Whether it's choosing the right online marketing platform or finding what resonates with your audience, data will continue to drive decision-making in sales and marketing.
According to the Harvard Business School, data-driven organizations are three times more likely to post significant improvements in their decisions.
Having developed business intelligence within sales and marketing disciplines, marketing professionals are ready for data transformation and find which marketing channels are causing the most conversions. Here’s how business intelligence can benefit your sales and marketing.
Why Is Business Intelligence Important?
Business intelligence (BI) describes the processes and technologies that can create meaningful insights from raw data. Different aspects of an organization (including marketing and sales) can improve business decisions and actions.
Business intelligence comes from analytics information, metrics, and key performance indicators (KPI). If you have analytics capture tools in place, these can help give you the pulse of your audience, including what they want and what will drive them towards your products.
Rather than rely on their gut, like more than half of Americans, businesses that take advantage of data will find that information is more reliable than simply following their instincts.
Big data, predictive analytics, and business intelligence contribute to a data-driven organization. Data-driven organizations use this information to identify new revenue opportunities, drive more sales, and align sales and marketing efforts.
When businesses treat marketing as a revenue-driving machine, they can better understand which channels are driving revenue, which channels are generating the most leads, and delivering the most qualified leads.
Marketing departments must quickly identify which programs are working and which aren’t. The faster they can identify which channels and programs are working, the better they can allocate resources and budget.
Additionally, data can help marketers understand which marketing channels are most effective, which channels outperformed last year, and under-utilized budget.
Key Benefits of Business Intelligence
Building business intelligence is one of the most powerful startup growth strategies that any business can take advantage of. Here are a few benefits that you can expect from BI.
Valuable Business Insights
Data can help marketers identify which channels are driving revenue, which channels are generating the most leads, and which channels are delivering the most qualified leads. By putting data to work, marketers can free up budgets and allocate resources to programs that drive revenue.
Data and analytics are closely linked. Big data refers to data sets that are so large and complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. Analytics refers to the process of extracting information from this big data. Both will uncover valuable insights that can be used to improve business outcomes down the line.
Alignment with Sales and Marketing Goals
When sales and marketing work together, it creates a stronger, more synergistic team. With a data-driven sales and marketing program, marketers and sales teams can work together to get on the same page. This can be the difference between finding and closing opportunities and losing customers.
Marketing departments can use data to drive decision-making and ensure that their campaigns are working. Marketing teams can align their resources with the strategy by aligning goals with business goals.
As a result, brands can allocate resources to those marketing channels. However, brands can also use data to determine which marketing channels need improvement, which channels are over-utilizing budget, and which channels are under-utilizing budget.
Targets the Right Audience
With business intelligence, marketers can identify which channels and programs are working. By determining which channels are delivering the most leads, companies can choose the most effective channels, saving time, budget, and resources.
Data analytics can help marketers understand which channels deliver the most qualified leads. By putting data to work, marketers can free up budgets and allocate resources to programs that drive revenue.
Businesses can learn which channels deliver the most qualified leads, which channels are under-utilized budget, and which channels generate the most revenue.
Improves Data Quality
Keeping data quality is one of the top challenges facing marketers today. Businesses often rely on incomplete, incorrect, and outdated data to make decisions. With business intelligence, companies can improve the quality of their data, which helps them make better decisions.
By improving data quality, organizations can streamline their sales and marketing operations and ensure the accuracy of their marketing data.
Optimized Marketing Campaigns
These days, it takes more time, effort, and resources to reach your target audience than it does to create content. When content creation, marketers can use data to ensure that their campaigns are working.
With business intelligence, marketers can quickly identify which channels and programs deliver the most qualified leads, which channels are under-utilizing budget, and which channels are over-utilizing budget.
As a result, they can quickly optimize the marketing campaigns and allocate resources to the channels to generate the most revenue.
Fast Analytics Reporting
When it comes to data analysis, marketers need analytics tools that can provide real-time data to make the most informed decisions. Fortunately, analytics tools like Salesforce Analytics Cloud are mobile, easy-to-use, and affordable.
With access to real-time analytics, marketers can use data to optimize their marketing campaigns. With sales and marketing departments working together, marketers must create reports that are easy to understand. With business intelligence, marketers can easily and quickly access data, which allows them to make more accurate decisions.
Marketers can use business intelligence to identify which channels and programs deliver the most leads. With faster analytics reporting, they can quickly identify which programs provide the most leads, which programs are underutilized budget, and which programs need improvement.
More Accurate Decision-Making
As sales professionals, you spend a lot of time making important decisions. From targeting the right customers, finding the right leads to qualifying the leads, there are a lot of factors that go into determining whether a lead is qualified.
Data-driven organizations make better decisions. Using data and analytics, marketers can align goals and, as a result, marketers can optimize their marketing campaigns.
Companies must make decisions as quickly as possible to keep up with their competitors. Wrong decisions could result in a loss of customers and revenue. Information can be delivered to the right stakeholders at the right time with existing data, optimizing the time-to-decision.
Conclusion
Business intelligence can unlock new sales opportunities, improve data quality, and optimize marketing campaigns. As marketers, you can use business intelligence to get faster analytics reporting, identify which channels and programs are most effective, understand which channels need improvement, and optimize your budget.
Marketing teams can align their resources with the strategy by aligning goals with business goals. As a result, brands can allocate resources to those marketing channels. However, brands can also use data to determine which marketing channels need improvement, which channels are over-utilizing budget, and which channels are under-utilizing budget.
About the Author: Sophia Young
Sophia recently quit a non-writing job to finally be able to tell stories and paint the world through her words. She loves talking about fashion and weddings and travel, but she can also easily kick ass with a thousand-word article about the latest marketing and business trends, finance-related topics, and can probably even whip up a nice heart-warming article about family life. She can totally go from fashion guru to your friendly neighborhood cat lady with mean budgeting skills and home tips real quick.