In a nutshell, growth revolves around three activities – “get” new customers, “keep” current ones and “increase” spending per customer. Easier said than done. The most challenging part is the process of getting there, the “how-to” part that most businesses are struggling with.

As a marketer, whether you like it or not, people are going to count on you to come up with the answer to the “how to’s”

• How to convert prospects into new customers?
• How to increase customer spending?
• How to detect a buying trigger for your products?
• How to turn things around and increase customer retention?
• How to improve customer experience?
• How to make the most out of pricing and promotion?
• How to choose the right marketing channels to communicate with the customer?
• How to increase marketing ROI?

Answering these questions through guesswork is like a suicide mission, not only for the company but also for your career as a marketer. The good news is that rich data sets and analytics tools to help answer the above questions are available, so today’s marketers can make smart decisions. But, if you feel like you have too “little” data or facts to support your marketing decisions, it could be because you are not making the most out of the data you have waiting around in your CRM database and Call Centre Data System or not crunching the data you get from Point-of-Sale (POS).

There is actually an overwhelming amount of data being stashed away and not used to its full potential in CRM Databases and Call Centre Systems. This is most likely found in the case of companies with large customer database such as telecommunications, retail, e-commerce, insurance, and banking.

Dealing with a massive amount of data could be a nightmare or a breeze depending on your ability to determine which data to use, where and how to source that data from, how to transform shambles of data to a more useful and integrated form so that it can be used across the company. These impressive data tactics can not only help you master sales but also lower costs and grow.

Data Analytics can hack that growth strategy by using customer intelligence as your secret weapon. If you crunch in your data right, utilise your CRM database to its full potential, and combine it with external data such as from social media sites, online browsing and demographic data – you can uncover interesting customer patterns.

To wrap up, here are some Data Analytics game plans you can use to boost your growth.

 360-Degree Single Customer View

Data Analytics from an internal customer database consisting of transaction history and customer profile alone can shed light on the characteristics of each customer. What’s more, Customer Analytics can also integrate all customer data from internal databases (customer profiles, call centre, email and past transactions) and external database (social media and search engines) to provide a 360-Degree Single Customer View. This can provide an even more in-depth insight into the customers’ mind, identifying their needs, pain points and behaviour of each customer at a deeper level.

This enables marketers to understand your customer’s persona better, and so you can segment them in a way that you can interact with different customers differently. This results in you being able to create targeted messages and promotions to communicate with customers in a personalised way.

For example: Walmart conducts data analytics on a real-time basis by fusing data from past purchases, their internal stock information, your mobile phone location data, social media and weather forecasts to boost BBQ cleaner sales. If a customer owns a Grill, considering the weather is good and they are within close vicinity to a Walmart store that has the BBQ cleaner in stock, this is a trigger for Walmart to send a voucher of a BBQ cleaner. By sending personalised targeted messages at the right time and the right place, Walmart is able to create better and more relevant interactions with its customers.

Customer Acquisition

In the past, marketers had to make educated guesses regarding the age, demographics and work profile of a target customer or a prospect. Today data specialists can sift through customer data to identify characteristics of a new prospect.

For example: Target identified a sales opportunity through data analytics on customers’ past purchases. Predictive Analytics helps to determine if women are statistically likely to be pregnant if they started buying unscented lotions and prenatal supplements. Thus, Target can send them coupons for baby products.

Mapping the Customer Journey

A customer will touch a company in many different ways before they decide to purchase. Collection of data from all touch points from the time of discovery to purchase of the products will give marketers valuable information on customer experience. This will shed a light on key factors that customers take into consideration during purchase. So, marketers can identify core customer touch-points to help maximise customer experience, increase customer retention, increase customer spending and understand how they transition through the product lifecycle.

Product Launch and Product Improvement

Data Analytics can also be used to examine customer interactions and subsequent purchases to uncover subtle or hidden relationships between triggers and events. In other words, it can identify the behaviour of a group of customers who are highly likely to stop buying your products or highly likely to be a target for your new product (to be launched). This is extremely useful for customer retention if product and customer experience improvement is needed.

Pricing and Promotion Optimisation

Data Analytics has the ability to provide real-time information which can help you to make well-informed decisions on pricing of your products. This is conducted by combining past purchasing pattern data, demographic info, income data and geographical location.

For example: A Tesco in close proximity to a University and student housing is more likely to stock affordable products and have better marketing promotions and discounts so students can afford the items on the shelves.

Giving Your Marketing ROI a Boost

By pointing you towards marketing activities that help you to generate the most ROI, Data Analytics is a critical tool to drive and demonstrate real growth in the companies. McKinsey analysis of more than 250 projects over five years revealed that companies that implement customer data analytics could improve their marketing ROI by 15-20%. This is because Data Analytics helps you to identify valuable opportunities by tweaking and twisting marketing campaigns to find out what works, what doesn’t, and what has the highest impact on the revenue.

The pathway towards growth by using Data Analytics requires asking the right questions, interpreting the findings correctly, and executing a prompt response to customer demands.

Data Analytics is not just about installing a complex analytics software and hoping that you will eventually find a valuable breakthrough. It requires work and commitment to transform your company into a customer-centric organisation. The competitive advantage of Data Analytics lies in the capacity to predict the future before your rivals can, so you can succeed in achieving a sustainable and profitable growth.

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