The Value of Customer Insight to Marketers

Customer insight is rapidly becoming a vital component in any business strategy; after all, who can afford not to know who their customers are, how they behave and how their loyalty can be assured? Put simply customer insight employs the collection, analysis and use of data, allowing businesses to create customer acquisition, development and retention strategies.
Customer insight can play a massively important role in planning and implementing marketing campaigns, helping marketers to extract the greatest revenue from limited marketing budgets. It does this by creating best match profiles for potential, loyal and the most profitable customers.
Fundamentally greater customer insights allows for more effective targeting. It has been a long known fact within marketing that a campaign can stand or fall on its ability to target the right type of people. A misguided campaign can be a costly mistake; conversely a well targeted campaign can court potential customers, produce profitable relationships and develop future prospects.
Understanding where targets should be focussed is only possible through in-depth analysis of data. Data is one of the most powerful tools at the marketer’s disposal and an integral element within modern customer insight services. In most cases, this data is easily accessible and gives the opportunity to identify profitable prospects, rather than pursuing customers that will provide little if any return on investment.
Existing customer data creates massive up and cross-selling opportunities. The profiles created using segmentation and modelling help to identify precisely which customers should be targeted through a greater understanding of their purchasing behaviour, the types of products they are likely to buy and an idea of their likely spend.
Understanding the behaviour of customers means marketers have the knowledge to implement campaigns that target these profiles in a very specific way, taking into account when and how they spend their money in order to extract the greatest revenue. It is this potential that attracts so many marketers to customer insight services; understandably, having the knowledge of how your customers spend their money is an extremely valuable asset in business.