Big data is taken so much for granted these days we hardly use the term any more. But what about small businesses, many of which — by their very nature — have fewer customers and less customer data. Is there anything to be done with small data?

There are some familiar use cases: A/B testing doesn’t require big data, and neither do Net Promoter Scores. Beyond that, are there ways to drive big data value from smaller data sets? In fact, there are at least two approaches. Some vendors like Mailchimp, the marketing automation and email marketing platform, builds large data sets out of its clients’ smaller ones. It has AI tools which can drive insights from this aggregated, anonymized data.

A very different approach is taken by Proof Analytics which uses smaller volumes of data to track sales and marketing outcomes in real-time, suggesting optimizations: a kind of “Business GPS,” as it calls the solution. Of course, the larger the data-set, the less vulnerable it is likely to be to unexpected, outlier events. But after COVID-19, perhaps we can agree that past is not always prologue, and maybe real-time analytics applied to smaller data streams creates better opportunities to respond.

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No one wants to invest time, money and energy into campaigns that don’t provide any ROI. In this quick reference guide, marketing professionals from small and medium businesses share how they make sure marketing efforts convert to sales.

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Following in the footsteps of Australia, European lawmakers may compel tech companies to pay for news. According to the Financial Times, regulations already in draft form could be amended to incorporate provisions which track the moves in Australia.

Search Engine Land editor George Nguyen writes: “It’s unreasonable to expect Google to pay to link to publishers on the main search results page…If Google is made to pay news outlets for …links, the argument can be made by other industries that Google should pay them, too.”

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If your clients are proud of their business tenure, they can now brag about it in their Google My Business listing. The new label shows up in local search results in the map pack. You can add it to your listing or your clients’ profiles by adding an opening date under the “Info” option in the admin menu.

Showing your years in business can help establish trust with potential clients (like Barry’s listing above which shows he’s both old [lol jk] and has been working in search for over 25 years). You can also use the feature to display a future opening date for a new business.

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Join us online, February 23, for a guided journey through critical search analytics issues that will help you address reporting needs, mitigate data loss, and make data-driven decisions that yield amazing results.

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“Perfectionism is one of the biggest blockers to swift, effective decision-making because it operates on faulty all-or-nothing thinking.” Melody Wilding, executive coach.