Gone are the days when businesses were measured on metrics of price only, it is day and age of data now. Businesses are now investing billions of dollars on analysis and automation. It is a must for businesses to run effective digital campaigns to sell their products but that won’t be possible without a skilful data analyst who has a sharp eye on sales revenue, site traffic, conversion, and retention rates. Let us dig deep into how data analysis can truly help you increase your sales.

Personalised customer experience

It is important to give customers what they want. It is human nature that they are more inclined towards a product which is according to their taste. The benefit of digital data is that companies can gather user’s data who visit the website and then run personalised different campaigns and ads to target these customers.

Now it is onto the data analyst which metrics they think will bring more customers in. For example, a clothing brand looks for the demographics, age groups, and retention rate to maximise their sales.

Increase engagement rates

When it comes to social media campaigns it is crucial to note down the engagement of customers to your content. Usually to calculate engagement rate, data analysts calculate engagement rate of posts by gathering the number of likes, comments, and shares. Divide this number by the number of followers and multiply by 100 to get a percentage of the post’s engagement rate.

The benchmark is usually 3-5% depending on your product and audience. But data analysts can figure out the cause of low engagement rates and suggest new strategies to increase it to have high sales.

Increase return on advertising spend (ROAS)

It reflects the amount of money spent on advertisements in comparison to the amount of money made from it. It is a crucial data analysis measure to have a strong idea of where your investment is going and is it fruitful? Ideally you should be making more money than you are spending on the ads. Data analysts gather this data to make inferences and predictions too. It is important to keep a check on your ROAS when dealing with social media campaigns. 

Increased retention rate

Retaining customers is important to any business, especially if you want to become sustainable then a loyal customer base is essential! Data analysts usually gather the data for individual customers in databases. They have their purchases and items of interest stored based on which they offer them special discounts. Now it is the responsibility of a data analyst to convert their customers to loyal ones by giving insightful information to the sales team.

Helps in decision making

When there is decrease of sales or loss of customers, it is the duty of data analysts to gather insights through data and propose a solution based on that. Data analysts don’t decide anything based on their instinct or gut feeling, in all of their decisions they rely on solid data. And that data has a story of itself, but it is the job of an analyst to tell that story on behalf of data. So, following is the duty of data analyst:

• What was the cause of the problem? (Reports)
• Why did it happen? (Diagnosis)
• What will happen in the future? (Predictions)
• What is the best way forward? (Recommendations) 

For instance, in a recent survey 46 percent of the marketers claimed that they would use analytics strategies to gain consumer insight in 2017. Examples of such strategies include location-based targeting, personalisation, and an increase in mobile and real-time reporting.

Helps with innovation & agility 

Data provides insights into what needs to be changed with modern needs and customer expectations. Many big businesses have brought revolution to the modern-day industry. Customer data helps with AI and predictive learning aspects where machine learning models behave based on patterns of customer liking. Many AI bots have been deployed by companies to maximise their sales based on data provided by data analysts.

Contributes to business development 

Data analysts categorise the data into different segments of age group, demographics, habits, and activities. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter etc. are ideal for providing accurate human behavioural data to pinpoint the interests of customers. It is very crucial to know about your customer. Many analysts use CLV (customer lifetime value) which determines each customer’s worth with respect to other customers. To bring in new products to the market we need a good amount of data about customers so we can increase sales.

Data is the focal point of digital marketing. To maximise sales and profits, companies should invest more on data analysis and data mining. Customers should be treated as assets to the company and more should be spent on studying their patterns. Data analysis has proven to be a determining factor in modern data business.