The most valuable commodity on earth

Data recently surpassed oil as the most valuable commodity in the world. The question that we need to ask ourselves is “Why?”; why is data so valuable, and are we making sure that we are getting the maximum value out of our data.

Why is data so valuable?

Data in itself is not particularly valuable. Data is simply a single point of information. The value of data is the actions that you are able to take a a result of the data.

As an example of this, knowing that it is raining does nothing for you in itself. It is simply a point of data. When you begin to merge related points of data together, you get information. By extrapolating your information into patterns, you get knowledge.

Data, information, and knowledge are all powerful tools, but they only help you understand things in hindsight. Taking that knowledge of patterns and using it as a model for the future allows you to gain wisdom. But that wisdom in itself does nothing for you without taking action from it, which is Praxis, or the practical application of wisdom.

Data is like a race car. It has limitless potential, but it requires you to put fuel into it before it realizes it’s value. Data requires analysis and action in order to create any value for your company. This brings us to the question of:

How do I make sure that I’m maximizing the value of my data?

There are two ways to make sure that you are getting value out of your data, internal monetization and external monetization.

Internal Monetization

Internal monetization refers to utilizing your data to glean insights to help your company. This can be things like improving your marketing efforts, managing customer experience, or management of your supply chain and equipment maintenance.

Most companies use the internal monetization of data to identify areas of inefficiency. Our client, Digital Marketer, was one of these. We helped them discover a structural issue with their site that was causing a huge SEO issue for them. Upon discovering the issue, they implemented a fix and saw a 50% increase in their traffic. You can read more about that story here: Praxis Metrics Case Study – Digital Marketer

Another way to monetize internally is to leverage data to expand your product and service offerings. Our client, Danette May, found themselves in a similar position to this. They had been trying to expand a funnel that they had built to offer it to more clients, but they found that they couldn’t increase their ad spend to reach this new market and maintain profitability on the product. They were about to abandon this idea when they came to Praxis to try to figure out what their lifetime customer value was; we helped them discover that their LTV for that funnel was much higher than they initially thought. This allowed them to increase their allowable cost per acquisition by $5, which caused them to experience explosive growth, and now that funnel brings in millions in revenue per year. You can read more about their story here: Praxis Metrics Case Study – Danette May

External Monetization

Another way to take advantage of your data is to monetize it externally. This can include selling the data that you have on your customers, creating mutually beneficial partnerships with other data-driven firms, and creating new subsidiaries or divisions within your company to take advantage of insights that you have gained. Selling and trading data with other companies is growing more challenging, as data rules and regulations are becoming much stricter across the globe, but these type of partnerships can be extremely lucrative for both parties if done properly.

How can I start monetizing my data?

The most important thing that you need to do before trying to monetize your data is to make sure that your data is accurate and “clean”. Attempting to make decisions off of bad data is like trying to drive that race car, but with a filthy windshield that you can’t see through.

Metrics Mapping

Once you have confidence in your data, the next thing you need to do is start to figure out what numbers are actually important to you an your business. We recommend a process called “Metrics Mapping”. Metrics Mapping helps you to understand exactly what you should be tracking, and what actions you should be taking based off of your numbers.

Metrics Mapping starts with determining your business goals and objectives. So if your goal is to double your revenue by 2021, then what questions do you need answered in order to get there? An example question would be “How do we increase the revenue from our website?”. From there, you can determine the metrics that would help answer that question. “How many conversions are we getting per day/month?” “What is our average order value?” “What are our repurchase rates?” “Where do we get our highest converting traffic?” would all be good questions that can help lead you to the metrics that you need to be tracking.

Once you know what you want to track, the next step is to figure out where your “source of truth” is for each of these metrics. Revenue per day/month should be tracked by your accounts (Paypal, Stripe, bank), average order value should be tracked through your sales system, highest converting traffic can be found in Google Analytics, etc. Once you have your “source of truth” selected for each of the metrics that you need to track, you know where you need to check in to see your progress.

Once you know your metrics and where they live, you need to assign someone to manage them. Even if it’s yourself, it’s critical that someone be specifically responsible for these metrics. This person needs to keep an eye on the metrics and know exactly what’s going on with them at any given time. Whether improving or worsening, this person should be aware of why they’re changing.

Dashboarding

Once you have your metrics mapped out, the next thing that you should do is start aggregating and visualizing your data in business intelligence dashboards. These dashboards will help you track your important metrics over time, and at a glance.

At Praxis, we prefer dashboards that go beyond just simple visualizations. We build dashboards that merge multiple sources of data in order to create new, reliable data sets. Our dashboards perform complex analysis and calculations to help you not only understand what has happened in your business, but also help you shape the future of your company.

We’ve built everything from “command centers” where executives and investors can log in to see all of the key metrics that they need, to drill-downs that allow you to see the performance of each of your ads. Through our experience creating these dashboards for our many clients, we have perfected their creation and roll-out. We have more information about these dashboards and what they can do for your business here: https://praxismetrics.com/dashboards/ltv-dashboards/

Next Steps

This article contains a roadmap for data monetization. This may seem overwhelming, but we can help you wherever you are in your journey. We offer services for tracking, dashboarding, and even metrics mapping. All you need to do is follow this link to schedule a free Praxis Metrics strategy call to get a personalized data roadmap for your company from a Praxis Metrics data expert.

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