Marketing Analytics provides valuable information on lead and customer data.   Marketing Analytics is one of many areas that contributes to Business Analytics.  And if we look just at the spending on Marketing Analytics, its usage is expected to increase 60% by 2015.   Obviously, new technology allows us to measure every aspect of our marketing efforts.  But the measurements are only valuable if you can understand the patterns to make future decisions.  Data alone doesn’t cut it.

It is the art of decoding the data and making decisions that leads to powerful Business Analytics. Organizations are focusing on analyzing the customer’s preferences and trends.  It’s well known that companies like Amazon decode what we want to buy before we even know what we want, by leveraging data and analytic tools.  But are most organizations missing something?

Let’s take a step back and look at you organization’s competitive advantage.  Why do clients buy from you and not your competition?  Go around your office ask a number of people in your company why clients buy from you.  Did they all have the same answer?  How about your clients?  What do they say? If it’s because you have the lowest price, you probably have an issue; unless you are Walmart!

Your competitive advantage (why people buy from you) is your secret sauce, but it should NOT be a secret!  It should be on you website, on all of your marketing material, and everyone in your organization should know it and live it.  I’ve seen too many companies’ websites where I can’t even tell what they do, let alone what their competitive advantage is.  What is your website telling people?  Is it leveraging your Marketing Analytics?

Let’s say you sell rivets.  Your rivets are the best quality in the market, but they cost 20% more than your competitors’ rivets. How are you going to sell such a commoditized product at a higher price?  You need to change the game by leveraging your analytics.  When you ask your clients why they buy from you, you learn that your competition has a defect rate 7% higher than your rivets.  Well, that’s a good start, but Business Analytics is not just about your company making better decisions.  It’s about providing intelligence to your clients so they can make better decisions.

Many clients fail to take it to the next level. What’s the result to the client if they could decrease potential failures in their product caused by 7% failure because of bad rivets?  How much do recalls, low customer satisfaction rates, and liability cost your customers? If you were a ship builder on April 12, 1912 and the cheap rivets you purchased contributed to the loss of 1495 lives when your ship hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean, you would have wished you purchased the best rivets that had 7% less defects for a mere 20% more.

Marketing Analytics needs to be turned external to help market your Competitive Advantage!