If you are still scratching your heads about how to grow your business, look no future, dig into your own sales data. Here are the nine major success factors using data marketing.
1. The balance between business instinct and data marketing
Implementing data marketing requires rational thinking and make business decision based on that findings on data analysis. In real life business situation, many decisions are made by business instincts.
Business instincts and data marketing concepts are not mutually exclusive. Decision making based on pure data analysis without understanding the customers may not work. Same for decisions based on pure business instincts without any data support.
To manage any businesses well and make the right decisions, it is important to combine data analysis with business instincts.
2. Understand your customers
Companies at different stages of growth have different level of relationship with their customers. Young companies tend to rely on word-of-mouth to get their name out. So they would be closer to the customers. The more established corporations tend to be more remote to their customers. They tend to run on a long history, experiencing generations of change of management or carry on the tradition without adjusting to the needs of the customers and the change of business environment.
It is never too later to start understanding your customers. Find out what they like, their purchase behavior, preference, and share with your employees so that your whole organization works toward the same business goal.
3. Create your own business formula
Every business is unique in its own way. Each and every business has its way to establish a business goal and success formula. Let’s take a look at a eCommerce example:
If you aim at increasing your sales revenue from US$5 millino to 8 million within 12 months, you have to work with some Key Performance Indices (KPI) such as traffic flow, conversion rate, average order amount, life cycle and cost per click, etc. With a US$3 million sales growth, you work out what you need to do for each KPI.
4. Define success
Performance index is an integral part of your business success formula. Before starting analysing data, you should first establish the Key Performance Indices as a benchmark and measure the result again it.
How do you know which are KPIs? It depends on your business goals. While there are different KPIs for different business targets, they all work towards a common overall business target.
For example, a KPI for a subscription based service company could be the Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). For a content/information based company, the KPI will be focusing on customer engagement. For a eShop, the KPIs would be traffic, conversion rate and average order amount.
5. Collect accurate data
After establishing the KPIs, the next important subject is the quality of data. If the data collected are inaccurate or irrelevant, not only the analytical report is not meaningful, but it may take you to a wrong direction.
Accurate data is fundamental to data marketing. You have to go beyond what Google Analytics has to offer, including adding Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) tags to track the ticket sales from corporate website and various distribution platforms.
6. Implement Key Performance Indices
After collecting accurate date, you may establish the relevant KPIs.
While the success formula is a combination of various performance indices, we still have to figure out how to improve the performance of each KPI. For example, if a eShop wants to increase the conversion rate from 2.1% to 2.3%, then we have to look at what we can do to improve the processes. If it incur development costs on the website, the company will have to evaluate the cost and benefit of the improvement.
To improve any KPIs, organisations should make a plan, designate responsible personnel, allocate appropriate resources, and monitor the implementation process every two weeks at least.
7. Create dashboards
After establishing KPIs, it is time to see the results. The best way to view all sales reports and KPIs using some data analytical tools. Autobizight is an online platform through which you can see the generated sales performance and customer behaviior in 4 smart dashboards.
8. Monitor sales performance every day
Once you set up the dashboards, you may update sales data and run reports every day. The closer you monitor each and every KPIs, the faster you are to spot the abnormal behavior or performance and make the right decision at the right time.
9. Look deep in the data
Get ready to accept the truth. Data doesn’t lie. So it may tell us what we thought was wrong. If the data tells you that the plan did not work, it’s time to review and come up with a new strategy.
Autobizight is on online data analytics platform that converts all of your data source from different distribution channels into one central database. We patch the missing data or ask you to fill out the blanks then performance sophisticated data analysis. Simply upload your data sheets in Excel format to the platform, sit back and wait for the summary of all KPIs on our smart dashboards. Managing data analysis has never been so easy!
