How Your Small Business Can Profit from Big Data

Small Business Really Can Benefit from Big Data

Every day we hear about “big data” in the news. There are billions, even trillions of records stored about user behavior. But his big data limited to giants such as Amazon, American Express and other companies? And if not, how can it be leveraged ethically and legally?

The real value in big data is not downloading a massive data set with the personal identifiable information (“PII”) of individual users. While this article is not getting into legal discussions, we all see the trouble that different companies have gotten into sharing this information.

Instead, big data can be leveraged for targeting purposes, helping small businesses identify their ideal prospects. We want to do this without revealing the personal information of the individual. The idea? Get the message in front of the right people.

Behavioral Data Is the Best Data

In our experience, behavioral data is the most valuable information you can have. Demographics (age, gender, income) are nice. However, they don’t let you know if the person is interested in a product or service. Google keywords, in contrast, reflect the intent of the user. Ever wonder why Google clicks are so expensive? They let you know what the person is looking for. They are literally asking for what they want.

But what if you want more than search delivers?

What if you want to reach beyond those few people searching today, and the small percentage of those who click your links on Google?

Target Those with Interest – Even if They Are Not Searching Today

Using big data, we can help our clients target those who are most likely in need of their product or service.

No, we do not sell them the personal identifiable information of an individual. We do not tell them the credit score. We do not tell them how much money is left on their mortgage.

What if you want to reach people who are likely to need your legal services? What if you want to connect with people who were in the market for a luxury car? Demographics and ZIP code narrow your reach, but do not let you know if the person is genuinely interested.

Using Elaborate Data Queries to Define a Small Interested Audience

We develop elaborate queries against massive datasets where we filter down to people in the right location, with the right demographics, and most importantly with the right behavior, desire and intent. We can turn an audience of 8 million people in New York into a short list of 6,000.

How much more effective do you think your advertising would be if it targeted the 6,000 who were interested versus 8 million in a general population? How much more effectively would your daily be if it reached the right people?

Reach People Already Interested via Display, Social Ads, Search

Whether you’re running Facebook ads, display ads, Google search or other marketing, your ads will be much more effective if the same ads are reaching people who are already interested in what you are offering.

Before you run your next campaign, consider this: I can run this ad to a wide demographic audience, and I can run a copy of the ad to a very narrowly qualified and focused audience. How much better will the results be? That’s were testing comes into play, but the results tend to be dramatic. Even better, as conversion data is tracked and matched against behavioral data, the algorithms get smarter and the targeting gets even sharper.

Bring in the Machines

Once you have your campaign running, the use of big data to analyze performance is key. Let the systems learn what buyers are interested. Perhaps vegans are twice as interested in your non-food service as someone else. Perhaps married people with 2 children are more likely to subscribe than those with 3 children. 

The point? Machine learning & AI can find patterns in data we can’t see. They aren’t smarter - there is just too much data for a human to wade through. But a rack of servers analyzing the data, looking at billions of data points? Yes, that can find patterns we can’t see.

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Christopher Ulrich is the CEO and founder of Direct Response Group which has been helping companies generate leads online for more than 20 years. Their clients range from Fortune 500 to small local businesses including professionals and service providers. 

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