In daily decision-making, when weighing alternatives and selecting the best options, having relevant data at hand makes the process of making a decision less variable, more secure and will lead to a more profitable outcome.

From an integrated agency perspective, when evaluating a brand or planning a campaign, it is extremely important to be able to make decisions based on data. Your customer data is important, but so are internal statistics such as sales measures and industry information. Who are your most profitable customers? Which products or services have the highest margins? How do your services or products compare with those of your competitors?

Data not only assists in decision-making, but allows the tracking of campaigns to demonstrate results. Data is also important in understanding how you compare with your competitors. Once your competitive advantage is identified, how can you benchmark yourself against your competitors without a strong grasp on the industry?

Consider the following data cycle:

Each of these steps is important in managing data. Firstly, the collection of data is critical including knowing what to collect and understanding what is important. The editing of this information is equally important, including ensuring that formatting is consistent and that information is collected in its entirety.

Secondly, the review of data is important. Understanding what you have and constantly analysing if what you have is what you need to have. If not, what changes can you make to your data collection and creation process to ensure that you are capturing what you need to?

Thirdly, managing the information is critical. The quantity of data you have, along with how important it is to you will determine how you manage the data. Also, does the software or other applications you are using allow you to extract the information you need?

The fourth step or consideration is training the software, system or human resources in the analysis and manipulation of this data. It is important that both the people using the data understand what it means and that they can either manipulate it or that the software can manipulate the data in an optimal way.

Finally, it is important to use the information. Use the information in daily and periodic decision making but also use the information to streamline processes and to baseline marketing efforts. Keeping an eye out for trends and making full use of data is an extremely valuable resource that could potentially be your competitive advantage!

When we’re born a very important record begins, our medical record. Whether in a secure computer database or in a file at your family medical clinic, somewhere there exists a comprehensive description of your medical history. Doctor’s visits, ailments, medication history and family background are all included. This medical record is not overly relevant to your every day life, but can be very helpful to a specialist in making suggestions to improve your health whether a routine visit or an emergency situation.

Let’s say your doctor retires, you move to different city, or find yourself in the emergency room in the middle of the night. Whether time sensitive or not, in order for the doctor to make an accurate and helpful diagnosis, a key tool that enables them to recognize the problem and construct an optimal recovery plan is your medical record.

Meet Joe. Despite regularly getting a full night’s sleep and trying to eat right, Joe is always tired and never feels refreshed. Joe decides to go visit his doctor to see if they can suggest possible causes and recommend treatment. The doctor examines Joe’s medical history and makes a recommendation based on all the available information.

Joe’s doctor is a specialist in asking the right questions and in analyzing data provided by Joe’s medical records. Without knowing Joe’s medical and family histories and list of current medications, the doctor would not have been able to prescribe an effective and appropriate treatment plan that would be medically appropriate to improve Joe’s health and well being.

Think of your friendly neighborhood integrated marketing agency as a family doctor. An integrated marketing agency, just like a doctor, needs to understand your company’s personality and family history in order to provide or suggest the best possible course of treatment. Similarly, doctors have to ask patients questions to find out certain pieces of information that a patient may not deem relevant. If doctors were only able to diagnose based on the information provided by patients and were not able to ask questions and run tests, the treatment plan provided by the doctor would not be very effective in healing the ailments, or improving the patient’s condition.

If Joe is your business, and an integrated marketing agency is your doctor, one of the most valuable and critical pieces required to correctly identify areas of improvement is information. In order to provide an effective solution or make recommendations, an integrated marketing agency needs to have all the facts, even facts that you don’t believe are important so that they, as specialists in their field, can implement solutions that will improve your return on investment, boost sales and address any other areas of opportunity.

Your doctor is a specialist in what they do, but is a generalist for your health. In the same way that you can’t go straight to see an ear nose and throat specialist when you have the sniffles, an integrated marketing agency can help ask the tough questions, analyze the data, and be your specialist who is a generalist, who can implement a treatment plan that gets at the root of the issues- the real root, not necessarily that root that you’ve identified.