We live in the age of big data. Alphabet, Meta, and countless others have built a trillion-dollar industry by collecting data for marketing. However, it’s not just vast multinational corporations that can harness the power of information. Nowadays, collecting and analyzing information is available to all companies.
Thanks to this democratization of information, leveraging your data is no longer just a nice bonus. It’s a necessity—a cornerstone of competitive advantage. Because if you’re not using marketing information to make informed data-driven decisions, you will only fall behind those who do.
So, what’s the secret to making use of your marketing information? To have a marketing information strategy to ensure you’re collecting and analyzing data and translating it into actionable insights to help your business grow.
In this article, we will look at marketing information management, why taking a structured approach to analyzing your data is essential, and provide you with a blueprint for a MIM strategy.
Understanding marketing information management
Marketing Information Management (MIM) systematically gathers, stores, analyzes, and deploys information about market trends, customer behavior, and evolving market activities. A systematic approach to organizing marketing information like this ensures that everyone in your business has access to the information they need to make the right decisions and that you’re all working towards the same goal.
Why marketing information management is important to your business
The world is a complicated place now. Companies no longer sell exclusively to people like them in their local area. Today, businesses navigate volatile global markets, selling to people from all demographics.
That’s why an information-led approach to marketing is essential—marketing must be industry- and demographic-dependent. For example, although they are both about health, a medicare advantage sales strategy that focuses on education and consent marketing is going to differ significantly from a Gymshark campaign, which generates brand interest via TikTok.
The good news is that the tools available to help you understand your customers are only improving. With MIM, you can forecast better, understand even the most complex markets, and develop marketing strategies that will ring true with your customers. Marketing information management strategies will allow you to:
- Forecast future trends: Using historical data and up-to-date market information, you can predict future market conditions and customer preferences and plan for potential risks.
- Measure demand: Figuring out the level of demand for your brand will help you with inventory management and product development and allow you to target your promotional strategies in order to generate more demand.
- Make informed decisions: A MIM strategy is crucial to any business that wants to make well-informed decisions that reflect the world as it is. Sometimes, your gut feeling will lead you in the right direction. You need accurate, well-analyzed information to make the right choice every time.
Components of a marketing information system
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A robust marketing information system is foundational to effective MIM and is typically made up of the following components:
- Internal records: This comprises data you collect within your organization, such as sales figures, customer feedback, and previous marketing campaign results.
- Marketing intelligence: This is information gathered from the market. It can come from the news, especially industry-specific publications, competitor analysis, and up-to-date information on market trends.
- Market research: The systematic data collection and analysis related to particular markets or customer preferences. This can be conducted by you or by outside agencies. Usually, it consists of data from surveys, interviews, and focus groups. If you want to know what your customers think, ask.
- Marketing Decision Support Systems (MDSS): These comprise all the analytical tools, software, and technology available to help you process the information. Today, with modern accounting software, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, and mobile software gathering data, you can collect data anytime from anywhere. It’s so easy, in fact, that without MDSS, it would be almost impossible to analyze all the information correctly.
Each of these components plays a vital role in understanding your market. Without data, analysis is impossible. Without market research and intelligence, you risk misinterpreting the data. Together, they give you the whole picture.
Setting up your MIM strategy
Setting up an effective MIM strategy isn’t easy—no single approach will work for everyone. But without getting the right processes in place from the start, you won’t be able to build a strategy that will give you a complete understanding of your market.
Here’s how to get started:
Identify your marketing information needs
While MIM will obviously be marketing-led, it affects everyone in your organization. Involve as many people and teams as possible to ensure a strategy that works for everyone. Remember, it’s easier to spend the time now than changing your whole strategy down the line.
- Assess current marketing challenges: Start by evaluating your current marketing efforts. What problems do you have? Are there any blind spots in your current strategy, or are you missing information about critical areas? You’ll also need to leverage customer intelligence, such as demographics, to ensure you’re targeting your MIM properly.
- Define clear objectives: What do you want to achieve with your MIM? Whether improving customer engagement, driving sales, improving your products, or generating B2B leads, having clear-set objects will keep you on the straight and narrow.
- Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Ensuring you have metrics in place means you can tell how well your strategy works. This could be conversion rates, improved customer ratings, or sales figures. You won’t know how well you’re doing without measuring these from the start.
Gathering and organizing relevant data
This stage is critical, as the data quality will determine the quality of the insights you can glean from it.
- Determine relevant data sources: Identify where you can gather data from. Common sources include internal records such as sales figures, social media analytics, customer feedback forms, and online reviews.
- Implement tools and systems: Where possible, look at automating data collection. CRM systems, web analysis tools, and social media platforms are all great ways to gather data automatically, ensuring you have accurate data without any gaps. Not only that but using technology can also help improve the quality of your data. For example, a cloud based phone system (what is a cloud based phone system?) can filter out scam-likely numbers to ensure you are only counting legitimate calls.
- Organize data in an accessible format: Data is only helpful if you can use it. The good news is that all those tools you implemented to collect data probably help you to understand it, too, offering dashboards and in-built reporting to help you analyze it.
Mastering the art of data analysis
Raw data by itself isn’t going to give you much. Unfortunately, the answers won’t just pop out of the page. However, there are some steps you can take to help you get to grips with the data you collect so you can figure out what it really tells you about the market and your customers.
- Use analytical tools: Many data analysis tools, from Google Analytics to custom software like SQL, are available today. Choose the one that suits the complexity of the data you’re analyzing. Too complicated, and you can get overwhelmed. Too simple and it won’t provide the insights you’re after.
- Develop your skills or hire experts: Data analysis is a specialized skill. If you aren’t trained, you may need to invest in training and education to get you (or your team) up to speed. Alternatively, you can always hire professionals to mine the gems of information from your data.
- Put in place a routine: Unfortunately, analysis isn’t a one-time task. Sales change, markets change, people change. Setting up a regular routine will help you stay on track and stick to your MIM strategy.
Making informed decisions
The whole point of a marketing information management strategy is to make informed decisions and create a marketing strategy that works. Here’s how you can do it.
- Align your insights with your marketing objectives: Make sure you’re looking for the right insights from the data to help you achieve what you want. Are you looking to improve your product? Perhaps look at reviews over time. Looking to improve your B2B display ad performance? Check click-through rates or look at sales before and after a campaign.
- Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making: Encourage your teams to rely on data rather than intuition. Not only will this keep you making better decisions, but it will also help teams accept decisions that may seem counterintuitive.
- Include the whole team: Remember to communicate why you have made the decisions to keep people on board and working together. Dictates from on high will be ignored if people don’t understand the reasons why you are making those decisions. Speak to production about why you want product changes or work with your sales team to develop sales call scripts together. With data on your side, you can explain your reasoning.
- Reassess and adjust based on outcomes: Reassess existing strategies and adapt. It should be a continuous loop of feedback and improvement.
Going one step further with AI
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The AI revolution is changing work, and marketing information management is no different. Machine learning can handle vast amounts of data, finding insights that are difficult for humans to spot. Because of this, AI can offer unique predictive insights and automated decision-making that is incredibly precise.
- Find an AI tool that’s suitable for your business: Just like other software solutions, AI for MIM can vary significantly in cost and complexity. Explore the options before committing. Find an affordable solution that gives you all the options you need without having too much redundancy. However, remember to consider whether it can scale with your business if you are expanding.
- Understand the potential: As well as checking out the various software options available, consider what AI can do with your data. AI is a new and growing field. Try not to miss out on features that could be useful to you because you are unaware of the potential.
- Run pilot projects: Finally, once you have narrowed down your list, consider running a few pilots to see if you can A/B test your chosen systems and be sure you’re investing in the right one.
Measuring success
While these steps will help you set up a marketing information management strategy so your business can optimize data and understand your industry and customers, this is just the beginning. Monitor and adjust your MIM strategy, constantly refining it to stay ahead of your competition.
- Set realistic, measurable goals: At the start of this process, you set clear objectives that you want to achieve from your MIM strategy. Remember to periodically review your progress and ensure you stick to your core objectives.
- Review performance against KPIs: While your objectives will tell you how you are doing on a macro level, measuring against the KPIs you set yourself will help steer you on the right path in real-time. Additionally, don’t forget to use customer feedback in your review process. Finally, set up monthly or weekly reviews to see if your MIM strategy is on track.
- Adjust and evolve: Your marketing information strategy is not a dogmatic set of rules you must obey at all costs; it’s a roadmap to guide you in the right direction. No path is completely clear, and you’re bound to hit a few obstacles on the way. As the situation changes, so should you. A good MIM strategy is in place to help you be dynamic, not to lock you.
Summing up
Setting up a strategy for your marketing information management is essential to ensure you make the right decisions for your business. Plan ahead, setting your goals and objectives early. Do your research and find the right software solutions for your business. From CRMs to AI, a wealth of tools are available to you.
And remember: a good strategy isn’t just for you, it’s for the whole company. Keep in touch with other teams and make sure your MIM strategy works for everyone. Foster a culture of data-driven decisions to make sure your whole team makes the best choices they can.
Finally, remember that MIM is an ongoing process, so review and refine as you go. With the right marketing information strategy, you can truly understand your customers and stay ahead of your competition.
