How To Use Data-Driven Techniques to Unlock New Customers and Revenue

There are probably hundreds of things affiliates can do to grow their revenue and get new customers through various data-driven strategies and online marketing data. But today, we want to focus on just the easiest to do and the most fundamental techniques.

1. Don’t Complicate
It’s quite tempting to focus on complex data analysis when searching for new opportunities to tackle. But most of the time, it’s still the simple things that bring the best results.
For example, paying close attention to your conversion rates will never grow old and it’s in fact one of the most important performance metrics possible for an affiliate site. If you devote most of your data-working time to conversions and creating split tests around basic conversion elements, you are sure to witness significant results without ever going into the advanced stuff.
2. Start With The General And Go Into Detail
Going back to the previous point, once you have your conversion data in line, it becomes a great benchmark for constructing other advanced techniques on top of it.
For example, these days, social media is growing as an everyday part of our life. As it turns out, people are surprisingly comfortable admitting that they enjoy poker or other forms of online gaming on sites like Facebook. This makes social media a great field for new affiliate campaigns. But the reason we’re mentioning it here is that you can take your main conversion rate and use it as a benchmark to determine how well social media is working in your case.
In short, the possibilities are endless, but you always have to start with the most basic piece of data you can get (like conversions or traffic) and then build upon it to find new customers effectively.
3. Trim And Refine Your Data
Not all data is usable right from the get-go. If you’re using many tools at the same time (which is quite a popular approach actually) then you will inevitably get different types of data reports.
One of the best tools available for refining various data packages is Open Refine (formally known as Google Refine). This tool will take any data you throw at it and consolidate it, delivering an easy-to-use final version.
4. Improve What’s Already Working
The temptation to go after the new things is very strong in the affiliate community. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong about it, but we believe that if you want to grow your profits systematically, you should spend just as much time working on improving what’s already profitable as going after new methods.
For example, if a given part of your site does a great job at bringing in new customers due to good SEO, clearly, you must keep making it even more optimized. This is a better strategy than leaving the page alone and focusing 100% of your time on building new promotions.
5. Remember About Statistical Significance
Statistical significance sounds like a fancy term, but its importance is crucial for affiliates doing any kind of data-work or split testing. In short, statistical significance tells us whether the results we’re seeing in a split test are genuine or just merely incidental.
To learn more, please check what Wikipedia has to say about the topic. For a quick significance checker, feel free to visit this page.
6. Spy On The Big Guys
This is possibly the oldest trick in the book. In short, if your competitors get their customers from somewhere then so can you. These days, tools like SEOmoz Pro, SpyFu, and Keyword Spy make it easier than ever.