Third-party data can help innovative businesses that want to understand their audience, know the competition, and grow their customer relationships. Because the data comes from outside your own touch points, it can help you understand changing consumer behavior, market-level trends, competitive insights, travel and visitation patterns, and more. Data intelligence has never been more important, and when combined with your own first-party data, third-party data gives you the real-time insights that complete the picture on consumer behaviors.
However, working with third-party data has its own set of challenges, with questions such as:
- Where does the company get the data? How do they collect it?
- How hard will it be to use the data?
- How do I know that the data is high quality?
These can be difficult questions to answer, and that’s before you even plan how to use that data in your operations and marketing strategies. Here’s what to look for when evaluating any third-party data provider, so that you know you’re choosing a quality partner for the long-term.
7 keys to evaluating a third-party data partner:
Privacy compliance
High level of data quality
Significant sample in your markets
Full-stack solution
Easy to use across your organization
Responsive to platform changes
Planning for growth & scalability
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With recent shifts in consumer behavior, we are once again in the very early stages of understanding just how people move, what they do and what they want. Consumer demands, global markets and even technology itself will shift, and increasingly at a faster pace. Any data partner must have a plan to adapt and grow for years to come.
For each of the keys above there are several indicators that can tell you whether a partner will be a good fit. Our handy 2-page Essential Checklist can help you keep track of all the critical indicators.