Industry voice: Analytics 2.0: the coming wave of next generation analytics

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Analytics are a pivotal issue in contemporary business. As the total number of data channels increase, understanding what the data means, how the data interrelates and how it corresponds with customer behavior can mean the difference between sales stagnation and sales increases.

Many businesses, however, remain locked into the world of analytics 1.0 and surface level data, such as in-app behavior. Even worse, some businesses are still concerned primarily with offline analytics related to TV spots, radio and print ads. Analytics 2.0 offers a path to a more meaningful, actionable understanding of business data.

 

Both offline and analytics 1.0 focus on single stream analysis. In other words, the measurements focus on the supposed customer response to a lone marketing touch-point. The analysis then tries to assert a return on investment from that single channel.

What can analytics 2.0 do?

Analytics 2.0 does away with single-stream analysis and embraces the multi-channel world that customers actually inhabit. Customers may see the TV spot, but they also see comments on social media, interact with inbound marketing, see search marketing ads, receive direct mail and participate in creating trending topics.

 

Analytics 2.0 aims to take these disparate streams of information and turn them into something useful. By gathering together information ranging from social sentiment to geo-location, weather and demographic factors, analytics 2.0 can provide insight into performance and even shed light onto historical patterns. For example, the annual sale a business runs may show persistently declining performance compared with expectations.

 

The issue may not be related to the sale or products on sale, but rather be the result of a nearby social event, such as a music festival, that has gained traction over the last few years with the business's core demographic. Analytics 1.0 wouldn't expose this relationship, but analytics 2.0 does make those kinds of connections.

How does it help interactions with customers?

Of course, analytics 2.0 isn't just about understanding what customers are doing or how they're responding to your marketing. It's also about taking that information and reaching out to customers proactively.

For example, maybe you've been focusing a lot of attention on Facebook, but where you're really getting traction is in a LinkedIn group. If there is a positive discussion going on there about your product or service, it gives you a golden opportunity to interact with a warm market. If you're seeing a spike in hits on a YouTube video, that can be a clear call to share the video via Twitter.

 

Just as importantly, if you're working with a marketing firm that specializes in analytics 2.0, these interactions don't need to be handled manually. Effective use of analytics 2.0 capitalizes on current customer behavior with automated responses that happen in real time, not after the fact, when the information may no longer be relevant.

 

Analytics 2.0 represents the wave of the future. It doesn't create silos of information, but rather correlates information to give your business deep insight into customer behaviors as it happens. By taking advantage of automation, your business can respond to that behavior in a timely fashion that encourages interaction, generates buzz and drives sales.

• Lee Jacobson is CEO of Apmetrix

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