ESPN baseball writer Jayson Stark has an entertaining and informational column this week about how the iPad has taken over baseball. Not just the device itself, but the information that it can display and the way that information is used.
Instead of relying on scouting notes, which are inherently subjective and qualitative, managers, coaches and players can look at opponents’ statistical tendencies – and video clips that back up the stats. Citing the Rays‘ Joe Maddon, Stark calls this the “second great renaissance” in baseball, the first being Branch Rickey‘s pioneering use of statistics from the 1920s on.
Marc Falardeau via Creative Commons
The theme of Stark’s column, obviously, is that knowledge is power. Many smaller businesses operate like the baseball teams of twenty years ago, knowing intuitively that more data would help them perform better but believing that experience and intuition can fill the gap. But like baseball teams that are slow to embrace statistics and technology, the difference in achievement is there for all to see.
Savvy marketers, of every size, know that there is no substitute for data. Judgment is important, and no business – or ball club – should be run by robots, but merchants need to have the most in-depth understanding possible of who their customers are, what they are doing, and what they want. Some if this information is difficult to obtain, but some is there for the taking.
For example, Zavee lets merchants see every purchase by a Zavee shopper, observe trends, and even determine which Zavee offers are working better than others. This is the kind of information that lets merchants segment their customers and market separately to each segment. It lets merchants test and evaluate marketing plans. And it helps merchants determine the return on their marketing investment. It even works on an iPad.
The Zavee takeaway:
- The only businesses too small to use data are the ones that want to stay small.
- Some information is difficult or expensive to find, so obtain what you can afford and use it creatively (Hint: Zavee can help).
- Do what baseball does and decentralize information – let colleagues help collect, analyze and use information to grow the business.
