How Analytics will be the key driver of growth in the post-COVID-19 world

Imagine a situation where a man is diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition. However, he gets timely medical treatment and starts recovering. He is advised to visit his doctors for regular health check-ups so that he can be given treatment and medicines accordingly. This patient gets into a false sense of belief that he is doing great and continues with the same medicines without getting his periodic health assessment. His health deteriorates and his life is in danger once again. Through this example, I wanted to bring to the fore an important lesson for businesses impacted by the disruption brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. These businesses will have to track every pulse of their business going forward to overcome the obstacles in the way.

Without evaluating the performance of your business in comparison to peers, industry, and the prevailing consumer sentiment, and just spending marketing budgets through advertising is not a pragmatic approach in today's times. Gone are days when marketers used to rely heavily on ATL activities to get the desired results.

Businesses need to be more cognizant about how their customers interact with their brand and an in-depth customer data analysis will help effectively and efficiently make marketing spends.

The importance of data and analytics is going to be more significant during such unprecedented times when spends need to be controlled and results maximised. Spending money on marketing activities before understanding your customer behaviour within and outside of your brand will be a wrong strategy. It is always imperative for these businesses to first analyse their customers data and then arrive at actionable insights from it. This will help businesses arrive at the exact areas that need a boost.

Being close to the facts about consumer behaviour within industry motivates the marketers to remain at par or above the industry average. Apparently, everyone can understand; what is the Acquisition Rate, Retention Rate, Attrition Rate, Decline Rate of their own customers by doing the slicing-dicing of their own customer data. This can certainly help you understand "What is the performance" but not "How was the performance" of a brand's marketing campaigns. When you can compare your brand's customer performance with the same parameters applied in industry then only you are able to evaluate and see the actual growth of your brand against industry benchmarks. Only then you will be able to decide whether you are capable to acquire new customers at the same rate at which any merchant gains in your own industry. Customer decline/Attrition rate, their wallet shares with the brand and untapped wallet share provides overall opportunity from own customer and it can be beneficial for any brand to understand their actual performance as compared to industry average standards.

Things you need to track once the COVID-19 dust settles:

Acquisition rate

: Keep a track of your brand's new customer acquisition rate because these customers are the lifeline for any brand. You must keep the rate maintained as per industry average to thrive and prosper and stay ahead in competition. Compare your brand's new acquisition rate with the standard acquisition rate in your own industry and put efforts to take early decisions.

Retention rate

: At what frequency are your customers revisiting your brand compared to the average repeat rate in your own industry. These customers have now become a part of your brand and, you must have a strong connect with these customers, so that they recall your brand whenever they think to buy next. Try to understand, to what level the frequency can be based on how frequently they spend around your brand.

Customer churn

: Always keep a close eye on customer defection and never let this go above the average industry churn rate.

Market share

: Keep noting your share in own industry in all regions that your brand is available in. Do not let the market share plunge down. You must act as soon as it shows a declining trend. This information is only viable when you have access to industry insights.

Market movement

: How important is it to maintain your brand's growth rate at par or above-industry growth rate? It is important to track ups and downs of brand and market, but you can only track it by having Industry insights available. So, you can compare and see if your brand is growing positively synced with industry or not.

Wallet share

: Do try to understand your wallet share from an analysis of your own customers data. Try to gain knowledge about how much your customers spend with you and how much they spend outside of you but within your own category. This gives you the understanding of total opportunity available from own customers and gives you visibility about it if you are losing your customers to everyone else in market.

It is essential to understand whether your brand is doing good or not and this answer will only be available when you have deep market insights to compare and comprehend. Analytics by Pine Labs is one of our top products that provides all such and many more industry analytics related requirements for our clients. Our Analytics product proposition is around understanding our customer's buying behavior through data-driven decision making. We help our existing clients find the proverbial 'needle in the haystack'. It helps client stay on top of the hidden trends by analysing their own customers data, and act on the insights before it impacts the business. It also intends to deliver business insights and helps precisely spot business opportunities that are otherwise nearly impossible to identify outside of their loyalty universe.