Measure or Die: What Analytics Do You Need to Beat the Competition
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 7:11 am
In the minds of ordinary people, statistics and analytics are boring activities that take up a lot of time and do not provide real benefits to business here and now. Only true professionals understand that without market analysis, marketing and promotion turn into Russian roulette. And who would want to throw money down the drain and not get the desired results? We asked international expert in marketing research and the automotive industry Alexander Gruzdev to tell us why businesses need to know the numbers and why it is so important to operate data correctly. He responded and prepared a short essay on a sore subject for our blog.
What do you know about your customers? Are you interested in them? And how often do usa whatsapp list you think about your products and services from the perspective of your customers? Now ask yourself a few more questions. Do you know your customers well? Who are your consumers? Do you know them? What are their preferences, habits, and values? What do they like and disapprove of? Most likely, the answers to these questions will be your assumptions, not real numbers from analytical reports. It is worth thinking about.
Be genuinely interested in your customers, not for the formal collection of information to use it to determine, say, the NPS index. You see, only when you know your customers well, and most importantly, correctly, only then will you be able to create competitive and relevant services and products and effectively promote them.
Find out the habitats
I will give you some examples so that you understand why you need to know the correct answers to all the questions I ask.
Company X launches an advertising campaign on Facebook, spends a solid budget. Hires a special employee who not only monitors user activity, but also answers their questions. The budget and the entire program are scheduled for two years. Time passes, and the company receives absolutely nothing - it only spends money. The hired person is fired, the program is closed.
What conclusion is made? That the wrong person was hired for activity on the wrong network. After which a decision is made to promote through YouTube. This time the company acts more prudently and accepts the program for a period of one year. It does not hire full-time employees, but turns to a specialized agency. Videos are filmed, money is spent on their promotion. But a year later this program is also closed.
When I accidentally met the head of this company at a conference, he asked me: can I explain why everyone succeeds, but they, despite the efforts and expenses, do not have the desired result. We began to figure out: who is this “everyone who succeeds”, what exactly is this “everyone that succeeds”, and most importantly - what goals did all these programs pursue in general. The most obvious thing became clear: the company's clients belong to a fairly old category and live mainly in regions where these social networks are not very popular.
That is, the company created cool content, but showed it to the wrong audience. Their products are not of interest to young people, and YouTube videos do not reach older audiences. Do you know why Facebook and YouTube were chosen? Because they represented the “most advanced promotion tools” at that time! It turns out that they chose tools that were convenient for performers, and not tools that were really needed to show the product to the right clients.
Be interested in moods and trends
It is important to know not only your customers, but also consumer sentiment and preferences in general. By the way, there are areas of business where the main marketing strategies still work to expand distribution and increase brand awareness and do not imply any targeting.
In the modern world, where you can track the path of each client individually, where “end-to-end analytics” is one of the most popular terms of the last five years, not to engage in client segmentation and target audience issues, setting up advertising campaigns is almost a mortal sin.
Let me give you the simplest example of why general market statistics are needed.
Let's say your company increased its turnover by 10% in the last quarter and you are ready to celebrate the victory, but is it worth it? If the market grew by 50%, then there is nothing to celebrate. But if the market grew by 1%, and you by 10%, then there is something to celebrate.
Without research and analysis, you cannot obtain this information. Moreover, without conducting regular research, you can miss very important trends and remain without information about customers, their preferences, desires and expectations, and market changes.
Quite an indicative example is Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, who called the first iPhone "a $500 phone with no buttons that doesn't stand a chance." What does this assessment mean? Of course, the company was aware of the preferences and desires of its customers, but it did not look around and absolutely did not understand the general mood of the market and consumers in general. As a result, Windows Mobile lost the competitive battle.
What do you know about your customers? Are you interested in them? And how often do usa whatsapp list you think about your products and services from the perspective of your customers? Now ask yourself a few more questions. Do you know your customers well? Who are your consumers? Do you know them? What are their preferences, habits, and values? What do they like and disapprove of? Most likely, the answers to these questions will be your assumptions, not real numbers from analytical reports. It is worth thinking about.
Be genuinely interested in your customers, not for the formal collection of information to use it to determine, say, the NPS index. You see, only when you know your customers well, and most importantly, correctly, only then will you be able to create competitive and relevant services and products and effectively promote them.
Find out the habitats
I will give you some examples so that you understand why you need to know the correct answers to all the questions I ask.
Company X launches an advertising campaign on Facebook, spends a solid budget. Hires a special employee who not only monitors user activity, but also answers their questions. The budget and the entire program are scheduled for two years. Time passes, and the company receives absolutely nothing - it only spends money. The hired person is fired, the program is closed.
What conclusion is made? That the wrong person was hired for activity on the wrong network. After which a decision is made to promote through YouTube. This time the company acts more prudently and accepts the program for a period of one year. It does not hire full-time employees, but turns to a specialized agency. Videos are filmed, money is spent on their promotion. But a year later this program is also closed.
When I accidentally met the head of this company at a conference, he asked me: can I explain why everyone succeeds, but they, despite the efforts and expenses, do not have the desired result. We began to figure out: who is this “everyone who succeeds”, what exactly is this “everyone that succeeds”, and most importantly - what goals did all these programs pursue in general. The most obvious thing became clear: the company's clients belong to a fairly old category and live mainly in regions where these social networks are not very popular.
That is, the company created cool content, but showed it to the wrong audience. Their products are not of interest to young people, and YouTube videos do not reach older audiences. Do you know why Facebook and YouTube were chosen? Because they represented the “most advanced promotion tools” at that time! It turns out that they chose tools that were convenient for performers, and not tools that were really needed to show the product to the right clients.
Be interested in moods and trends
It is important to know not only your customers, but also consumer sentiment and preferences in general. By the way, there are areas of business where the main marketing strategies still work to expand distribution and increase brand awareness and do not imply any targeting.
In the modern world, where you can track the path of each client individually, where “end-to-end analytics” is one of the most popular terms of the last five years, not to engage in client segmentation and target audience issues, setting up advertising campaigns is almost a mortal sin.
Let me give you the simplest example of why general market statistics are needed.
Let's say your company increased its turnover by 10% in the last quarter and you are ready to celebrate the victory, but is it worth it? If the market grew by 50%, then there is nothing to celebrate. But if the market grew by 1%, and you by 10%, then there is something to celebrate.
Without research and analysis, you cannot obtain this information. Moreover, without conducting regular research, you can miss very important trends and remain without information about customers, their preferences, desires and expectations, and market changes.
Quite an indicative example is Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, who called the first iPhone "a $500 phone with no buttons that doesn't stand a chance." What does this assessment mean? Of course, the company was aware of the preferences and desires of its customers, but it did not look around and absolutely did not understand the general mood of the market and consumers in general. As a result, Windows Mobile lost the competitive battle.