According to Gallop’s analysis, companies that apply behavioral economics outperform those who don’t. This is an increase of 85% sales growth and more than 25% in gross margin.

Companies are collecting more and more consumer data each day and are utilizing this data to generate big returns.

These companies are also using innovative approaches like web data scraping to get personalized data that helps your bottom line.

If you would like to learn more about consumer data and how it can benefit your business,.

Check out this guide

How To Collect Consumer Data

Collecting data from consumers is an important part of any business’s marketing strategy. Without personalized data, companies are at a major disadvantage when it comes to reaching out to the consumer. The closer you can get to the consumer, the easier it is to sell your product.

Types of Data

To understand how to collect consumer data, it is important first to understand the types of data that can be collected. There are a few different types of data you can collect including:

• Primary Data – data that has been gathered directly from the consumer
• First-Party Data – data that has been gathered from your audience
• Second-Party Data – first-party data collected from another company
• Third-Party Data – data that has been gathered from another company

Second-party data is normally bought from another company. Third-party data is usually bought from a marketplace that has pulled information from a few sources.

Primary and first-party data are the most trustworthy sources of data because you have collected it yourself.

Ways to Gather Data

There are many ways to gather data that can be used to improve your business and generate returns.

There are three basic ways to collect data:

1. Directly asking your consumer
2. Indirectly tracking the consumer
3. Pulling other sources of data about the consumer

A good place to start for collecting consumer data is by asking your customers name, mailing address, and email address. These three are very important to give your company a way of directly marketing to your consumer with a personalized touch to make them feel important. With this data, you can send invites for special events, offer coupons to drive traffic into the store, and generate repeat business.

The next data typically collected from the consumer can include their birthday, profession, and gender. With this information, it gives you the ability to further personalize your marketing approach. For example, You can send birthday coupons to invite them to spend in the store.

Some companies dig even deeper. They will collect information about the consumer’s personalities, values, and lifestyle choices. With this information, you open up an array of possibilities that will help generate business and improve your bottom line.

One great way to get large amounts of consumer data is to extract it from the web through scraping social media activity, blog posts and other news that might affect the consumer. To do this at scale you will need a web scraping proxy provider so you never get detected by the website.

Digging Deeper

Companies have found innovative approaches to understanding their consumer. Influencing them in certain ways to suggest add-on items to increase total sales.

Companies like Amazon and Zappos are using artificial intelligence to track what consumers are buying. With this information, they can recommend certain items that you may purchase.

This form of data mining is called “basket analysis” and is based on the idea that if you have bought a certain group of items, then you are likely to purchase another group of items.

There are many ways to collect consumer data, some are more intrusive than others. Another way companies are collecting consumer data is based on their location.

Companies will collect consumer’s IP addresses, watch the IP addresses they are interacting with. And then target specific users with super personalized advertising that is relevant to your location.

With companies having the ability to buy and sell data about their consumers, consumers’ data profiles are becoming very personal and relevant. It is important to keep in mind the consumer’s privacy.

Europe has set rules and regulations on how companies can treat consumer data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR.) And the United States also has legislation in place that is stated to state.

Turning Data Into Knowledge

The problem with collecting large amounts of data on consumers is the need to sort through it, collecting information that will help your business generate returns. Artificial Intelligence is becoming a huge factor in sorting through large amounts of data. Having the ability to return useful information the company can use.

The use of artificial intelligence is presenting a bigger problem in itself – the need for computers that can handle this amount of information.

Check out the supernode core upgrade, which will help you sort through these large amounts of data and find the information you are looking for that will help benefit your company.

The more relevant and high-quality information you can obtain about your consumers, the easier it will be to translate that data into something useful. The data will not only improve your sales but your marketing, customer service, and product development as well.

This type of data will help you:

• Understand your consumer better – making it easier to understand what they are interested in and what you can provide to them
• Identify areas of your business for improvement – making it easier to see what areas your consumers are happy with and what you need to work on
• Look at past trends to determine the future – making it easier to look at what has worked in the past and what direction you should be going in the future
• Personalize marketing – making it easier for you to truly connect with your market and capture consumers in your niche

For More Helpful Small Business Information

You can see why collecting consumer data is so important for any type of business. It helps you connect with consumers, find ways to improve business, and also capture a larger market share.

If you would like more information that will help your small business, check out our blog!