Over the last few months we’ve discussed how best to market your company online. Customer behaviour has changed with digital and mobile technologies increasingly playing a critical part in the success, or failure, of businesses.
Online your prospects can find everything they need to know about you, be it pricing, service, overall customer experience, level of expertise or, even, how your company treats its staff – the conversation has become digital and around the clock, which means that there is a heck of a lot of data (about you and your industry) floating about.
Knowing what that data means and how it affects your company is the key to pinpointing existing problems in your business and finding new opportunities to explore.
It’s easy to get lost in heaps of zeros and ones though and it can drive you dilly if you do not know what to look out for.
Used wisely, however, clear analytics could provide the rudder (and the oomph) your business needs to improve profitability, drive new sales and enhance customer loyalty.
Smart Data Drives New Sales
Richard Branson is famously quoted as saying; “The time to go into a new business is when it’s badly run by others.”
Not “knowing” your business or, rather, not knowing what available data is saying about your business does not necessarily mean you are running it poorly – but it does mean you are not, currently, running it as well as you could . . .
20% improvement in MROI. But wait, there’s more!
Respected research company, McKinsey & Company, analysed business practices of over 250 leading companies, finding that organisations that put data at the centre of their marketing and sales decisions improved their ROI by between 15% and 20%.
And while that may sound pretty good to you the increased return on actual marketing spend is just the tip of the analytics-powered-sword-of-opportunity.
According to Forbes Magazine the companies that succeed today do three things well.
- Use Analytics to identify valuable opportunities, often by performing micro-market analysis.
- Focus on the consumer decision journey to convert new sales or stop clients from defecting.
- Use “algorithmic marketing” to create more relevant customer interactions.
The snapshot summary of all the above is that, from an increased sales perspective, clever analytics allows you to (really) KNOW.YOUR.CUSTOMER.
Knowledge being power, now more than ever smart data use allows you to customise your offers, communications and general interaction with your clients.
Knowing what to offer, when to offer and how to offer a product or solution is the tonic that will lead to increased sales and more effective marketing spend.
The days of blanket bombing are done, dead and buried underneath the rubble of yesteryear.
Say hello to targeted, smart, marketing.
Say hello to better qualified leads, shorter buying cycles and improved sales.
Smart Data Boosts Customer Loyalty
“It’s easier to keep a customer than to acquire a customer.” How often is that mantra not repeated and, sadly, how often is that mantra not forgotten?
See, for yourself?
For a classic example of “getting it wrong” one has to look no further than our cellular industry players.
Often the service aspect is not what it should be and neither are the “upgrade options” available to long-standing customers, with better deals on new contracts offered as companies drive acquisition and leave retention on the side of the road to fend for itself in a dark and lonely world.
What often happens, of course, is that the “roadside refugee” is then picked up by someone holding out a far more enticing bag of sweets.
It’s sinful, considering how much money was spent marketing (and converting) that customer in the first place.
Grow Business from your Existing Client base
Business research and consulting firm, BIA/Kelsey found that, while many businesses do have loyalty initiatives, most of those were offline, meaning that companies were literally leaving masses of lost revenue on the table – purely because they did not effectively mine their existing client database and because their digital strategy did not adequately address shopper purchase preferences.
“Customer data gives businesses a great opportunity to reward clients with loyalty programmes that pay attention to their specific purchase preferences,” says Tyler Roye, CEO of e-gift card retailer eGifter.
“This can include the media / advertising / marketing channels viewed, types of products purchased, most active purchasing time of day and a whole host of other variables that allows businesses to offer the most enticing deals for customers, as and when it suits them.”
Think about it this way. If you regularly shop at your neighbourhood butchery you will, in time, establish a friendly relationship with the block man on call. He (or she) will know what you like and probably be able to upsell you on other products that they think you will like, or should try.
Because you trust and value their opinion you give it a go and spend more than you intended.
Exactly the same principle applies in the digital space.
To Know Thy Customer is to Grow Thyself
There is, of course, significantly more where the above information comes from and we could talk the merits of using smart analytics when making key business decisions until the cows come home, but, if you take just one thing away from today’s missive it’s the following:
To gain deeper insight about the real sources of your customer value, the impact of your marketing cost and the future behaviour of customers you need clear analytics to light the path to increased prosperity.
