Forrester says that pricing models should be based on the 5 C’s, which include customers, competition, commercialization, costs and communication. For the sake of brevity, however, I would like to focus on the importance of the first two C’s–customers and competition–and how these areas can be better leveraged with the help of marketing intelligence + business analytics.

1. Customers

You have undoubtedly heard about brands that have tried to increase their prices and been met with extreme backlash from their customers (think Netflix when they tried to charge double for separate services). What the customer thinks is important to the success of your business, especially in the age of social media when your brand’s message can be accepted, denied or acted against quite quickly. The power lies with the customer, so it is important that they are happiest.

So how might you assess what your customers want from your company? With the power of social research, it’s easy. You can find out what your customers are saying about the spirits industry, including your brand and your competitions’ brands. How do they assess the value of their alcohol? What outside forces impact their decision-making to buy your product or service? What variables can you control in order to help the customer convert? What assets or added value can you provide that will help you sell to your target audience? Finding out what is most important to them through social research can help provide you with actionable insights that you can use to positively impact your business.

2. Competition

Competitive research is the cornerstone of a great digital marketing strategy. It’s not about looking at their pricing models once. It’s about continuously monitoring your product value and pricing to be competitive in your industry. You now know, thanks to social intelligence, what your customers want. How can you use this information to upstage the competition? Perhaps you find out that most customers search for your products on search engines (which is true for most businesses).

When you do competitive research, you realize that your competitors are bidding on high-funnel keywords like “champagne.” You see an opportunity to marry mobile and search with a hyper local strategy to show people where to buy your champagne in their specific markets.  Perhaps your customers want the option of being able to buy their spirits online. How can you enhance their user experience? Shipping discounts? 1-click purchasing? Specials, promotions and limited edition bottles? All of these ideas can be generated from a little investigative research into the competition.

By marrying historical data and industry trend analysis, you can create a predictive model for the spirits industry. You can leverage this information to optimize your pricing on various spirits throughout the year. For example, everyone knows New Years is a huge time for champagne. But how can you capitalize on other times of the year when champagne might be popular, like wedding season for example? Predictive analytics can show you where the opportunities for improvement lie and allow you to make pricing and inventory decisions based on data.

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Will the fans’ social hype over players and teams reveal the true Draft order? Or will the professionals prevail? Find out with this great infographic from Levelwing.

As the Harvard Business Review puts it, “Apart from the fact that those between the ages of 50 and 65 spend twice the amount of money on healthcare than the 18 to 25 year-old set and three times as much money on housing, 50 to 65 year-olds also spend an amazing 78% more money on shopping.” 78% more money. That’s quite a bit that your business could be missing out on.

Here are three ways to find out if you could benefit from a demographic targeting shift in your digital marketing initiatives:

1. Social research gives you the unique opportunity to listen to unsolicited conversation by your audience of followers and sharers. Profiling the people who are talking most about your brand is important, but it’s also important to explore who is actually purchasing and not just sharing. Who is your most valuable audience? It’s probably smart to strike a balance between influencer and converter. If someone talks positively about your brand, that’s great, but if they are purchasing and then sharing, that’s the most powerful. Think about bloggers who do not fit the “mommy blogging” archetype (30-something women with one or two small children), but are of the Boomer generation.

2. Data mining should already be a part of your marketing mix. Perhaps it just needs to be redirected to examine the basics. Using your website data capture enables you to find the demographics of the people who are converting on your website. By mining this data and searching for trends, you can optimize your site to appeal to your most lucrative consumer group.

3. User experience testing can be a great route to optimization. User experience testing essentially does exactly what it says–tests user experience. Different audiences can be segmented in order to test who best interacts with your site and what actions they are most likely to complete. If your target audience is confused by your navigation or does not understand your messaging, it could cause drop off. The best way to optimize your conversion funnel is to conduct tests. Segmenting demographics in these tests could also help you ascertain if you are marketing to your most lucrative audience.

Whether you use these methods or others, it’s important to remember that your most valuable demographics online can change. It is a best practice to constantly test and refine your digital marketing efforts to be sure that you are meeting or exceeding your business goals and improving business intelligence.

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How many levels are you away from predictive analytics? This solution is a great way to marry current + historical data to predict future business trends, which can in turn help you optimize your business in virtually every facet, improving your bottom line. To get more information about improving your business analytics, check out Levelwing’s Technology page.

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1. Analytics Implementation: As I mentioned before, many decision-makers realize that this is an imperative part of their digital media strategy. Deciding on your analytics tools, from free Google Analytics to a more in-depth solution like Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite, is the first step. Choosing a tool based on your needs and team’s ability are among factors to take into consideration as well.

2. Aggregating Intelligence: So you’ve begun tracking and analyzing initiatives, but now what? Remember, all this data is only as good as the person interpreting it and gleaning actionable insights from it. Therefore, it’s important to have a dedicated team to look at trends and create plans for how to best capitalize on these trends. Whether it is changing digital media planning and buying, marketing messaging, or more business-related needs such as switching up inventory, it is imperative that you have the right people asking the right questions of the data in order to interpret how it can be utilized best.

3. Offline + Online Matching: This is a more in-depth process than most people are used to. This process entails several complex steps of data matching, which requires getting information from marketing initiatives, website transfers and user behavior, as well as offline purchases. For example, if your brick-and-mortar store runs a paid search ad about your winter sale on shoes, you want to be able to tell how many people saw this ad and purchased not only online, but in your store, because of it. It can be done, but it rarely is. Database development can help lighten the human power it takes to harness these sources of disjointed data and retrieve the right answers.

4. Predictive Modeling: This is by far the most in-depth analytics level, but probably the most beneficial to any business. Essentially, predictive modeling allows businesses to overlay historical data, current trends and external variables to create a process that enables businesses to make data-driven decisions about their marketing, sales, research and development, etc. This form of advanced analysis can impact business across the board, giving companies the ability to manipulate variables to choose the most profitable outcome.

No matter what your level of analytics implementation is now, there is always room for improvement. Whether it is your strategy, intelligence or technology itself, analytics is more than just tracking code and conversion numbers. At the heart of analytics lies the foundation of your business intelligence. The more you have, the more you know.

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