Peerview Data Insights

What separates good marketers from bad marketers?

According to Salesforce’s 2016 State of Marketing report, "extensively using" these five data-driven tools and technologies are at the heart of their success:

• marketing analytics (aggregating and benchmarking internal and external performance data to help determine your marketing who, what, when, why and how)
• customer targeting and segmentation (using internal and external performance data to determine who gets what, when, why and how)
• marketing automation (using internal and external performance data to program what, when and how)
• agile marketing (test → measure → revise → repeat, with benchmarks differentiating "winners" from "losers")
• predictive intelligence (using internal and external performance data to estimate future actions or outcomes)

 How many do you use?

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PLEASE NOTE: the following is an excerpt from "20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know," which is now available as a free download here.

Performance Metric: CASH FLOW

Definition:  A MEASUREMENT OF THE AMOUNT OF MONEY A COMPANY HAS GENERATED OVER A SPECIFIC PERIOD OF TIME

Importance:  Cash flow shows how money moves into a company, how long it stays there, whether or not there is a sufficient amount of it to provide for day-to-day operations, and how it flows out of the company. The challenge is that even “profitable” companies can go broke because they had all their money tied up in assets and couldn’t pay their expenses. This means that no matter what a company is focused on — growth, profitability or value — it can’t survive without adequate cash flow, which is why they say “revenue is vanity, cash flow is sanity.”

PLEASE NOTE: the following is an excerpt from "20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know," which is now available as a free download here.

Performance Metric: LEVERAGE

Definition:  A MEASUREMENT OF HOW A COMPANY USES DEBT TO FURTHER ITS OPERATIONS

Importance:  Companies use debt to acquire assets in the hope that the income generated from those assets will be greater than the cost to service that debt over time. In most cases, the greater the debt the greater the risk because a company that is highly leveraged is more likely to go bankrupt than one that isn't. On the other hand, a company that has very low levels of debt may not taking advantage of the growth opportunities that additional leverage may offer. 

Nobody is an industry of one. Everybody competes for customers. You can't beat anyone if you're evaluating your performance in a vacuum

Nobody needs another report.

As one of our clients said, "I already get fat stacks of business performance data, what I don't have is enough time to go through them unless there's a problem."

Sound familiar?

Most of us are too busy running our business to ever really take a step back and analyze it.

The problem with running your business this way is this: it's a huge miss.

In study after study, Salesforce.com, Bain & Co., Constant Contact, Accenture and GE all found that companies that analyze their performance data do better:

• 2x more likely to have top-quartile performance
• 5x more likely to make faster decisions
• 8x more likely to report positive outcomes of any kind

So what's holding everyone else back?

PLEASE NOTE: the following is an excerpt from "20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know," which is now available as a free download here.

Performance Metric: LIQUIDITY

Definition:  A MEASUREMENT OF A COMPANY'S ABILITY TO SATISFY ITS SHORT-TERM OBLIGATIONS AS AND WHEN THEY FALL DUE

Importance:  From a practical standpoint, liquidity matters because a company that doesn't have enough money on hand to make payroll, cut checks to suppliers and keep its lights on can't stay in business very long. More importantly, because it's so critical to a company's on-going success, it also serves as an indirect measure of management's core competency — if a CEO or CFO can't adequately plan for the inevitable ups and downs, what else is he or she missing?

Nobody needs another report.

As one of our clients said, "I already get fat stacks of business performance data, what I don't have is enough time to go through them unless there's a problem."

Sound familiar?

Most of us are too busy running our business to ever really take a step back and analyze it.

The problem is this: that's a huge miss.

In study after study, Salesforce.com, Bain & Co., Constant Contact, Accenture and GE all found that companies that analyze their performance data do better:

• 2x more likely to have top-quartile performance
• 5x more likely to make faster decisions
• 8x more likely to report positive outcomes of any kind

So what's holding everyone else back?

PLEASE NOTE: the following is an excerpt from "20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know," which is now available as a free download here.

Performance Metric: PROFITABILITY

Definition:  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TOTAL REVENUE AND TOTAL EXPENSES

Importance:  Sometimes profit is meaningful, sometimes it isn't.

Insight:  Because it can be manipulated via the timing or choice of various accounting methods, it can say more about owner/management priorities and/or industry traditions than a company's ability to generate revenue while controlling costs. For this reason, analysts rely on common-sized, comparative ratios to put "profitability" in context so they can more accurately gauge how effectively or ineffectively a company is being operated.

Just a quick post to say we've updated our eBook “20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know.”

Even if you're not using our competitive analysis & benchmarking tool to cut costs or boost your growth rate, it’s a great, all-around playbook for improving finance, HR, sales & marketing and management.

PLEASE NOTE: the following is an excerpt from "20 Competitive Metrics Every Business Needs to Know," which is now available as a free download here.

Performance Metric: GROWTH

Definition:  A RELATIVE MEASUREMENT OF THE YEAR-OVER-YEAR CHANGE IN TOTAL COMPANY REVENUE

Importance:  Growth is a strong indicator of product/market fit, but because it can vary significantly by industry, by year or by company life stage, it should always be benchmarked competitively.

Underlying causes/influencing factors:  

• price
• product
• promotion (marketing)
• place
• process
• partners (vendors, distributors, suppliers, etc.)
• people (personnel)

Not to be alarmist, but there seem to be more and more articles lately like this one from The Wall Street Journal:

RISK GROWS OF MARKETS SPARKING RECESSION

Is the U.S. headed for recession? The markets suggest so.

With Thursday’s sell off, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now down 14.5% from its all-time high last May. Yields on risky bonds continue to climb, while investors have sought safety in U.S. Treasurys, sending those yields lower. And oil has hit a nearly 12½-year low.

Yet the economic data show no recession. Job growth in January was healthy, and employers are having trouble filling vacancies.

This dichotomy is neatly captured by two indexes compiled by Cornerstone Macro. One, using financial indicators such as the stock market and corporate bond yields, puts the probability the U.S. is now in recession at 50%. The other, which adds in macroeconomic data such as loan delinquencies and inflation-adjusted income, puts the probability at just 28%.

Of course markets often wrongly predict recessions. But in some circumstances they can help bring them about. Economic turning points are unpredictable because they are caused by changes in psychology, not just mechanical factors such as interest rates and wages and salaries. Markets influence that psychology by signaling to businesses whether they should invest or hire. Fear of recession can thus be self-fulfilling.

Since nobody knows if we're really headed for trouble or not, it's probably a good time to take a step back and make sure your company is firing on all cylinders just in case.

So... where to begin?