Implementing first-party data strategy for small enterprises

Given the general global business outlook and increased data privacy oversight, small and medium-sized businesses must create and execute a first-party data strategy. PHOTO | POOL   

By MBUGUA NJIHIA More by this Author

Given the general global business outlook and increased data privacy oversight, small and medium-sized businesses must create and execute a first-party data strategy.

By collecting and utilising data from your customers and interactions, you can gain valuable insights into their behaviours, preferences, and needs to improve the customer experience, target marketing efforts, and drive business growth.

Here are six steps that you can follow to get started:

Define your data objectives

Before collecting any data, have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with it. It might include identifying customer segments, improving loyalty, or increasing sales.

Having specific goals will help you focus your data collection efforts and ensure that you are collecting the right data.

Identify the data sources

Once you have defined your data objectives, you need to identify sources. This can include customer surveys, interactions on your website or mobile app, social media engagements, or historical transaction information.

Consider layering data from compliant third-party sources to supplement your efforts.

ALSO READ: Saccos, SMEs lag in data privacy laws compliance

Develop a collection plan

This should cover details on how you will collect the data, who will be responsible for collecting it, and how you will store and manage it.

You must take into account legal and ethical considerations, such as obtaining consent from customers and protecting their personal information.

Analyse and interpret the data

You need to analyse and interpret collected data to extract meaningful insights.

This involves using data visualisation tools to identify trends and patterns, or statistical analysis to identify correlations and relationships between different data sets.

This should lead to aha moments or validate a hypothesis.

Communicate insights

After you have extracted insights from your data, you need to communicate them to relevant stakeholders in your business.

It could be presenting your findings to your management team, sharing them with your sales or marketing teams, or using them to inform business decisions if singularly responsible.

READ: Closing the data protection information gap for SMEs

Act on the insights

The final step in creating and executing a first-party data strategy is to act on the insights you have gained.

This could see you implementing new marketing campaigns based on customer preferences, making changes to your website or mobile app based on user behaviour, or launching new products or services based on identified customer needs.

Overall, implementing a first-party data strategy will provide valuable insights to help you better understand and serve your customers through delightful experiences.

Njihia is the head of business at Safiri Express

www.mbuguanjihia.com