The Wisdom of Engaging in Data-Driven Marketing During Times of Success

At MindEcology, the clients that come to us for marketing guidance usually find themselves in one of two boats:

1. Business is strong and they want to make it even stronger by egaging in data-driven, customer-centric marketing

or

2. Business has been tanking for some time and they are looking for a last-ditch effort to pull themselves back from the brink

Trust us – you would rather be in the first group. It’s much less painful.

After all, companies who are already knocking on the door of defeat generally have less time and fewer resources to spend on turning things around through better marketing. They are in panic mode and looking for something to save them. Of course, it is much, much better to be in the position to build on success by spending wisely on marketing – and then to spin that investment into a healthy ROI.

The Inherent Risks of Inaction When Times are Good

Unfortunately, most companies belonging to the first group do not feel motivated to “go to the next level” in their marketing efforts. This is especially true for companies who have more or less stumbled upon their marketing success. They have an often-misplaced sense of confidence in their current customer targeting, positioning and messaging methods (or lack thereof).

Business owners and executives who have chosen to forgo taking an analytics-driven, best customer-centric approach to their marketing activities are putting themselves at risk in two ways:

1. they are burning money on “spray-and-pray” marketing techniques, wasting markeing dollars that they could be socking away for future expansion or for making it through a rough patch

and

2. they are putting themselves at risk by relying too much on current success drivers without thoroughly examining the methods necessary to expand their business opportunities with a hyper-targeted approach.

Inaction during times of success is risky indeed.

A Prescription for Extending Your Current Business Success into the Future

We all know that people and companies who can maintain high levels of success not just for months or a few years – but for a decade or more – have one thing in common: they make their own success. From a marketing perspective, this must necessarily boil down to taking a proactive, data-driven approach to marketing. Specificially, it means leveraging their knowledge about existing customers, geographies and revenue trends to not only predict – but to create – their own future success by targeting and messaging to the right customers.

What is the best time to invest in data-driven marketing? Whether your business is just starting out, has already met some success, or has hit a sales brick wall – the time to get serious about your marketing is right now.