Harnessing Marketing Information: Metro Market

Once your newspaper has recognized the importance of market intelligence, what can you do to harness the information and put it to work for you? The key to having easily accessible information, both to present to advertisers and to use internally, is to have the proper plan and methods for data gathering. Darrell Kunken of The Sacramento Bee shared his company's success story.

The Goal:Not all data will become useful information. First recognize the purpose of your database. The Bee wanted to use theirs to:

• Understand the consumer audience before selling them products


• Create a feedback loop with the customer


• Target the products to certain audience segments


• Establish measurable metrics

The Plan:
Next, establish a cohesive plan that includes a collection process, personnel alignments, and evaluations. Kunken stresses the importance of making the process cyclical. Getting up to date marketing data should not be a once-time investment, but a continuous process. Here are the key elements of The Bee's plan:

• Dedicate staff to collect and mine data


• Audit existing infrastructure
  Examine your current data to see what you already have available.


• Develop a data extraction plan
  Kunken's plan included specific steps for data integration, analysis, execution, and most importantly, tracking the results.

  Step 1: Integration
  Existing data from databases such as print subscriptions, advertising customers, and direct mail lists are standardized. Next, these data are integrated through an external vendor, such as AsTECH.
  Step 2: Analysis
  Once data is set, it's possible to analyze in a variety of ways. The Bee employed Claritas' PRIZM segmentation tool to create lifecycle groupings in order to examine consumer behavior by age and income.
  Step 3: Execution
  The newspaper can match its consumer data against an advertiser's customer file. To increase the possibility of an advertiser agreeing to share data, Kunken suggests giving the advertiser an estimated ROI if they do. Offer to give the advertiser quarterly updates. After making a sale, make sure to follow up on results and make changes to the plan if necessary.
  Step 4: Tracking
  Whether or not an advertising sales is made from the data, go back and evaluate the process. Also keep databases updated.

The Collection Process:
After making a plan, data collection is the next step. The Sacramento Bee looked at the following sources:

• Market-wide list of USPS deliverable addresses
  
• Bee product customers
  The paper looked at data from print subscribers, online registered users, and recipients of its Spanish-language product, Vida. It also standardized data on classifieds advertisers and letters-to-the-editor writers.


• Demographic data
  The Bee purchased household-level data on characteristics like the age of the head of the household, number of children, income, and recreational interests such as golf, travel, sailing, etc.


• Advertiser customer file
  The Bee identified advertisers who were driving the newspaper's business and tried to identify similar types of businesses.

Kunken offered three case studies of successful deployment of market data:

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