business intelligence

4 Things Marketers Need to Know About Business Intelligence

Business has never been more complicated than it is today. Luckily, there are also more tools and resources than any other time in history to help navigate that complexity. It’s no longer necessary to guess or shoot in the dark.

Business intelligence has been gaining in popularity in recent years. It’s projected to be a $29.48 billion industry by 2022. Sales teams and executive management tend to be the ones driving that change.

Sales and marketing teams tend to be the most interested in advanced dashboards and data visualization. But what are they looking for, exactly?

We’re going to delve into the business intelligence process and see how they can influence your marketing efforts.

Business Intelligence Process For Marketers

The definition of business intelligence for marketing is a computer-aided method of processing, visualizing, and analyzing data.

Data analysis and visualization is incredibly important. Businesses, enterprises, and large organizations produce an immense amount of information. Business intelligence for marketing offers a number of tools and techniques to transform that information into business insights.

Let’s take a look at the business intelligence process for marketers in greater detail.

Business Intelligence Lets You Ask The Right Questions

You can’t get the right answers if you don’t ask the right questions. Business intelligence helps you get clear on what questions you need to be asking. Then you can decide how to ask them.

It also helps you determine if you’re asking the wrong questions. Sometimes you might be measuring the wrong metrics, which can give you an inaccurate picture of how you should proceed.

Most business intelligence software features a dashboard with advanced analytic capabilities. This helps you sort through large amounts of data quickly and efficiently. Scanning through terabytes of information manually can be a costly and time-consuming endeavor.

That also means you might be missing out on opportunities or spending money pursuing the wrong direction while you’re waiting for those insights. Business intelligence gives you those insights in real-time.

Define and Target Your Demographics

Precise targeting is one of the biggest advantages of digital marketing. Business intelligence helps you determine who your ideal customers are. It also lets you know when you can best reach them.

Business intelligence lets you draw in data from various sources to give greater insight into your customer’s behaviors.

Business intelligence tools help you transform your data into rich data. It doesn’t just keep track of your target demographic. It also lets you determine their engagement rate across multiple channels. It factors in ROI and purchase history, as well.

All of these points, taken together, help you compose a very detailed and thorough model of your customers’ behavior.

Improved Reporting

In today’s fast-moving business world, time is of the essence. There’s no time to wait for quarterly reports. By that time it could be too late.

If you want to be successful, you need good data. And you need it fast. The problem that many marketers today are facing is how to deal with multi-channel data.

Having data from many different sources means that data might not be consistent. It might not be able to communicate or interact with data from other sources. You need some way to get all of that data to cooperate.

Business intelligence tools bring data from all of your multi-channel sources into one central platform. This lets you create detailed, useful analytics and visualizations in real-time. This gives you a precious advantage over your competition.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics tools are one of the most powerful tools that business intelligence has to offer. Predictive analytics solutions require a lot of data to function properly. That’s why business intelligence is essential for them to function properly.

Predictive analytics doesn’t just tell you what your customers want to buy. It also tells you when they want to buy, as well as how to reach them. Business intelligence tools can analyze all of your customers’ previous engagements and interactions.

Say you want to run an automated email campaign. First, you might have an idea of what particular customers might want. Business intelligence will also let you know when’s the best time to schedule that email. It can even give you an idea of the best tone to market for a particular customer, based on previous engagements.

Business intelligence can even derive insights from a lack of engagement. You can assess if emails aren’t being opened. This can also help you choose the appropriate message to try and win back your customers.

As the business world continues to get more complex and data-driven, the need for business intelligence is only going to rise.

Get started with business intelligence now, before that happens. You don’t want to be playing catch-up and learning the basics when it matters.

Looking For Data-Driven Marketing Insights?

Businesses of all sizes and types produce an incredible amount of data these days. That data can provide invaluable insights into every single aspect of your business.

Book a demo with us today and learn more about the power of data-driven marketing.