Six lessons for brand that don’t want to mess up in the age of analytics
Marketing optimization is still not a massive priority for most brands, but what’s even more surprising is how few of these companies have the staff and the infrastructure in place to engage with consumers in real time. The new world is littered with amazing data, fresh information, and cool insights but these businesses are too busy looking at Excel charts and reports that lie in an inbox or are stacked up on the chief marketing officer’s desk.
Imagine a day when you could have all of the data and analytics you have ever wanted. Imagine being able to track and analyze the journey of your consumers. Imagine being able to be a fly on the wall for all of their conversations with family and friends about what they love and hate about your brand, the competitors, and the other brands that impact their lives. Imagine being able to speak directly to them and to get their feedback, live.
Stop imagining: It’s all here. Currently, some companies are offering rudimentary ways to gather and manipulate some of this data in fairly engaging dashboards, but the true sex with data (the ability to blend the traditional campaign metrics with the social content that consumers are creating) is just around the corner. Most brands will mess this up but yours doesn’t have to be one of them.
Nail down the linear
If you don’t even have the basics down on what you can (and should) be tracking, please stop everything and either get yourself more informed or bring on some help. If you’re not sure where to start, I highly recommend the books on web analytics by Avinash Kaushik. If you’re not measuring and optimizing the linear data, you are already lost in the woods.
Nail down the circular
If you’re not overly active in the social media sphere, make sure to (at least) secure your space by signing up for those media where your consumers are more active and start listening in on the key chattering. You will quickly be able to identify both who the key players are and what the key messages are. Miss these spaces and you are missing a tremendous opportunity to build your business and to become more aware of your industry.
Start making out with your data
The majority of corporate executives from small, medium, and even large businesses are struggling with data and consumer intelligence as much as the next person. Most companies would admit that they don’t even know who their most loyal consumers are. Build some dashboards and start leveraging some social media monitoring tools. The idea is to tie the database that you have into the social sphere so that you can better understand your consumers and their needs.
Everything is mobile
Amazon’s Price Check app turned every retail competitor’s store into a showroom for Amazon. It won’t just be Amazon that will be leveraging these hyper-connected consumers and their desire to connect more to brands wherever they may be. Amazon’s app enabled human beings to become data collectors for Amazon. These consumers are giving Amazon the inputs needed for success and are giving them over for free. Traditionally, these data points and inputs were gathered at a great cost to business. No longer.
It’s going to get strange
While most companies can’t even fathom connecting their linear and circular data, there are many new (and somewhat scary) analytical tools that will be finding their way into our lives. It may sound like science fiction, but some of the bigger brands are currently experimenting with serious hardware to better understand what would trigger a Pavlovian response in the consumer, using advanced scientific technology to map your brain and market to an individual’s specific DNA tastes.
Technology rules
Gartner Group reported that “by 2017, a CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO.” Let that concept marinate in your brain for a moment. This means that big data is coming to marketing, and the insights that we will soon have available to us—at the business level—will make what we’re spending on computers, servers, and capital infrastructure pale in comparison. This will finally give us true knowledge of what it takes to acquire customers and keep them.
This is an excerpt from CTRL ALT DELETE: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It. by Mitch Joel. Copyright © 2013 by Mitch Joel. Reprinted by permission of Business Plus, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
