Big data isn’t coming – it’s already here. Big data, machine learning, deep learning, data science — the range of technologies and techniques for analyzing vast volumes of data is expanding at a lightning speed. This is to gain deep insights into customer behavior, systems performance, and identify new revenue opportunities. Here’s your essential guide to how marketers can carefully craft a plan that will see them leveraging new business techniques to cut cost and improve efficacy.

1. Invest in hiring experts

The ultimate goal is to find experts, strong marketers who understands the consumers and know how to utilize data analytics first. Subsequently, he/she can then learn the about the industry. Citibank once observed that since a given number of marketing skills, expertise, and experiences are often missing in the talent pool from the banking sector, they looked at hiring marketers with no banking experience at all. In such cases, the last thing Citi needed was more people with banking experience. “We are looking for people who are consumer marketers and understand the audience.” – Blanton

2. Don’t forget about reskilling your valuable existing employees

While hiring data analytics experts may the quickest way to harness the power of data, your existing employees provide immense value as well. It’s their knowledge and experiences accumulated over the years in this industry, coupled with the skills provided by your data experts that will translate into actionable business strategies! So, don’t be too quick to retrench them. Instead, you want to invest in your existing employees by providing them with upskilling opportunities. Hackwagon offers a wide range of Data Analytics courses such as the Data Science 101 to upskill individuals and help keep businesses relevant.

3. Track traffic and performance to identify growth opportunities

We recommend having at least one source of data and tracking it diligently. It is one of the best ways to get started, sort out leads and figure out what’s wrong/where can I improve. It’s crucial to set up your tracking from the beginning (through Google Analytics or any other tool available), as this infrastructure is what will allow you to do effective testing. Have a business problem in mind. For example, most of your online traffic dropping out at the checkout page. This is where you’d focuses heavily on analytics in that part of the funnel to understand when, why, and how people drop out. Subsequently, iterate potential solutions based on your findings. Through changes in design and the nature of the offer that brings customers to the page, marketers work to optimise the process so it feels worth their consumers’ time.