data.path Ryoji.Ikeda – 3 by r2hox | CC BY 2.0
Big data is, for lack of a better term, a big idea; it’s right there in the name. The crux of big data is that the information is so vast and complex that traditional analysis methods are rendered ineffective. So why is such a premium being placed on data mountains that are so difficult to make sense of, and, more importantly, how are companies supposed to leverage that data?
A Forrester Research study called “Gear Up to Support B2B Marketing’s Big Data Destiny” offers a helpful roadmap for making sense of big data to predict customer behavior and ultimately benefit the sales process. The study asserts that, with the use of proper analytic automation, a company can theoretically streamline their sales process, helping both marketing and sales departments by offering deep insights about prospects’ buying habits.
There is obviously a lot of potential nestled away in big data sets. In the initial stages of Forrester’s proposed deployment, marketing teams benefit from more sophisticated buyer insights. According to Forrester, information gained through the granular study of certain data allows “teams to obsess over customers from all angles to make sure that marketing activity, content, and frontline service delivers value at each stage in the customer lifecycle.” By letting customer behavior dictate the direction of a marketing campaign, companies can maximize that campaign’s efficacy at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Whether or not you’re leveraging data, it comes down to being in tune with your customers’ needs.
For most businesses, there’s too much data to sift through manually, so it’s important that a business leverage analytic systems to extract valuable insights. In other words, why do all that leg work when you can have a robot do it for you? Analytic systems can yield three vital insights from your big data pool. Proper data analysis will allow CMOs to:
- Analyze their most valuable accounts
- Identify ideal customers
- Better allocate market spending through data insights that better identify and target early market opportunities
Big data analytics will help streamline the marketing process to make it lean and more effective.
Putting those insights into action is a considerable task in and of itself, so Forrester advises that CMOs seek data management solutions and approaches that can reliably indicate buying signals, illustrate behavioral patterns around those signals, and “scale through automation and self-learning.” If that last bit sounds complicated, that’s because it is!
The Forrester study recommends that “CMOs should pick solutions that minimize the effort required to build and refine models by processing feedback about how customers interact with marketing activity and grading the results of their program spend.” By employing big data insights to yield macro- and micro-level factors, your company will ensure that marketing strategies are hitting the necessary points on all levels of business. Micro-level insights can be used to spot check the relevancy of current strategies while macro-level insights can be used for longer-term maintenance.
Think of big data as a highly valuable foreign currency. In its raw state, it can’t do much for you, but with the right resources it can be very valuable. As Forrester’s study puts it, “data analytics let B2B marketers use facts and statistics to measurably improve returns when they deploy it correctly.” Not only does proper analysis of big data allow companies to draw predictive models but it can also be used to reap short-term benefits such as modifying and optimizing ongoing sales, and refining current marketing slates.
Comments are closed.