Business analytics and big data can help you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers. The more you know about your customers, the more chance you have of improving customer experience and increasing the profits and sales in your business.
Applying business analytics in marketing can help you to target your customers’ needs and focus on what is best for the consumer. It will also allow you to look at the way you market your products and services and find out when the right time is to market them. Keep reading below to find out more about business analytics and how it can improve the way you market your products and services:
What is Business Analytics?
Business analytics refers to the technologies, skills, and practices for continuous investigation and exploration of past business performance. The data you collect can give you a better insight into what’s working well and it can also help improve business planning. Business analytics looks at developing an understanding and providing an insight into business performance based on statistics and data.
Business analytics uses numerical analysis to help a business make decisions. Business analytics are closely linked to management science. It can be used to:
- Drive fully automated systems
- As an input for human decisions
Business analytics involve taking a data-driven approach to business in order to develop new business insights. In order to do this, we need to use:
- Statistics
- Data modelling
Why is Business Analytics Becoming So Popular?
Analytics were first introduced in the late 19th century by Frederick Winslow. Soon after, Henry Ford (the car manufacturer) used it to measure how long it took to build each car component within his factory.
Since then, business analytics has developed considerably. The increase in computing power has enabled even more advanced analysis of data to take place. The introduction of computers has brought a whole new world of endless possibilities. With how far analytics has come and the way business analytics are used today, more people might not believe that analytics only started in the 1900s.
Business analytics are now used in most large businesses around the world. Many start-ups are also starting to use the data collected to give them an advantage in the competitive market.
There has been a huge increase in business analytics in the technology industry, and more business schools have started offering courses to help meet this demand. These courses are perfect for small and large businesses alike, as they can help identify trends, customer opinions, problems within your business, and they can help you to become more effective and efficient. Click here to find out how you could earn your Masters in Business Analytics online.
Understanding Your Customers Better
Marketing is all about reaching the right customer at the perfect time. Evidence has suggested that marketers who understand their customers and know their needs are more likely to be successful. Understanding how big data is collected and how it works will allow you to predict potential purchases, better understand your customers, and analyse their behaviour.
Business analytics can help you to gain an insight into who is interested in your product or service in real-time. This allows you to target your marketing efforts and personalise them depending on each individual’s needs and wants.
Many companies use marketing automation software to:
- Link digital behaviour to the CRM (customer relationship management) strategies.
- Track certain topics such as what a customer is interested in.
- Produce personalised content based on the customers’ interests.
Marketers who connect human experience with data can create buyer personas, which in turn help to produce more informed and better digital strategies. They also help to produce marketing campaigns that are tailored to a customer’s needs.
A persona is:
- A composite representation of a human customer
- Built to understand customers’ needs, goals, wants and pain points
- Often used by content marketers to produce and deliver content that suits the needs of the audience. It will look at factors such as average income, demographics and purchase motivators.
Big Data is Big Money
Business analytics or big data also allows skilled marketers to work out how much money they are spending and how they can make the most out of the money they are spending. This enables them to use their marketing budget more effectively and efficiently.
A survey was completed between 2006 and 2014. This survey:
- Was completed by McKinsey & Company who are a global management consulting firm.
- Looked into over 400 diverse client engagements.
- Was completed over a variety of different regions and industries.
- Found that between 15-20% of all businesses’ marketing budgets could be spent in other areas. The majority of businesses were not marketing their business in an effective and efficient way, and many weren’t using the data they’d collected to see how they could improve.
- Found that over £200 billion could be spent in other areas of the business.
After this survey had been completed, an insurance company contacted them to say:
- That they had followed their advice and used the big data to increase their marketing productivity.
- This productivity increased by more than 15% between 2009 and 2012.
- They were able to improve the way they made business decisions.
- They were able to reduce the amount of money they were spending on marketing to an efficient level, even though other businesses in the same industry were increasing their spending by up to 62%.
Most businesses and marketers understand that providing customers with a positive experience will typically lead to increased sales and referrals – it also often leads to repeat business. In today’s data-driven world, most people are aware that businesses are collecting their information through social media activity, loyalty cards and company apps, to name just a few. They realise that when brands know what motivates them and who their customers are and what they want, they can meet their needs more successfully.
Businesses who want to be effective and efficient in today’s competitive world need to be able to look at the masses of data they gather, understand what the data is telling them, and then interpret it in order to create an outstanding marketing strategy that sets them apart from their competition.