Staying on track with insight-driven marketing

Explore ways to analyse customer data and trends to unearth the insight you need for high impact marketing.

3 minute read

It’s not always easy to make marketing decisions, but one thing is for sure, the right insight always helps. If you can find and use insight from customer data and trends, you’re off to a great start.

Customer data

What your customers tell you, according to their buying habits (and/or via a survey), is the ideal north star for a powerful marketing plan. And whether you’re armed with a sophisticated ecommerce engine rich with sales data, or a small pool of customers you see every day, they are wealth of insight to inform your thinking.

What to look for in customer data

One of the most powerful ways to grow your business is to find the highest value customers in your data. Some sales will cost more than others, high value may be in volume or frequency as well as cost to convert. If you can unearth your high value customers, you can double down and grow that particular audience.

Another area to dive into is loyalty; is there a repeat purchase behaviour, and would your customers recommend you? If customers are especially loyal perhaps advocacy is a marketing strategy to consider, effectively enabling and rewarding customers to sell on your behalf (tactics like buy-one-give-one offers, refer a friend for a discount could work well.)

Your data may also inform your marketing channels and the weighting of your investment/effort. For example, if data shows that customers who buy product ‘A’ are likely to go on to buy product ‘B’, you may want to focus marketing efforts more on product A with advertising, and then convert the extra sale with a direct offer. This insight could lead to a decision that grows both the overall market, and sales volume for both products.

Trends

Industry bodies commonly share trending information, and government agencies such as New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and Tourism New Zealand are also useful sources. Professional advisory firms like Deloitte and KPMG often publish trend reports, and global forecasters such as Trendwatching have a raft of free and paid content options. Why not sign up for a free trend forecast newsletter and set up a google alert for ‘[your industry] + trends’?

How do you know if a trend is worth following?

The most successful New Zealand businesses tend to be brave and curious, but at the same time, they remain focussed on doing one thing well. It’s worth thinking about whether the trend could work as an accelerant for your core business, or whether it is a distraction to it.

Sometimes a trend has an overall industry impact, and other industry players, especially global ones tend to get hit by the trend wave first. New Zealand businesses are well placed to watch, learn and adapt, based on what’s happening around the world. Digital and social trends are among the easiest to spot and track.

If your business is customer-centric, you’ll know the importance of staying close to the thinking and behaviour of your customers. If a trend is likely to impact your customer thinking and behaviour, then it’s absolutely one to pay attention to. Will your customers want/expect to engage with you in a different way?

And finally, it’s worth thinking about whether a trend inspires you to think about the future of your business. It might not be a trend you act on now, but it might inspire your marketing (and business) calendar in years to come, helping you to stay focussed on long-term sustainability.

Whether you’re working with customer data, trends or both, leveraging the insight within that information will help you to make decisions that move the dial. And if you need help, contact an expert. A marketing strategy advisor can take data and trends and crunch them into actionable marketing steps to move your business forward.

By being proactive and responsive to trends, small businesses can leverage insights to stay ahead of the competition, anticipate changes in customer behaviour, and adapt business strategies accordingly.

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