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LET'S GET AHEAD! Make Money, Save Money, Live Better!
Data Mining - Diggin' For Dollars! … by neil smith
Posted on 2008-Oct-15 at 10:38 - Post Comment
10/15/08
If you are just starting out in business or already have one off the ground, you either have a database containing customer and prospective customer information, or you soon will regardless of how far out of your mind that aspect of your business may be at the moment. Trust me, my first business database was comprised of three Microsoft Word documents (CLIENTS, ACTIVE PROSPECTS and DEAD PROSPECTS) with the contacts merely alphabetized. Ahh the good ol’ days! I have progressed from that out of necessity and eventually if you are running any sort of viable business, you will too.
Once you have amassed a certain amount of information over time just from your daily data input as you operate your business, certain patterns will form in your data that you may not be aware of that can reveal valuable information regarding the habits of certain demographics of the contacts in your database. This information can help you to better target your sales and marketing focus and may even help you cross-market new products and services. Extracting this data in ways which you can benefit from is called DATA MINING. Care to dig deeper?
Q: Don’t you need to be a large, faceless corporation with a super-Goliath computing platform to take advantage of something as daunting and advanced as data mining?
A: Heck no! - In regards to small business, the term data mining is merely in reference to the analysis of certain customer data you have collected in order to identify ways in which you can improve your services and boost your profits utilizing information you ALREADY HAVE such as name, address, phone numbers, email addresses, websites, how often they buy, when they buy, how they learned about you, income, age and geographical location.
If you are not gathering this information - start gathering it! This does not mean you should start calling everyone in your database and pummeling them with questions. Instead, you should just create fields for this information in your database and add information as acquired. “Slow and steady wins the race!” said the victorious turtle.
You can also mine information from outside sources utilizing data which can be obtained from educational and government sources such as census data to identify different demographics within a certain area which can help you focus your sales and marketing efforts more effectively. Also try going onto the websites of different cities’ chambers of commerce. There you can often find very useful information along with business and government listings often broken down into various categories ripe for your picking!
Ways to Collect Valuable Data -
As previously stated, you don’t want to bum-rush your clients and prospects and start pummeling them for information. Instead, gather information slowly through your normal routine follow up conversations and also try things like contests and surveys which you can email or mail to them or place on your website along with perhaps a coupon good for a nominal discount in exchange for entering information. Great information can also just be gathered in your normal routine conversations with your customers and prospects as well without the need for anything fancy. Just take good notes while you communicate.
Extracting the Gems from Your Data Mine!
Your database is your data mine! You’ve worked hard to shore up the walls, lay down the cart tracks and drill the dynamite holes, and now we’re going to blast and dig up all this dirty data, run it through the sifter and look for the diamonds!
We want to find out what your best clients have in common. Are they all of a certain age group? Do they all reside in a certain type of neighborhood? Do they share a common ethnic thread? Are they all golfers? How do they come to you (website, print advertising, word of mouth?). These are the types of things you want to look for so that you can focus more effectively on the most lucrative profit streams and identify new ones!
What I have laid out here is just the beginning as far as ways in which you can put data mining to work for you. Get creative, think outside the box and put your valuable mine to work for you and MAKE MONEY, SAVE MONEY and SEAL THE DEAL! (It doesn’t hurt to hire dwarves to do your digging for you either, but that’s another story for another time…)
Please visit my website at http://www.letsgetahead.com for more great articles like this one!
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