Business Intelligence

Regardless of the type or size of your business, you understand the need to get the most out of your marketing budget. One of the most cost-effective ways to optimize your marketing budget is to analyze your customer and sales data in order to draw meaningful conclusions about the future. The data you analyze can be about your own company, your customers, your competitors, or larger economic or industry trends. All of this falls under the header of the growing field of business intelligence.

Business intelligence techniques are already helping small, midsize and large businesses alike to make smarter, better-informed business decisions.

• Business Intelligence and Marketing ROI

  Business intelligence refers to the techniques and methodologies used to identify, extract, and analyze business data, such as sales data across products, locations, and types of customers. Internal or externally-sourced databases are leveraged by humans (and computers) to find significant relationships and patterns in the data.

  Many businesses are already applying a unique form of business intelligence – called marketing analytics – to improve their operations. One of the areas where business intelligence techniques are being increasingly applied is in the area of marketing. Companies are using business intelligence techniques to achieve a better marketing return on investment (ROI).

  When you know which customers are most likely to respond to your messages – and what those messages should be – you can achieve a much higher return on investment on your marketing activities.

  Here are five applications of business intelligence techniques and how they apply specifically to the art and science of achieving higher marketing return on investment:

  1. Measurement

  The first application of business intelligence to the realm of marketing is to collect and maintain historical data – such as sales and order data. When designing your methods of data collection, be sure to plan ahead concerning the specific types of information about your customers that may prove helpful.

  2. Analytics

  Once you have collected the data you need and have stored it in a database, the next step is to analyze it. Such analysis can yield a wealth of insights about who your customers are, what their buying patterns are like, how they think – and how to find lots more just like your best customers. All of this allows you to categorize the prospects in your trade area into specific market segments, ranking them by their potential profitability to your company.

  3. Reporting

  Next, you can leverage business intelligence techniques to create better reporting on your marketing ROI. You can summarize your analytics results in a way that allows everyone in your organization to easily determine the best course of action.

  4. Collaboration

  Now that you have determined which variables predict certain customer behaviors, you can share this data across departments to refine your marketing strategy. With your sales, advertising, and marketing teams all on the same page, you can better design comprehensive marketing campaigns to target customers more effectively.

  5. Knowledge Management

  One of the most critical components of business intelligence is continuing the cycle of collecting and applying feedback about your actions. Since you will continue to collect and maintain your data, you will be able to determine the effectiveness of certain campaigns over others. You will be better informed to continue to make effective course corrections on your path to marketing effectiveness.

  Business intelligence systems create a feedback loop of data-driven action, measurement and analysis. The result is better marketing return on investment, since your entire marketing machine will be geared toward those prospects who are most likely to buy from you.

  Contact MindEcology today to get started.