Using Data to Make Decisions in Marketing

Marketing. An Art? A Science? An amalgam of both. Historically, marketing has been a craft owned by the creative rather than the methodical. And, it is likely that the creative will never leave. But, technology continues to push the envelope on what can be tracked and measured. Each day, demand increases for marketers that can measure their results.

“There is such tremendous change in the marketplace that marketing techniques that used to work may not work anymore,” says Roland Rust, chairman of the marketing department at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business at College Park, Md., and author of numerous books on marketing. “Companies are trying a lot of new things and don’t know whether they work. The companies that are getting ahead these days are those that use data to make decisions,”

Prof. Rust adds. Conquering highly profitable markets, or having the right market focus and position, is one of the key building blocks of a high-performance business, says Mr. Merrihue of Accenture. And a high-performance business today demands cost-effective, results-driven marketing” (http://online.wsj.com/ad/accenture/)

The source of this information comes from an advertisement -, but the message, while a touch bombastic, remains the same. Understanding your marketing position and tracking progress against goals has become one of the most important topics in marketing. That is no secret at all. Determining what to measure and how to improve is a large challenge.

I’ll toss out my two cents on how Competitive Intelligence can improve a marketing department’s ability to compete.

If done properly, competitive intelligence should be able to tell you:

Crucial business needs that lead people to consider your product/service/solution

How the competition positions itself against you

The perception of the prospects in regard to your value proposition

The right message at the right time of the evaluation process

Your company’s image compared with that of the competition

What are the most important factors that cause a prospect to use you vs. anyone else.

Competitive Intelligence should feed your marketing department with these types of answers, allowing the most effective messages to be refined. Tracking this information over time will provide the ability to measure improvement and/or keep pace with a changing marketplace.

These ideas are some of the most basic possibilities. If you have other ideas or need suggestions, let’s chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)