Obsessed with B2B marketing? You should be a PRO member! Join now at 25% off. Offer ends Friday!

As a marketer, you surely own customer data. But is it actionable? In huge, raw files, data can overwhelm you. However, when handled adeptly, data can be a marketer's most reliable weapon for driving to the core of customers' buying intentions—and meeting them there to make the sale. It's the secret sauce for achieving authentic customer-centric marketing.

But it's surprising how many organizations struggle with marketing data tools, including the people in their IT departments, who may not have the time or database management expertise to help.

Here are five ways to build a data-driven marketing culture and turn data into customer-centric results.

1. Mine your own business

Data is sometimes hiding in the inner resources of your organization—perhaps with dealers or resellers of your product or service, your sales force, or locked up in an IT vault. Dig it out so it can be fortified and put to good use.

Establish a unique customer identifier to connect disparate data sources at the customer-record level. Then, you'll have line of sight across the entire customer experience—what's happening in the dealer channel, point of sale, complaints or service calls from the call center, online recommendations, referrals, warranty data, enrollments, renewals, and subsequent purchases.

That insight will enable you to identify and investigate the relationships among those data elements. You can learn valuable information from those measurements, such as how service calls affect renewals, or how many new customers go on to make that elusive second purchase.

2. Pump life into the data

This step is where things get more difficult—but it's necessary. It's critical to wrangle sets of data from scattered subsidiaries, software platforms, and sources into a usable, nimble database via smart data manipulation. The right approach can make your database simple, complete, reliable, and useable.

Your internal data can also be supplemented with external sources. Because customers are multifaceted, internal data will help you build the skeleton; but you will need to develop profiles to flesh out what your customers really look like. Connecting data sources (see item No. 1) will enable you to understand your customers' behavior and their attraction to your brand.

External data sources, such as consumer demographics, business firmographics, regulatory filings, and credit ratings will add depth to your customer profiles. Then, the data you've collected has to be made accessible so you can describe, segment, or select your customers by any of their attributes—behavior, a particular demographic, value measurements, or other metrics. That will help you speak to customers in more relevant ways—treating a high-value customer like, well, a highly valued customer.

A data synthesis tool (we've built a proprietary system for our clients) can help you successfully handle the technical aspects of the database manipulation. Some sophisticated companies use PowerDesigner by Sybase or ERwin by Computer Associates as architecture tools to create database structure and utility.

3. Listen up

Data will talk to you if you're willing to listen to it. You can access incredible insight into a customer's frame of mind and readiness to buy.

Enter your email address to continue reading

Five Ways to Create a Data-Driven Marketing Culture

Don't worry...it's free!

Already a member? Sign in now.

Sign in with your preferred account, below.

Did you like this article?
Know someone who would enjoy it too? Share with your friends, free of charge, no sign up required! Simply share this link, and they will get instant access…
  • Copy Link

  • Email

  • Twitter

  • Facebook

  • Pinterest

  • Linkedin


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Bergeson is president and CEO of Bridgz Marketing Group in Minneapolis, a BI WORLDWIDE company and member of ICOM, the 50-nation network of independent marketing communications organizations.