There was a time when business owners found it difficult to precisely correlate which of their investments led to actual sales and profit. They would spend most of their time concocting elaborate marketing plans with little to no assurance of success. They were left to rely on guesswork, or even just their gut feel, to decide on investment decisions. It didn’t really matter whether their marketing efforts were creative or run-of-the-mill, because at the end of the day, these business owners and marketers were still left to wonder if what they came up, even actually worked.
They knew that the bottom line of any of their marketing efforts was to increase awareness of their brand, or to lead to a sale or a new customer. But they also knew that traditional marketing projects were usually untrackable; the connection between them and their business’ performance was ambiguous and inconclusive.
We’ve come a long way since those times. There are now numerous tools that we can use to bridge that connection. Now, with the plethora of consumer data within easy reach, and with the modern techniques of marketing analytics, marketing has evolved into a more precise science.
We’ve previously discussed the benefits of marketing analytics software. Catch up here.
Marketing Analytics: The Game-Changer
“Insight-driven businesses are growing at an average of 30% each year; by 2021, they are predicted to take $1.8 trillion annually from their less-informed industry competitors.”
Data-driven, insight-drive businesses Consumer data is at the heart of it all. The amount of data that you can collect from your target customers is vital in realizing which investments can be maximized for your business’ profits in the future.
A data-driven business uses marketing analytics and adopts this 3-step process:
- They use marketing analytics to determine important business opportunities.
- Translate insights into effective services and products that appeal to their consumers.
- Create offerings around their products and services and launching them to their target customers.
We also emphasized the need for businesses to track their marketing campaigns, which you can read here.
How can your business gain value from all the data that you’ve been able to gather and analyse? Focus your efforts on managing your pricing and revenue schemes as these provide the most impact on your business.
In order for you to do this, there are aspects of your business that you will need to adjust so that it aligns with your plans to integrate marketing analytics:
1. Mindset.
Business owners, including their staff, may not be confident or are even unsure on how to proceed with any extra steps or changes that their analytics says “they should do”. Should you change your processes to accommodate new practices and techniques? Do you take analytics tool training and consider it a priority over other skills that you and your staff need to learn?
Even if data gathering and the processes that lead to it, have become more simplified because of easier software capabilities, it still requires that you and your staff understand the fundamentals of the technology that you’re using. The biggest challenge may seem to be the technical know-how in operating your analytics software, as well as in interpreting the data. But the truly larger issue is your mind-set. It will be difficult for a business that takes a lot of precautions, to relegate its entrenched practices and processes to changes. Your business needs to commit to your plans. A lot of businesses hesitate and then fail in implementing new technology due to a lack of preparedness.
2. Training.
Training courses will almost certainly be included by your marketing analytics software provider for you and your staff. Your employees should have access to these training modules and should have their schedules arranged to avoid shift conflicts especially since they’ll probably be working on the job.
Aside from being able to use your software tools, you should also conduct training sessions on the most critical aspects of pricing, as well as best practices in inventory management. Training exercises should lean on having simulations that contain real data and in creating decisions that affect your business’ pricing. This will train your staff to analyse the results and see the impact of their decisions.
While you may also have the option of getting specialized marketing analytics experts, it may cost you more.
3. Consider Automation.
If you have a large, extensive inventory of products and services, it may prove to be too time-consuming to analyze all of them. It will also prove to be more expensive an undertaking, so you should consider the number of hours that will be spent on each task.
What do you need automation for? You can opt for automated systems or addons that can do most of the work such as setting prices for groups of products, divided accordingly by your data. You can have utilization forecasts that use the data as basis: advance reservations, booking history, etc.
The output for these automated processes should be flexible, easy-to-use, and shareable (internally). Formats like Excel spreadsheets are the most common, accepted output especially for reports.
And if you’re ready to try out marketing analytics software, then sign-up for a free trial for Maralytics, here.
4. Focus on opportunities with the most potential.
Find out what each of your target customers are willing to spend on. You can do this by cross-selling, doing targeted promotions, and by customer segmentation. Check your inventory and maximize on what you currently have that are available. You’ll need the experience, know-how, and most of all, the talent, for you to be able to pinpoint opportunities routinely.
Conclusion
Marketing analytics involves a lot of details to be considered, but the essential process is applying an array of techniques in gathering your crucial insights. While the data to make smarter decisions are readily available, alongside analytical tools, an integrated approach is necessary to drive growth and performance.
