Three Practices to Keep in Mind when Analyzing Marketing and Sales Intelligence Data
By Harriet Durnford-Smith, VP of Marketing, Adverity
Agility is paramount for businesses to flourish, with 57% of Fortune 500 companies being born in the face of economic and technological disruption. The unprecedented levels of change in 2020 have shifted corporate perspectives, altered consumer behaviors, and reinvented the way customers interact with brands. To keep up with these ongoing developments, business leaders must pivot their strategies and innovate their operational processes(Marketing and Sales).
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The sharp increase in digital transformation initiatives is carving out new pathways for success, but businesses need to ensure their changes align with market trends. By taking a proactive stance, decision makers can utilize their current resources to navigate these changes. Businesses possess a wealth of data that, with the right management and preparation tools, can lead to augmented analytics and valuable, real-time market insights. This insight-driven approach is key to unlocking true agility, so how can forward-thinking businesses deploy effective change to meet consumer demand?
1. Understand the power of purpose
Consumers are four to six times more likely to purchase from brands that reflect a strong purpose – and one of the best methods to convey this is through powerful messaging. Iconic brands such as Lego achieved this in 2020 by addressing the new reality of home-bound parents and children. As part of their inclusive content strategy, Lego provided educational resources through their website and repositioned its products as relevant, meaningful, and engaging. Businesses that deploy purpose-led content will stay ahead of the curve, but to be successful, they need an insight-driven understanding of current market sentiment.
Augmented analytics facilitates this by allowing businesses to identify consumer trends as they emerge and rapidly implement responses. Even sudden, unpredicted changes in the market can be proactively analyzed, giving decision makers a view on potential impact to the business. By then applying these insights to their messaging, companies can deliver informed adaptations to branding efforts. Embedding value in external communications not only consolidates business purpose, but also leads to demonstrable results, as can be seen through Lego’s record sales this year.
2. Onboard digital-first experiences
Social distancing limitations have made digital channels more than an important inclusion in business strategies; for many, they are now a lifeline. Digital technologies and marketing platforms offer companies a flexible, innovative way to continue providing products and services, as well as generate demand for them. Time spent on smartphones and the use of digital video, for instance, has significantly increased in light of lockdown. Moreover, forecasts predict this level of use will be maintained even after 2020, opening new opportunities for engagement.
With a vast array of digital channels to invest in, business leaders need insight into how each is performing. Augmented analytics offers a real-time view of under and over-performing channels, enabling marketing and sales teams to continuously optimize targeting strategies and justify spend with tangible outcomes. Budget allocation will be a high priority moving into 2021, as 43% of decision makers are citing the need to streamline budgeting processes. Rolling forecasts are an essential technique for allocating spend, meaning companies will require sophisticated analytics to build effective digital strategies and maintain growth.
3. Realize the value of customer connection
Following the influx of digital engagement, companies are developing new ways to stay in touch with their customer bases. Physical trade shows have been transformed into virtual events, face-to-face video conferencing has supplemented customer calls, and a more human approach has become a mainstay for building business relationships. All of these pivots open new customer or client touchpoints that can feed into augmented analytics.
Through continually tracking segments and digital metrics, businesses can pull out patterns and trends as they happen, so all viable connection opportunities can be optimized and pursued. Additionally, augmented analytics identifies anomalies and issues before they become a problem for business. These insights can then be leveraged to support wider marketing and sales strategies across the company. For example, businesses that deploy webinars to elevate awareness of a product or service can analyze viewer questions to identify pain points. Turning qualitative responses into valuable insights can inform the storytelling process of a webinar, or be used to enhance creative assets that support sales and marketing teams. By feeding augmented analysis into various business functions, companies can continuously advance their customer engagement processes.
The current market climate is primed for innovation, as businesses continue to adapt to a new way of working. With a proactive, agile approach, companies can achieve great success and evolve to be relevant, digitally savvy leaders in their respective industry. Augmented analysis, fuelled by AI-driven data management and preparation, will keep companies at the forefront of this evolution. Embracing advanced technologies allows companies to adapt, quickly and smoothly, for the present, as well as future-proof business strategies for whatever lies ahead.
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