ICC Asks Marketers: Do You Really Know Your Customers?

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- If you're like most marketing executives today, you may be concerned that you don't know your customer as well as you need to.  And that's a problem, because the c-suite is increasingly looking for every business division to show the way it impacts the customer and the bottom line. For marketers that means ROMI or return on marketing investment. From focus groups to web surveys to purchased data, there are many ways to remedy this situation and learn more about the customer. However, these methods, once the only way to uncover more information about customers, are often expensive and time-consuming with results that too often fall short. Fortunately, marketers are entering the era of big data and big data decision-making. ICC, the Business and IT Solutions company that correctly predicted the 2014 Oscars and designs collaboration solutions for today's workforce, has outlined five questions that you should be asking about your customers that big data can answer today.

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"We've found that even seemingly unconnected, individual data points can be combined to form a much more complete picture of who your customers are and what they really want. This can provide for strong customer insight and allow marketers to personalize and enhance the customer experience," says Steve Grover, ICC VP of Business Analytics.

Five Customer Questions Your Data can Answer Today
Using analytic techniques can help uncover patterns of behavior and needs that may be completely unknown to the customer and to you.  But marketers need to start by asking the right questions about their customers in order to understand just where they are in the customer lifecycle process.

1. What do our customers want that they aren't getting from us today? If you can discover what your customers need at the present moment, at the beginning of the customer lifecycle process, you can use this data to help attract new customers and retain existing customers throughout the lifecycle process.
2. What is the next best product or service we can offer our customers? As you get to know more about your customers, data analysis can help you find your next product or services offering while you deepen and broaden your customer relationships.
3. What is the customer sentiment for each of our products and services? As you go deeper into the customer lifecycle process you begin to understand your customers more intimately. This helps you to understand the "Why?" behind the buy.
4. What do we need to learn that we don't know today to personalize our customer experience? The classic "you don't know what you don't know" can be overcome with proper analytic techniques. You can then detect – even anticipate – areas in your products, services and customer service that may be causing attrition.
5. What is the total collective return on marketing investment (ROMI) from our multi-channel campaigns this year? The data marketers' equivalent of the realtors' "Location, location, location" mantra is "Measure, measure, measure." By collecting and measuring multiple data sources – and comparing, contrasting and predicting among them – you can develop stronger, more repeatable and consistent returns for marketing campaigns.

The data is available today to answer marketer's most pressing questions about their customers and technologies are available to analyze this data and make sense of it in a way that was never possible before. Finding the data is becoming the easy part since most of it lives inside the corporate firewall.  Other data can be readily purchased to supplement the data companies already own.

Once marketers have been able to set out the questions they need to answer, they next need to select the resources with the technical expertise and analytic skills that can not only collect and analyze big data, but also help interpret it. The world of marketing will never be the same, because big data really means big insights for marketers.

Want to Learn More?

• See what ICC CEO Steven Glaser has to say about customer analytics and more at http://bit.ly/1naqJ5Z
• ICC takes a look at many different technology topics in our Insights page at http://bit.ly/1q0FFam

About ICC
ICC (Information Control Company), based in Columbus, Ohio, is a leading provider of enterprise technology solutions. With a staff over 500 highly trained consultants, we are experts in Strategy, User Experience, Visual Design, Engineering, Project Management, Business Analytics and Quality Assurance. Using these skills, we develop and deploy innovative, business-critical solutions that enable Fortune 500 and mid-market organizations to improve operational efficiencies. Our Business, Digital and Technology solutions give our clients a competitive advantage that helps them drive revenues and increase margin.

Farsite, the advanced analytics division of ICC, specializes in helping companies use Big Data and predictive analytics to empower smart business decisions, solve their toughest challenges and gain a distinctive competitive advantage. For more information visit www.FarsiteGroup.com.

Clutch is a world-class digital ad agency inside the walls of ICC. Together, they're a collection of seasoned strategists, user experience specialists, writers, art directors and developers who specialize in the art and science of interactive conversations. 

ICC is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and an IBM Premier Business Partner. ICC is committed to serving its clients, community and country by developing U.S.-based leaders who work hard to strengthen the American economy. More information is available at http://www.icctechnology.com.

Media Contacts:
Theresa Hodgson
ICC
[email protected]
614-523-3070 x106
http://www.icctechnology.com/  

Rich Mullikin
Communication Strategy Group for ICC
[email protected]
866-997-2424
www.communicationstrategygroup.com

SOURCE Information Control Company