It’s not all of a sudden that smartphones took over the business industry overnight, but of course it was a process that took a complete decade to perfect this way of living. The usage of a smartphone as a means of staying connected via SMS, call or even emails has grown tremendously globally, and even surpassed traditional usage via Desktop Computers or even Laptops. This is a significant change that impacts the entire business model and strategy in its current state of business.
The Traditional Advertising
Is the traditional way of marketing and advertising still relevant in today’s businesses? There is no right or wrong in still keeping the traditional advertising in today’s business. The question is, are you serious in spending your money on advertising? If you are serious about it, then what are you looking at for the outcome of your advertisement? How are you keeping track of the outcome, and how do you track your advertising performance, and the return of your investment?
The Digital Intelligent Advertising
If you have a powerful BI tool that allows you to access real time data, historical data and predictive data of your business in a matter of seconds for all your outlets/brands collectively, nationwide or even globally, how does that sound? Now let me make it more interesting, what about if you have all this information before you even start advertising on any media? What if I can give you a tool that does everything below, before you even decide the type of campaign for any sector of your business?
- Number of customers who visited my store in the last month
- Number of customers who spent more than $100 during their visit
- Number of customers with more than three visits during the one month period
- Female or male customers out of all of the above
- Let’s tweak a little further; number of customers who are sitting in my store right now
- Number of customers who are sitting in my store right now for more than 30 minutes
- Now imagine the type of marketing you can do with all the above data.
Data As Data Or Data As Business Information?
Why do you need a report on data that you already have?
- To learn your own business pattern
- To learn on the success rate of your business vs previous month/quarter and year
- To learn on the success rate of your business vs previous month/quarter and year
- To identify your strength and also the area that needs improvement or changes
- To know your revenue vs losses
- And perhaps many more that is relevant only to your own business.
The question is, do we want to see the data that makes us happy or do we want to see the actual data that helps the business growth? Having to know how much the competitors are taking away from our lunch is more critical than just learning our own business data.
This will help us realise the loss we have made by not initiating the right marketing materials at the right time to keep loyal customers. The other part which makes a business interesting is winning our competitors’ customers. If a business owner or CMO can analyse real time/historical data and predict the data of their competitors’ customers’ behavioural pattern, will that give them an opportunity to enable the right campaign at the right time to win their competitors’ customers?
Now how about that? This is what we call “Business Location Intelligent” that gives you all the attributes and details you need at your fingertips to drive business to the next level.
Andrew Kanan is a result oriented professional with over 20 years of diverse industry and functional experience in driving sales, profit and market share in IT sectors. He leads Lat Sense, a leading technology company that enables Brands and Companies in leveraging technology and Big Data via location-based solutions. Follow him on LinkedIn and website.
