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How to Incorporate Open Data into Your Marketing Strategy

Data is now more important than ever; it impacts basically every element of our lives, and perhaps even more so in business. Data-driven marketing is vital to running a successful campaign; guesswork and trial and error may be useful from time to time, but having cold hard numbers to work with will always mean better results.

A potentially great way of incorporating data into your marketing strategy is to use open data; information that has been made available to anyone and for any use. Having these data sets online means a goldmine of information at your fingertips that provides insight into a wide range of topics and can be used in numerous different ways - and all without spending a single penny!

If you haven't worked with open data before, or are looking for some more ideas for how to use it in your marketing campaigns, read on and you'll (hopefully!) soon be inspired.

 

The Top 5 Business Advantages of Open Data

While the open data movement began predominantly as a way to make government operations more transparent, the business world has now begun to see the benefits that using the wealth of freely available information can hold. The Met Office noted that around 20% of those who use their open data are doing so for purely commercial reasons.

Clearly, using open data can benefit businesses of any size, and the monetary potential is huge. As is shown in the chart below from a report from McKinsey, open data could generate over $3 trillion annually across just seven sectors.
 

So why exactly should you consider incorporating open data into your marketing strategy? Whether you're considering the use of government data or other open data UK sources, here are some of the advantages it can hold for your business:
 

  1. It’s Free. Ok, so this is an obvious one, but the fact that open data is free to access and use completely free of charge is one of the biggest draws for most companies. While implementing some new elements into your marketing strategy can have a negative impact on your ROI if things go amiss, you've basically got nothing to lose here - so surely it's worth a shot?

  2. It’s Ready to go. Because the nature of open data means that is must be technically open, i.e. machine-readable, in order to be considered truly open, it's provided in formats such as CSV files to make downloading and transferring to software such as Excel quick and easy.

  3. It’s for Everyone. If you're imagining that the use of open data is restricted to large enterprises with dedicated data teams, you'd be wrong; a survey by the ODI found that the majority (70%) of companies using open data are in fact 'micro' enterprises; those with less than ten employees.

  4. It’s Underused. The fact that business use of open data is largely in its infancy is actually a good thing for early adopters who become acquainted with the movement sooner rather than later. The phenomenon is growing rapidly and having a good understanding of open data and how to find, analyse and reuse it amongst your team will give you a good edge over your competitors.

  5. It Creates Trust. Open data is a two-way street, and businesses that choose to open their own data can see good results. Providing transparency to your customers creates more trust and gives a better overall perception of your brand. As open data becomes more commonplace,  consumers are likely to expect more transparency not just from the government, but also from companies.

     

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Using Open Data in Marketing

Now we’ve established the advantages of using open data, let’s look at how you can use it to inform your marketing strategy:

  • Targeted Marketing. One of the best uses for open data is to target potential customers based on what they need or want. For example, by looking at weather data from the Met Office you could create ads showing deals on suncream for hot weather, or send out emails about holiday offers in bad weather. The image below from National Express serves as a good example; they've placed this banner on their site to remind travellers about upcoming service disruptions, based on UK travel data.

 

Image Source: National Express
 

  • Find Hot Topics. You can use the open data found on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook or Google Trends to seek out new trends. While basing an entire business on something that's currently 'in' isn't a good idea, leveraging these topics in your marketing can be a great way to get people engaging with your brand and to show that you're a company with your finger on the pulse.

  • Qualify Leads. It's all well and good attracting plenty of new leads, but how do you know which ones to focus on during the sales process? Using business open data can work wonders here - by looking at details such as company size, revenue, industry and location you can get a good grasp of whether or not they're likely to have a genuine need for your product or service. This process has been made easier than ever before thanks to intelligence provider Global Database recently opening up much of its company data; you can search for a specific UK company and gain instant access to details like profit and loss accounts, technology insights and employee details.

  • Research Competitors. Keeping a watchful eye over what your competitors are doing to attract new business can help you make decisions about your own strategy. You could use social media open data such as Twitter mentions, or use the aforementioned free company search from Global Database to look them up and make note of what technology they're using and their financial details to see how well their current sales and marketing is working compared to your own.

  • Open Up. It may seem a little daunting to open up your own data, but it can be a good addition to your marketing efforts. It can drive more traffic to your site, both organically and through any potential integrations with third-party apps or sites, as well as giving consumers more faith in the legitimacy of your company.

 

Of course, open source datasets can be used for other purposes as well as marketing. Business development and expansion, for example. Say if you're a supermarket chain looking to open a store in a new location, you could access the free data provided by the Ordnance Survey and use it to determine the best sites based on things like how residential an area is, how many schools etc it has.

 

Turning Raw Data into Marketing Insights

If you've found an open data source but you're not too sure how to glean useful insights from it, the best place to start is by using PivotTables in Excel. Helpfully, there's an option for Recommended PivotTables, meaning Excel will sweep through the data and find potential patterns that reveal the significance of the information. The feature will give you a number of options to choose from, and acts as a good place to begin your analysis as you can then continue to tweak the table as you see fit. The image below from Office Support shows how to set up a Recommended PivotTable.


Source: Support.office.com

Although open data has predominantly been the realm of organisations involved in science or government until fairly recently, its use in business is increasing and will continue to do so as the movement grows. Businesses that choose to implement open data in their marketing strategy will find that they have a wide variety of information at their disposal; everything from public big data sources from government departments and research bodies to free company intelligence, particularly with the unprecedented opening of UK business data by Global Database.