What do you do if you want to outsmart your market competitors using analytical skills?

The key to outsmarting competitors lies in setting clear goals and metrics. Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, while metrics indicate your progress. For instance, if you aim to boost sales by 10% in the next quarter, track metrics like leads, conversions, and revenue.

These goals need to be value-based for the business or the client if you are a marketing agency. For example, does the business need a certain ROI in a certain time period? It is common that bootstrapping SaaS companies it is common that they need to cover their CAC (customer acquisition costs) in 3 months. And assuming their customers stay they use the cash flow that generates to bootstrap. However, a similar SaaS that has millions in VC funding has no such constraining goals. They just want growth at any cost... simplified speaking.

After defining your goals and metrics, the next step is to gather and analyze relevant data. This data can come from multiple sources like internal records, customer feedback, market research, and industry reports. Use analytical skills to sift through and interpret the data, uncovering patterns and insights. For instance, analyze customer demographics, preferences, and buying behavior to identify target audiences and pain points.

Data is everywhere... assuming you set up to properly measure your performance goals. Many mess this up for sure. The real trick is connecting data and conversions. And cost should be part of that data to do a proper value-based analysis.

After analyzing your data, the next step is to benchmark and compare your performance with competitors. Benchmarking measures your performance against standards or best practices, while comparing identifies similarities and differences in data. Use analytical skills to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and competitive advantages. For instance, assess market share, customer satisfaction, product quality, and pricing strategy through benchmarking and comparison.

As I stated in #1, business goals matter. Comparing campaigns is more than just generating leads or creating customers. Campaign A may have a CAC of $100, but an overall ROI of 900%. While Campaign B may have a CAC of $50 and an overall ROI of 600%. Business-wise, we have to add timeframes, audience sizes, and lifetime value.

After analyzing your data and benchmarking against competitors, it's time to implement and test your strategies. Implementation involves putting plans into action, while testing measures results and outcomes. Use analytical skills to monitor progress, feedback, and impact. For example, implement and test new products, marketing campaigns, or customer loyalty programs.

Your results from #2 and #3 would allow you to make the best marketing business decisions. Where to focus your efforts and money. And usually, clear data to improve is there along this journey.

Following testing and feedback, the next step is learning and improving your strategies. Learning involves acquiring new knowledge and skills, while improving entails making changes to enhance performance. Use analytical skills to identify what works, what needs improvement, and new opportunities. For example, optimize website, customer service, or product features through learning and improvement.

To stay ahead of competitors, continually repeat and innovate your analytical process. Repeating involves applying the same process to new data and goals, while innovating means creating new or improved solutions based on analysis. Constantly update skills and solutions using analytical skills. For instance, explore new markets, niches, or technologies through repeating and innovating.

Value-based reporting and analytics require considering the costs and the value generated (usually revenue). From there, we can understand the ROI of marketing channels and campaigns. If you try to do this without money considerations, you are optimizing for marketing, not business needs. When we do business first, we can then optimize for marketing metrics.