How to Leverage Customer Data and Increase Sales
We are in the 21st century, where sales and marketing are no longer products of trial and error. The most successful businesses are now using data to understand customer behavior and create high-ROI marketing strategies. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to collect and analyze data to incorporate in your marketing plan and, of course, boost your sales. Read on for ways your business can leverage customer data to make more conversions.
Invest in Analytics Tools
Since most of the data come from digital systems, analytics tools can be a great addition to your data arsenal. These tools break down information from different data sources to help you make sense of it.
Large organizations may assign this task to entire departments, but you don’t have to do it. There are many incredibly cheap tools that you can incorporate into your network of digital systems and save yourself the hassle of manual data analysis. Basic analytics software performs such tasks as visual analytics, regression analysis, experimental design, forecasting or time series analysis, correlation analysis, scenario analysis, text analytics, video and voice analytics, and linear programming.
Use A Customer Data Platform
Customer data platforms (CDPs) are great for businesses looking to unify customer data and view their customer engagement in a single system. With a comprehensive and well-integrated enterprise CDP, you can follow specific customers and identify all places where you have interacted, the marketing content they have opened, the webpages they have visited on your site, and the last time they interacted with your content.
CDPs not only help you get a general picture of your customer base but also simplify customer categorization so you can create user personas and develop marketing strategies with much more ease. A good CDP is flexible and is inclusive enough to accommodate any kind of business expansion.
Automate
Automation is growing popular by the day, and it’s simply because businesses have too many datasets to analyze manually. Automation systems use contemporary technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to assess data, classify it, and dispatch content based on customer tastes and preferences. The best thing about AI-based automation is that it gets better by the day. Machine learning systems use past patterns to predict the future, and as they receive more data, their accuracy increases.
You can use automation on specific components of your sales strategy, depending on your staffing and data availability.
Patch Up Sales and Marketing Loopholes
If you use sales and marketing funnels to track your customers, ensure you actually use it to refine your campaigns. A well-structured marketing funnel should help separate strengths from loopholes, i.e., make it possible for you to identify the stages in which you are losing most of your prospects. For example, if the bulk of your leads don’t go past your landing page, it means the page is either confusing or irrelevant; hence you need to revise it. If they reach the bottom of the funnel but fail to make a purchase or schedule an appointment, it means there is a problem on the sales page, which needs to be fixed.
Visualize the Data
Unless you are an expert, there is virtually nothing you can do with the raw numbers you get from your data sources. Centralized dashboards can help you get a better view of your information and break it down with ease. They allow you to monitor the flow of data from their various sources and ensure you make your sales decisions based on your leads’ quality. Common data visualization tools include indicators, line charts, column charts, bar charts, pie charts, area charts, pivot tables, scatter charts, and treemaps.
Improve Your Website Navigation
Whether you run a brick-and-mortar store with a website, or your business is based entirely online, website navigation is worth paying attention to. You can use sales funnels and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to assess website performance and tell whether some of your blog posts, landing pages, and sales pages are undercutting your other sales and marketing efforts. Ensure each destination down the sales pipeline has visible calls-to-action (CTAs) and that there are clear trails linking traffic sources to the bottom of the funnel.
The primary objective of any business is to make a profit and increase sales over time. In the age of data digitization, this can be more confusing than it should be. Use the above tips to comprehend customer data and use it to raise your bottom line.
