What is BI strategy?
Business Intelligence(BI) is all about getting the right information to the right decision-makers at the right time. Data is usually being generated when a company performs its day-to-day operation. This raw data needs to be analyzed so that the management can come up with strategies for the future. Companies will be able to understand more about their customers, their habits and attitudes, to pinpoint customer’s preferences, to help them execute targeted campaigns that would generate the best results for the business.
With Business Intelligence, marketers can achieve targeted demographics and audience profiling, more optimized marketing campaigns, and speedier reporting process, and quality insights. It leads to fact-based decision making in business rather than intuition.
Is BI software or a process?
The term BI is mainly used for an approach that could be a technological approach or business approach. BI software can predict the future based on the trends that occurred in the past. KPI’s can also be tracked from time-to-time in business performance management processing. But BI does not just point only to the software you are using but more of the overall approach. Whether you are using technology or processes, anything you are doing to convert raw data into meaningful information is BI.
What is the Role of BI in Marketing?
Why should a marketing team have a BI Strategy? A survey conducted by MiQ amongst marketers on the US and UK found that 43% of marketers cite the cost of advanced data science as the biggest challenge to investing in it. This statistic shows that there is a general lack of understanding of how BI can drive marketing results. Three ways BI is aiding marketing are in Marketing Analytics, Web Analytics, and Prediction Analysis.
Marketing Analytics:
Marketing Analytics is a combination of technology and processes that help marketers in evaluating the success of their marketing initiatives. It helps them assess the performance of marketing initiatives like blogging, channel communications, social media, etc. It uses critical business metrics like marketing attribution, ROI, and others and gives a clear report of how your marketing initiatives are performing.
Web Analytics
With so much information available online, customers have become tech-savvy and more socially informed than ever before. With the number of customers increasing each day, solutions that provide all the user data at one place has become very challenging. This is where web analytics plays a vital role. It gives insights using various forms of data that a customer leaves on your website, to help in increasing leads.
Predictive Analytics
Predictive Analytics and other big data tools have changed the way different organizations analyze and harness data. Predictive analytics uncover data that reveal future trends. It finds patterns in the vast amount of data. The information provided by predictive analytics help businesses in creating better marketing campaigns by forecasting trends. It helps in analyzing the past behavior of the customers to draft the best message for them. With the rise of AI and predictive analytics, the art of marketing has just got better.
Most brands, businesses, entrepreneurs, and owners alike understand how important it is to have a web presence for their company. However, they fail to understand the importance of capturing, analyzing, conceptualizing, and then closing on the traffic they receive.
How can you use BI in marketing effectively for actionable insights?
Analyzing customer behaviors, buying patterns and sales trends
Measuring, tracking and predicting sales and financial performance
Budgeting and financial planning and forecasting
Tracking the performance of marketing campaigns
Optimizing processes and operational performance
Improving delivery and supply chain effectiveness
Web and e-commerce data analytics
Customer relationship management
Risk analysis
Strategic value driver analysis
How it improves overall Sales and Marketing efforts
Without the use of the right tools and right techniques, it will always be difficult for sales managers to predict which sales technique can be used to convert the lead or closing the deal quickly. Sales can’t happen on predictions, and it occurs through research & proper presentation. Sales can make use of BI & make modifications in their approach to prepare the sales pitch to be more specific & personalized. They help you determine which campaign elements generated the most revenue last quarter. They also help you understand how customers are engaging with your company and the channel they prefer the most to engage with your company.
With regards to the impact of BI being embedded into sales and marketing efforts, here are the benefits to the business:
Analyze consumer buying patterns to develop products or services that match current consumption trends.
Provide visibility into which products are selling the most in the market or identifying areas of improvement for low-selling products.
Use meaningful data to manage your sales/marketing processes and identify potential selling opportunities.
Improves overall organizational efficiency through shared information that can improve productivity and save time.
Increase sales performance and conversions by analyzing customer interaction data with your business through the Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) tool.
Acquire competitive intelligence through marketing insights used by your competitors and plan future actions.
Business intelligence software tools like #DundasBI are not limited to be used by data analytics experts but by any non-technical business user. It also provides real-time business intelligence through predictive analytics and machine learning.
Conclusion
Business Intelligence for Marketing help businesses adapts to customer needs, be it through increased availability of merchandise or improved sales representative; BI provides valuable insights to encourage fact-based decision-making.
Currently, there is overwhelming pressure for industry players to implement strategies like storytelling, data discovery, data quality management, and collaborative BI. On the other hand, emerging technologies such as AI and NLP, are playing a significant role in driving the industry forward. Most importantly, data governance and security have become critical to business intelligence.
The BI landscape is rapidly shifting. As a result, to remain relevant and competitive, businesses must implement robust business intelligence tools and keep close tabs with these trends. But more importantly, you should have the right business intelligence analytics skills to make the most out of your marketing journey.