease. Make use of an online budgeting system to monitor where your company’s funds are going and where you might need to make cutbacks or abandon projects. If you can visualize the facts of each situation, you can adjust to make your company efficient and effective.

Using Digital Analytics for Marketing

Your marketing efforts depend heavily on your ability to track them. You should have data not just for each advertisement you put out, but also the demographics of your audience, the details of days and times where you get responses, and the conversion rates between first sight and purchase of your product.

If you cannot keep track of where your audience is coming from or what draws them to consider your product or service, you will have a much more difficult time finding them. Your business will need to have the capacity to analyze consumer data and point out where your marketing efforts are not doing well.

When your advertisements or campaigns succeed, you’ll want to be able to track that as well. Find an analytics tool that can track how your customers get to your site and see how you can pour more resources into the methods that work and cut back on the ones that don’t.

Each social media platform has a variety of analytics tools available to businesses, some of which are free, and some you’ll have to purchase. The data you receive from those tools will be significant to your ability to grow your business as you seek to improve your targeting and find your audience.

Using Digital Analytics for Growth

All of these tools help you make changes on a smaller scale, but streamlining the day-to-day processes using this technology can give you the edge you need to keep your business growing. Once you have a good idea of where you are and what is and isn’t working for you, you’ll be able to predict your next steps.

You’ll need to be able to use the systems that are already working for you and adapt them to future campaigns. The data you gather over a set period can give you an idea of what you have to anticipate in the next phases of your company’s growth and how you can work with those expected changes to help your business along.

Analytics can also help you automate systems that have proven to work the same way every time, like transaction processing and chain supply orders. If you have repeat orders or use a specific amount of materials in a set amount of time, then you can program those processes to work without human supervision.

You’ll need to use analytics on your competition, too, since consumers tend to go where they feel they can get the best deal. Look for what works for businesses that do the same work you do, and see how to adapt their tactics to work for your company. If you understand your competitor’s strengths, you can counter them better.

Conclusion

In an age where technology is available in every aspect of life, you can keep up with the times and gain advantages by using it. Using digital analytics can give your business the edge it needs to fulfill the dream you started with — and even go far beyond it.