Data Rich, Intelligence Poor? Wanted: Marketing Intelligence

With ever-increasing volumes of data, the challenge is to use them in a targeted manner.FROM MICHAEL GRUND*There is no question that market-oriented company management requires information: about the market, customers and competitors. While the focus of information procurement has long been on market research, today the magic word "big data" is at the center of attention. There are many reasons for this, two of which are particularly important: Firstly, people now leave broad data trails due to their information and purchasing behavior, and secondly, technological developments are making the collection and analysis of this data ever easier and cheaper. And this has consequences: The mere existence of large amounts of data leads companies to believe that they know more and more about their customers and therefore need less traditional market research, for example. But do large amounts of data automatically lead to a better understanding of customers? Of course not.An example from practiceThe latest newsletter from our telecommunications provider, our main insurance company or our favorite car manufacturer appears in our inbox. We open it and realize after a few moments that the content is of no interest to us because it is simply not relevant to our needs. A particularly successful example was sent out by a mobile phone provider a few months ago. A contract customer received a newsletter with various offers, but the problem was that offer one was not available at the customer's home address for technical reasons. The customer already had offer two (subscription). Offer three (contract renewal) was not available at the time, as the customer had just renewed six months ago. And offer four was out of the question for reasons of age (up to 26 years). The problem described above documents the fact that companies sitting on huge amounts of data, which they obtain from contract details or usage behavior, do not use this flood of data to add value. No visible added value is generated for either the company or its customers. Companies should actually know their customers, but nevertheless process them with such shotgun activities. This is in the hope that one or the other might find the offers interesting. Is that realistic? Hardly. Because if the company does not make the effort to carefully use the data, which is all available due to the subscription, for the newsletter, thousands and thousands of newsletters are sent out that have little or no relevance for the recipients, resulting in a falling newsletter open rate and an increase in newsletter unsubscriptions. However, all of this could have been prevented if the company had enriched the available data with a little intelligence and excluded those customers who are technically unable to use certain services at their registered address or who already use certain services. The company actually knows all of this. And if it were smart, it would use this knowledge. This is not about highly complex analyses of customer behavior or data mining models. No, it's about simple address selections or the dynamic design of a newsletter depending on the product portfolio used and the customer's address.Intelligent data usage is requiredMarketing intelligence describes a comprehensive concept: it is about the systematic and target-oriented linking of classic market research, the analysis of markets and competitors (very often underestimated) as well as the intelligent use of internally available data. Sound marketing decisions require reliable information and the intelligent use of various (!) sources of information. The availability of "big data" alone is not a solution if the data is not collected in a targeted manner and evaluated and interpreted with a mixture of market/customer knowledge, creativity and analytical expertise. In addition to a reliable and up-to-date database, this requires systems/tools for data analysis as well as suitably qualified employees who understand the market and can use these tools in a target-oriented manner.In the context of Marketing 3.0, there is a lot of talk about creating value. Especially if a company wants to address customers in an individualized way, added value must also be recognizable for the addressees. Uninteresting or irrelevant content is not only worthless, but also destroys interest in products or companies.