Predictive analytics has existed for years. But now the time has come for it to shine. Marketers are gravitating towards predictive analytics in order to improve their profits. Many more will follow suit in the near future. As of this year 49% of B2B companies are already using predictive analytics to propel their business forward.
So, what is it? Predictive analytics as the name suggests is a concept deeply rooted in the idea of predicting and identifying future outcomes on the basis of historical data. This data, that has been collected through the years coupled with algorithms and other techniques help marketers assess the future.
Why Should Marketers use Predictive Analytics?
A new age of global consumerism has made its way into the world, consumers are becoming tech-savvy so marketers too need to change their methods. The volume of data is expanding exponentially thanks to abundance of technology. But that means more work for marketers, more data to sift through and analyse. Here’s where predictive analytics comes in.
With computers becoming faster as well as cheaper, and marketing software becoming self-explanatory, it is easier for marketers to analyse the data available to them in order to produce insights.
According to this study, Predictive marketers are 1.8x more likely to exceed the shared goals of their organization than other marketers who don’t.
Big data is the data of the future. From IP log files, forms to purchase activities across the internet, big data is complex and needs further analysis. As a marketer you can leverage this data to your advantage. Predictive analytics is where the future is.
Why Is Predictive Analytics Important?
Predictive analytics has a lot of uses for businesses and other organizations.
1.Foretelling Through Predictability:
With predictive analytics, you can optimize your marketing campaigns. You can foretell your customer’s behaviour. You have the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell more as a result of predictive analytics. You will be able to retain more leads through campaigns thanks to this. Organizations can further improve their operability and functioning through successful forecasting. You can predict the optimum price for your products or how many units you might sell during a certain period. It will enable you to prepare for the future. For example predictive analytics will help you forecast your Black Friday and Cyber Monday You will know how to prepare yourself accordingly.
The best thing about this is that you have a fair idea of what is to come.
2.Frauds and Other Risks
Cyber-security has become a major concern amongst most B2B companies. Predictive analytics can actually help you protect your business against potential cyber criminals.
Monitoring real-time activities can actually help you spot abnormal or suspicious behaviour. You can use analytics to assess credit scores of your customers. A person’s creditworthiness is revealed through their credit score. You can reduce the risk of defaulters with the help of predictive analytics.
How Can You Use Predictive Analytics to Engage Prospects?
# 1: Know Your Customer
To sell more, you need to know more about your customers, leads and prospects. Your marketing database does not show you the bigger picture in terms of data.
Using a predictive analytics platform will allow you to put all customer data from every department to get the complete picture of your client. Using this you can profile your customer.
The key to good marketing is to know your customer. To see the complete picture, you need to know the following things:
- How they got to know of you
- How they behave when they are on your website
- What problems they have
- How you can solve these problems
- How you can retain them for the long run
- How they can communicate about your brand to others
For the long run, you need to develop cross-selling and upselling strategies, and there’s no way better to do this than using predictive analysis. Your first step should be to consolidate all data from multiple channels in one single platform. The reason why you need to consolidate all this information is because a lot of vital data resides in the databases of departments like sales, support, IT etc. You have to make sure that they are COLLECTING data in the first place. Only then can you put this all together.
#2: Build Meaningful Relationships
At this day and age, consumers are looking for interesting brands who are willing to connect with them at an emotional level. For that brands and marketers need to build meaningful relationships with their customers and leads.
While it is true that account retention is not really a marketer’s job, but there is nothing bigger than achieving success. For a marketer it is fairly easy to retain customers by building meaningful relationships. All this while you can use predictive analytics to your advantage.
With predictive analytics you can start building meaningful connections with your leads the moment they enter the sales funnel. You can revolutionize the entire process of lead nurturing with predictive analytics. You can continue this even after these leads have become customers.
Your clients will be able to trust you more and more, to such an extent that they will buy a certain product only from you and not from your competitors.
Not only that, it is easy to predict existing customer behaviour. Hence you will be able to profit more.
#3: Take Advantage of Metrics
As a marketer, retaining customers is more important than acquiring new ones. After all, if you can’t retain your customers, how and why will new ones come to you?
As I have already mentioned, existing customers are much easier to predict. And they are much more likely to refer you to their family, friends and colleagues.
You may use Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) as an effective metric of performance. Set concrete goals with help of predictive analytics. Upselling and cross-selling have never been easier. This will be your opportunity to upsell premium items and cross-sell related products and services to your client pool.
Renew licenses, contracts and subscriptions because that will ensure how many customers you have on board.
Use predictive analytics to identify customers who might not be satisfied with your product or service. Accordingly you can create campaigns to retain them. And that brings us to..
#4: Create Influential Marketing Campaigns
You understand a lead’s journey through the sales funnel. With predictive analytics, you can actually predict their next action/step. It might be a discount coupon or a bundled offer in case of existing customers or qualified leads.
When you incorporate predictive analytics in your marketing automation platform, you can personalize your responses further. Take your marketing automation strategy to the next level with predictive models.
You can create campaigns based on future predictions. Not only will you be able to save time, because you already know what your leads and customers want, you can also bring in more business in the long run.
Predictive analytics will allow you to identify patterns and build models that will explore all your data. You have to collect the right data, if you want to be successful.
Club this with your lead-scoring model and you will be able to find out which leads are better suited for sales-handover.
The Bottom Line
Most marketing teams already have an existing customer database that they can use to their advantage. But very few use them. You need to change your idea about retaining customers.
You need to understand that predictive analytics could be the only thing standing between you and your cold leads, unhappy customers and underrated prospects.