How do you optimize a business's marketing strategy? Is brand recognition a key indicator of success? Will a more appealing logo drive greater sales? How do you prioritize all the pieces and where do you begin?

For the novice marketing professional, social media and Web traffic analysis seem like the answer to everything. Consumers share honest feedback directly with the company, common trends can be seen clearly using Web analytics tools on an organization's website and the data can be aggregated in real time. Both methods are authentic and affordable, and represent a prime component of customer data analysis.

But they aren't the most telling forms of data for developing an entire marketing plan.

Finding More Reliable Data

While many businesses use social media and Web analytics to drive marketing strategies, this data isn't always the most quantifiable or reliable. Feedback from consumers via a social media site like Twitter can run the gamut. It's often fiercely opinionated and may not apply to the broader customer base. In the same way, Web traffic may reveal something about consumer interests or the effectiveness of a website, but it doesn't always provide solid sales data (save for companies with an e-commerce website, of course).

This is why many businesses are still more comfortable relying on transaction history and mass survey data to plan future product needs, pricing strategy and promotions. These are the two primary venues explored by Abdi Eshghi​, Ph.D., a professor in Bentley's masters of marketing analytics graduate program, in his Customer Data Analysis and Relationship Marketing course.

"For class projects, we use real transaction data from companies that are in the business of direct marketing," Eshgi said. "This course was developed to address the needs of the business community, who are searching for individuals with strong hands-on analytical skills who can hit the ground running on day one."

Quantitative Analysis with Real Insights

Transactional data and survey responses have numerous strengths compared to other more loosely structured sources of information. First, transaction history reflects an exact measurement of how consumers interact with a product or service. Data from a point of sale can be used to directly measure business health and how customers have behaved rather than how they feel, which is an important distinction when determining effectiveness of a particular strategy. This historical data isn't necessarily better — it's just different. The two are most insightful when used in conjunction. 

"They are similar in that they provide a rich source for gaining a better understanding of consumer behavior," Eshgi said. "A key difference, however, between transaction data on the one hand and Web/social media traffic on the other is that transaction data reflect a snapshot of what consumers have done whereas Web/social media traffic show the process consumers went through in order to reach a final purchase decision, which is captured by the transaction data."

In other words, social media may show how consumers think and feel, but the most important bit of info is how sales are influenced — which is shown by transaction history.

Controlling the Data Collection Process

Any professional in a STEM field will tell you the way data is collected is absolutely critical, but how do you analyze something amorphous like consumer opinions empirically?

That's where carefully designed surveys come into play. Marketing professionals use consumer surveys with both open- and closed-ended questions distributed en masse to glean information. Using this procedure, companies can seek feedback for very specific questions, turn these answers into reliable statistics and use those statistics to influence business decisions. But garnering this data isn't always easy. It often requires a mastery of particular software packages. That's why Eshgi requires students to learn the tools first.

"We use the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences [SPSS] for hands-on assignments and class projects," Eshgi said. "SPSS is one the main statistical packages used in the workplace today."

Improving Business Outcomes

The data collected from transaction history and survey distribution can be used in a great deal of contexts for large and small businesses. For example, it can be used to help telecommunications companies from losing customers.

"Cellular service providers in the telecommunication industry have a vested interest in predicting customers that are more likely to switch to a competing service provider when their contract expires," Eshgi said. "With this knowledge, they can intervene (i.e., sweeten the deal) and prevent consumers from switching."

While the marketing industry is undergoing huge changes, there will always be value in tried and true data collection methods. Truly successful marketing strategies put all the puzzle pieces — social media presence, survey feedback, finances and web trends — together.