In today’s business landscape, companies must integrate a variety of data and intelligence tools to run successfully. When it comes to effectively marketing a business, marketing intelligence is integral to any plan.
“The intelligence that businesses need to make decisions, further their marketing campaigns, and ultimately make their ventures successful is standard data relevant to marketing efforts,” explains Jashan Dhaliwal, Marketing Manager of FirstHive. “Determining which data is useful and effective is where the “intelligence” part of the equation comes into play.”
The best intelligence tools available to businesses are changing the way marketing intelligence is viewed, analyzed, and applied. As Dhaliwal explains, central systems, such as customer data platforms, or CDPs, empower marketing professionals and enable them to map the customer life cycle across multiple channels. “Multichannel marketing intelligence and real-time customer engagement data is a game-changer for any industry that may often rely on antiquated data sourcing approaches to inform marketing decisions,” he says.
The Value of Unstructured Data
The disruptive offering that is revolutionizing the marketing industry is the SaaS (software as a service) platform. These platforms capture consumer information — both off and online — including unstructured data, which is typically subjective and can include opinions and judgments on your brand or your company.
“Most analytics programs ignore this data altogether as they are unable to collect it in any useful manner,” says Dhaliwal. “Without this data, a complete customer profile can be nearly impossible to construct.” However, this issue can be solved by allowing intelligence tools to collect this important data for eventual use by a company’s marketing team.
The Deluge of Data
One of the most significant issues of data analysis and real-world application is simply volume. When marketing departments have to sift through mounds of structured and unstructured data, identifying what is and isn’t relevant can be challenging. To be truly disruptive, any SaaS platform needs to have a way to dive deep into the massive amount of data and provide segmentation opportunities while publishing on multiple channels.
With social media platforms regularly changing their algorithms, marketing departments may struggle with getting real-time sales opportunities to the right consumers. The amount of data is so dense that by the time they have sifted through it all, the market has already changed. But with a marketing platform that has listening capabilities, customer profiles can be quickly created and contextualized. Campaigns can then be born that bring those segmented customers the exact offers they are more likely to express interest in or purchase.
Giving Your Marketing Team the Edge
True disruption comes with innovations that change not only how things are done, but also the results of that new approach. For example, when a company correctly applies and integrates an intelligent CDP into their marketing plan, they can expect that it will give them an edge against their competitors.
Support of unstructured data is not the only benefit of a robust SaaS CDP; real-time optimization is also a game-changer that can save time, freeing your marketing department to work on campaigns and get sales instead of simply analyzing data. Targeted marketing saves time for the organization, as well. With a well-applied CDP, campaigns can be targeted toward the right consumers every time, leading to more follow-through and revenue in the long run.
“Cross-channel application is also vital,” Dhaliwal says. “Once marketers build their audience using the data collected, they can distribute those customer personas across multiple channels, furthering their reach and the possibility of sales.”
Automated CDPs are the new kids in town, and marketers who know the power of a well-designed CDP are already gaining advantages over marketers who do not. Marketing is all about acquiring, engaging, and retaining consumers who will eventually spend money on your product or service. Utilizing collected data to drive engagement to the right customers is how to improve a company’s ROI, and how marketing departments earn their keep.
The times are indeed changing. Innovations in marketing intelligence are truly revolutionizing the industry. The more marketing departments can make their campaigns targeted and personalized, the more their organization stands to win big in the long run.