Crime Mapping your customers
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If you have ever watched CSI or Criminal Minds you will have seen investigators studying maps covered in dots and tags. The investigators are looking at these maps making assumptions and solving crimes. This is called GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology and it is fundamental in crime analysis.
What does this have to do with marketing and growing your business? Everything. You can use the same methods to develop an understanding of your customers that will save you money and generate business in ways you never thought possible.
What do you need to get started?
The minimum you need is a PC with an internet connection and a list of customer addresses. It is important at this time to explain some terms used in analysis.
Data.
Data is raw information. Normally collected as a consequence of the day to day operation of your business.
Information.
Information is data collated in a specific way for a specific task. Such as grouped or counted (e.g. All sales in January).
The reason I make this distinction is that when I talk about data I will be using this definition and not the I T world version of data.
For example you have all your invoices in MYOB and this contains address data. Exporting this into a spreadsheet so you can sort, count and group turns it into “information”. Using information you can say we have five customers in the south side of town.
Getting started.
1) You will need to make a spreadsheet with the following columns.
Address (Street Number and Street Name)
City (or Suburb)
State
Zip Code (Post code for Countries that don’t use the term ZIP)
The following are optional columns:
Name
Phone Number
Group (This is a great benefit and you should work on developing some groups, I’ll discuss this in detail later in the blog)
URL
Email
2) Once you have populated this spreadsheet with your data. Select all your data and “Copy” it.
3) Go to BatchGeo (www.batchgeo.com) and “Paste” your spreadsheet into the text box on the website. See below.
4) Click on the “MAP NOW” button and BatchGeo will generate a map of the locations you specified in your spreadsheet.
So you now have your map. As you can see it is completely interactive and has many features such as zoom in. Next we look into some analysis.
Analysis.
Analysis should be done at all stages of this process. The first analysis you can carry out is on the data you collect from your systems. Look at your data and see what information can be extracted from your data. Let’s look at a basic invoice for example.
* We have address data which is the minimum we need for GIS analysis.
*We have the date of the purchase
*We have the value of the purchase
*We have the items being purchased.
This allows us to develop three groups (you could develop more groups by breaking these groups into smaller groups – subgroups)
*Address + Date (this could be broken into subgroups January, February…)
*Address + Value (this could be broken into subgroups of <$500, $500 – $1000, $1001+)
*Address + Items (this could be broken into sub groups such as whitegoods, TVs, computer equipment).
So your spreadsheet would now contain the address columns and a “Group” column with each line having a group name in it.
Now when you generate your map using the technique we discussed earlier you can see that BatchGeo has given each group a separate colour, patterns will being to form in your information.
*Are all your high value invoices in one geographic area?
*Do you sell a particular item in a particular area?
*Is a particular area generating more sales during a particular month?
Even knowing this simple information will reduce advertising waste. Why advertise expensive items in an area that has never purchased those types of items. You can also target your advertising in a month in the area that has the best chance of responding.
Having this in place also lets you put marketing plans together which are targeted and based in fact not assumption. Do some geographic focused marketing and see if sales increase in that area. You can accurately measure the success of a marketing tactic. You could get as granular as just a thousand houses. See if any sales come out of those houses.
Normally that sort of marketing needs to be in the tens of thousands to have any impact (See blogs Direct Marketing – Martin Marszal or When 99% Failure is ok.).
Play with this tool. You will not know the real value or what you can achieve until you use it. Do it once and I guarantee you will see amazing things. Things you never expected to see, like all your customers would use the same road to get to you. Or they all live near a particular sporting venue – sponsorship opportunity.
Having access to this information is like using a laser to hit your target rather than just throwing things around till you hit something. In the law enforcement world they refer to this type of analysis as Intelligence Led Policing, you can start using Intelligence Led Marketing.
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Related posts:
- Why staying in contact with customers works
- Why People Buy
- How big does your point of difference have to be?
- Good customer service should be the default
- Direct Mail – when a 99% fail is fine
