If you believe that data isn’t at the heart of any organisation, well, where have you been the last decade! Businesses that leverage data intelligently tend to do better business.

Businesses these days can’t function without data and there is no shortage of data either, the challenge is to deal with it intelligently. It is all about knowing which data you already collect which data you require and how to combine different data sets to drive sales and profits.

Using data analytics, businesses can monitor customer activities and tie them to specific sales and marketing efforts. Many brands are currently using analytics to power their sales and marketing work, thus, businesses that fail to embrace this technology may find they’re losing market share to the competition.

Marketers need to understand the data and what is relevant, understand customer behaviours and insights from previous interactions. By understanding this, they can effectively plan and plot customer journeys. When understanding the customers, businesses can offer them personalised offerings based on their needs, this will lead to customer loyalty as well as an increase in sales and ultimately profits. We all know it is more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, therefore, it would make sense to speak to the existing customers and give them what they want.

In an E-consultancy article, they mentioned that only 0.5% of data available is used, as the amount and complexity of data intimidate companies. Understanding the data information can be overwhelming, but once you understand it and integrate it into your decision-making process, you’ll quickly realise the new sales opportunities that are now at your disposal.

According to Forbes there are different ways data is revolutionising sales and marketing, here are 3:

1. ‘Data is revolutionising how companies attain greater customer responsiveness and gain greater customer insights.

A Forrester study found that 44% of B2C marketers are using big data and analytics to improve responsiveness to 36% are actively using analytics and data mining to gain greater insights to plan more relationship-driven strategies. Source: Marketing’s Big Leap Forward Overcome The Urgent Challenge To Improve Customer Experience And Marketing Performance

2. Forrester found that big data analytics increases marketers’ ability to get beyond campaign execution and focus on how to make customer relationships more successful.By using big data analytics to define and guide customer development, marketers increase the potential of creating greater customer loyalty and improving customer lifetime. The following graphic is from the SAS-sponsored Forrester study How Analytics Drives Customer Life-Cycle Management Vision: The Customer Analytics Playbook (PDF).

3. Customer Value Analytics (CVA) based on Big Data is making it possible for leading marketers to deliver consistent omnichannel customer experiences across all channels. CVA is emerging as a viable series of Big Data-based technologies that accelerate sales cycles while retaining and scaling the personalized nature of customer relationships. The bottom line is that CVA is now a viable series of technologies for orchestrating excellent omnichannel customer experiences across a selling network. Source: CapGemini Presentation, From Customer Insights to Action Ruurd Dam, November 2015.

All businesses use data to create strategies, make important decisions and set goals for their business. If the data captured is relevant, accurate and usable it could be of great value to any business and will lead to better decision making, increased sales / profits and lead to a competitive advantage.

The data is there, companies just need to learn how to maximise it and drive revenue from it.

References:

Columbus, L. 2016. Ten Ways Big Data is Revolutionizing Marketing and Sales. Online URL:http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/05/09/ten-ways-big-data-is-revolutionizing-marketing-and-sales/2/#31a3f8db19fd

Haase, S. 2016. Five ways to utilize your data to increase sales. Online URL: https://econsultancy.com/blog/68231-five-ways-to-utilize-your-data-to-increase-sales/

McGuire, T. et al. 2012. Why Big Data is the new competitive advantage. Online URL: http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/why-big-data-is-the-new-competitive-advantage/