Now is a great time to Spring Clean your data
A slightly longer and darker winter than usual is coming to an end and traditionally, as Spring breaks, we invest energy in sowing seeds to grow throughout the rest of the year. This year should be no different and, after so much disruption, it’s probably more important than ever to spend some time looking at one of the most important assets in your business and using it to nurture your growth throughout the rest of the year – your data.
Here are some suggested steps to take to spring clean your data and set your business up for a great year:
Step One – Who is your ideal customer?
My eBook: “Understand the Importance of Knowing Your Ideal Client and Create your own Avatar” is an ideal place to start.
You need to create an avatar for your business, to ensure that you are addressing the real problems or issues that your customers face.
My guide helps you do three things:
- Learn why you need an avatar
- Learn how to use an avatar
- Create your own avatar by using our handy
Even if you have done this before, I would recommend revisiting your avatars annually (or every time there is a change in Lockdowns!) as your customers change and evolve just as your business may do. You can learn something new every time you complete this process.
Your business needs to be clear on who its ideal customer is to make sure your marketing messages, content creation and systems fit this persona.
Step Two – Look at your data
Once you know who your ideal customer is, you should do an audit of your data to see if it fits your avatar. When I talk about data, I mean your customer data or client information.
Data Protection requires you to comply with the law, think carefully about the information you hold, and have compliant protocols in place to be able to send communication to your contacts, and, where necessary, keep your data up-to-date. You also need to ensure that a process is in place when gathering new contact data too. Talk to me to find out more about Data Protection – it really is an opportunity to sort out lots of areas in your business.
If you don’t have pre-defined data input systems or have several people in your company entering data, it can lead to duplication, inconsistent data entries, or incomplete records.
Also, if a Data Protection protocol isn’t in place, and your records aren’t clean and tidy, it could have serious implications for how you grow your business, not to mention the risk that you could be breaking the law.
Carrying out a data health check will help you with your Data Protection compliance and let you know which areas of your contact database or CRM are lacking information. You can then decide which segments of data need to be enriched, and which contacts need to be updated or re-categorised. Our Data Fitness Assessment can investigate your data’s completeness, accuracy, age, duplication and alignment to your target market.
Once you have done a spring clean of your data, you can see what gaps you have and come up with a strategy to enhance and enrich one of the main foundations of your business.
Step 3 – Last but not least, invest in a good CRM (Contact Relationship Management)
A quality CRM will allow your business to store data and manipulate it efficiently to reflect your customer avatar, saving you time and money. You may question the need for a CRM, but every business should have one. Read my blog, or watch my YouTube videos, to find out how they can help all businesses, regardless of size or complexity.
With a CRM in place, you can move your business forward knowing that you have an effective way of communicating with your ideal customer and that you’re managing their data effectively and ethically.
We always recommend CapsuleCRM because it is excellent at helping improve revenue, reduce spend, ensure productive use of contacts, managing a pipeline, and delivering client work efficiently.
In fact, here at Blake Consultants we help businesses find their ideal customer avatar and then design and install a bespoke CapsuleCRM to suit your exact business requirements. We can also do a data health check on existing databases to ensure you have high-quality data.
If you want to start making some positive changes and grow your business, contact me today for a no-obligation chat about improving your sales and marketing engagement processes.
Who Am I?
I have been working with CapsuleCRM for over a decade and helped many clients increase revenue, reduce costs, make the most of their contacts, manage their pipeline and deliver great customer service. Capsule is an excellent way to capture your leads and clients once you’ve identified them using your avatar.
I can design and install the perfect bespoke version of Capsule to meet your needs. Capsule really is a great solution for coaches, consultants and business owners and when it is integrated with Transpond and Xero you have really solid foundations in place to grow your business.
I’m always happy to have a chat – you can contact me at julia.blake@blakeconsultants.co.uk and sign up to receive my Growth Hack Bulletin too.
You can also follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube