Potential students and business partners get information about your school or agency from various devices, including phones and laptops. This makes it very easy for you to track consumer behaviour and patterns. Such data is very important for any international education marketing strategy, however, having a large amount of data to analyze can be overwhelming. The right frame of mind and tools to navigate all this information, helps you realize the value in analyzing your customer data.

Accepting the Importance of Big Data

Big Data comes across as difficult to process, and the temptation to simply ignore it is strong. But, hope is not lost! When dissected it can provide useful insight that will aid your marketing efforts. Accepting that in Big Data there is precious value is the first step in the right direction, even though it still needs to be filtered and refined.

Invest in the Right Tools

Now that you’ve accepted the hidden value in all that data, it is time to invest in the right tools for the job. The key here is to get the right talent, to dive into all that data and come out with the information that is most important to you. Bigger companies may have an entire department for this, but it's not the only way to go. With plenty of online tools to choose from you can still get the benefit of value extraction without spending large budget amounts.

Lessons in History

When thinking of customer data, it is not only the big chunk of daily incoming digital data that is important. As the saying goes, history repeats itself, so to have a sound plan that will last you long-term, it is important to look back on your customer history. Analyzing data such as where your students came from over the years in a particular month or season can help you forecast. If your past customer data is not yet digitized it may be a good idea to document it as sales history from the past ten years may show you buying patterns that current digital data may not.

Become More Efficient

When thinking of data we tend to focus on just how it can help us increase sales, but data can also help add to your profits in indirect ways. Through data, one can analyze how to operate more efficiently. For example, if you know that your potential students come from a country or age group that isn’t so present on Facebook, then you can avoid spending time and money on that channel. 

Follow us next week as we navigate more ways to understand the value of data and what it can be used for.