Prediction- isn’t this a very natural activity of human brains about a future event?
Yes! And it is often based upon experience or knowledge. Coming to Predictive Analytics, it is the branch of advanced analytics that is used to make predictions about unknown future events with the help of various historical data.
Prediction is not just one of the things your brain does. It is the primary function of the neo-cortex and the foundation of intelligence- Jeff Hawkins
As a marketer, if we think about, what is the number one thing that we look for as a business, above all us?
Everyone is looking for the pipeline, we are looking for revenue, and to grow business. Now, close your eyes and imagine a world, where your data can find your next customer with an 86% accuracy rate. Imagine a world where you know about your customer needs, where to find them? What they are interested in, their pain point is? What competitor products that they might be researching? And say you can get into that sales cycle early, and you can grow your business. Cool stuff! Right?
That’s the world we live in! And why is it available to us today? Why can we do these fundamental things that 5-10 years ago we couldn’t do?
Of course, we all know that today we live in this incredible digital world, where we have technology and data, that we can get any answers to any questions in a matter of seconds. With the potential of an advanced predictive analytics capability, we are able to predict future events that result in providing real-time insights into customers and processes. It integrates various techniques from data mining, statistics, modeling, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to process and analyze various data sets for the purpose of developing predictions.
According to a survey by Forrester, about 87% of B2B market leaders consider predictive analytics as a critical part of their marketing stack. Most of them have either already implemented the technology or plan to do so within a year, with goals to boost their market share and revenue growth.
“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP
HOW TO USE PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE MARKETING AND SALES PERFORMANCE?
2015 is admirably calculated to be the year of data-driven marketing. With the adoption of predictive analytics techniques, marketers see its huge potential to improve prospecting, increase lead quality and build the sales pipeline with passing years. For now,
source- salesforce
• IMPROVE YOUR LEAD SCORE
With appropriate use of Predictive analytics tool, you can easily correlate the actions of your existing customers to influence your future efforts as a marketer. With the power of predictive analytics, scoring leads becomes less of unscientific and more of an actual data-driven view of your target customer.
Predictive Analytics can quickly score leads based on customers’ demographic, behavioral, and psychological data. On the basis of those scores, it is resolved whether the leads are ‘hot’ and should be immediately passed on to the sales team, or if they need more time in a nurture campaign.
Now, B2B companies are getting into the act. "Nearly 14 times more B-to-B organizations are using predictive lead scoring than in 2011,” says Jill Stanek, research analyst at Sirius Decisions.
source- Sirius Decisions
• BACK YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS WITH DATA
By applying predictive analytics in organizations, you can improve the overall marketing performance with the help of excellent data analysis. With the available data, businesses can better plan, develop, strategize, and implement future marketing campaigns.
Predictive Analytics allows us to forecast past performance to give you an exhaustive understanding of all the market segments in your target audience. Backing your marketing campaigns with data can help you move the process further down the sales funnel and drive maximum ROI.
• IMPROVE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION BY PREDICTING CHURN
Churn predictions are the process of detecting customers who are likely to cancel a subscription to a service. To grow, a business must have a higher growth rate than the churn rate. With predictive analytics, you can analyze the warning signs or behavioral patterns of previously- churned customers from the warning’s signs of current customers and, thus, can provide the necessary churn-prevention nurture campaign.
• FIND UPSELL AND CROSS-SELL OPPORTUNITIES
Lead generation is expensive. It is far easier and more profitable to upsell or cross-sell an existing customer than to make a new sale to a brand-new customer.
Amazon has attributed up to 35% of its revenue to cross-selling, both through its “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” features.
Marketers can leverage customer data to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities. With a flexible predictive analytics platform, you can understand how different segments have performed on very specific campaigns so that you can deploy similar campaigns that have a higher likelihood of success.
Predictive analytics helps you understand your existing customer’s future needs and plan to upsell or cross-sell campaigns to increase your customers’ profitability over time and keep them coming back for more. When done right, it helps a customer derive more value out of their purchases, do their jobs better and make their lives easier.
• PREDICTIVE CONTENT TO PROVIDE SIGNIFICANT ROI
While marketers are getting better at measuring the ROI of their content and strategy efforts, it is still difficult to see how content is used past the marketing automation phase. Often, the content itself gets the blame, but, in reality, the true culprit is an ill-defined strategy for content distribution. Which types of content work better for certain leads can be answered with predictive analytics. Content marketing has the ability to provide significant ROI for your company.
Predictive content improves marketing’s visibility, strategy, and contribution to revenue. It eliminates shot-in-the-dark content creation and saves marketing from creating useless, irrelevant sales content. This improves marketing efficiency and lets marketers create and serve sales that work for sales conversations and conversion.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Today’s customers are empowered, connected, and have a high expectation for engaging on their own terms. Predictive analytics tools enable users to mine through large volumes of data for making educated predictions. Businesses can predict their customer wants and needs by unlocking insights. The company can show product recommendations based on the previous action like Netflixand Amazon (The productive users of Predictive Analytics). Display ads more accordingly based on the type of consumers and also send out better-targeted email campaigns (https://deck7.io/) to help target customers with relevant offers across all channels including digital, mobile and social.