Let the Data Decide: Making Important Decisions With Your Business Contact Database

Data has a critical role in assessing your marketing programs performance. The ability to see the future is a rare skill. However, if you do have a process it should be supported by one kick-ass database.

What gets measured gets improved. Before creating a massive decision with your creative team, set first your one big back room support- your data. You need to figure out what’s missing on your data and how you can access it for future strategies and decisions. Business contact database is one form of data that helps create greater efficiencies across enterprise.

It would be interesting to see how companies could greatly benefit from having all the data needed in making decisions, decisions not based on gut-feel, but rather on data.

In our current marketing environment one of the biggest challenges however is to implement a tool, but tools are limiting. Also, what compounds the challenge is that we have the tendency to decide from our experiences.

What are the strategies you can apply to create a data driven company and make the most out of your business contact database?

Know your audience-You need to sit down with your core audience and figure out what motivates them. Start measuring your revenue, profit margins and the number of new customers. Once you have the data about your customers you can slowly over time help evolve the information into making great analysis.

Analyze- When data is already provided you now have the opportunity to get insights, to know which is relevant among all the data you have. Analyzing maybe hard to do but when you have already established easier means to do, so your business will be in a much bigger advantage. If your data screams out the action you need to take, then you can analyze immediately.

Depersonalize decision making- Very few people can argue with a customers voice. Don’t make decisions about you or what you think. Get ideas from both the external and internal benchmark. Be focused on your customer and ask about their opinion, you can drag their voice on the table through open ended survey questions.

Be proactive rather than reactive- Get ahead of the data game and don’t wait until someone asks for the data. Be aware of what are the upcoming changes, have a plan to analyze the impact and proactively present results. If you do this you now have the ability to provide better analysis.

Hire critical thinkers- Make sure that there is one person who spends 80 % of his time doing analysis. This person is your analyst, inform the strategic objectives of your company and then get out of the way. Empower them to analyze the data and make them accountable for insights.

Create a decision making process- Process helps create frameworks that people can understand, follow and repeat. It helps when establishing goals and create metrics so that it becomes easier to stay focused and for a successful execution.

Try applying some or all the strategies listed above and find one that works for your business.

If you have a database you have the ability to define, measure, analyze, improve and control decisions, it will give you the opportunity to create structured processes in your company. Find a company who can help you build up that database, that could lead to the success you’ve always been wanting.

Pour over your business database and analyze that no one asked but only you because you are the only smart one in the family.


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