How to Stay Ahead of the Competition – #SAP20tips Week Two

We want to help more businesses tap into the power of predictive analytics. So last week, we launched a 20 tips campaign – a tip a day over four weeks – that introduces real-life scenarios of customers using predictive analytics to overcome business challenges. Each week of #SAP20tips is focusing on a different topic. Last week, we talked about predictive and customer relationship management. (For more details, read last week’s blog.)

This week, our theme is marketing.

Boost Your Marketing with Predictive Analytics

Marketing’s Holy Grail? To know exactly what customers and prospects are going to do next. Being able to better anticipate customers’ behavior provides the ultimate competitive advantage.

Digital marketing can be daunting, especially when you need to understand vast amounts of data (or Big Data) and translate them into meaningful and actionable insights for the business. The need to better understand prospects and customers is even more crucial as you need to understand browsing behavior in real time. And not just by looking back at past historical behavior and performance, but also by anticipating new behavior. This enables you to tailor the customer experience while they are actively browsing/clicking to increase their engagement.

Predictive analytics can also tell you about the market innovations for your industry, which allows you to better define your marketing strategy and execute targeted marketing campaigns and continuously monitor the predicted outcomes for improvements. Using predictive analytics, you can validate potential marketing outcomes even before implementing your digital marketing campaigns. Using predictive models, you can get better marketing insights and predict consumers’ response to your services or product offers.

Another thing to consider – customers are coming into the buying process much more educated than ever before. Often times the buying decision is made even before customers engage. For brands, this is both a positive and a negative. More informed prospects are better leads, but these pre-educated customers carry risk. In entering the discussion at such a high level and holding the buying power, they are more easily able to switch providers if their needs and expectations aren’t met.

If you’re interested in learning how predictive analytics can help you tackle these challenges and make your marketing smarter, make sure to follow #SAP20Tips and @SAPAnalytics over the coming week for the daily tips posted to STAY AHEAD: 20 Tips from SAP Predictive Analytics. We’ll be sharing real-life customer stories!

Week 2 – Originally published on the Analytics blog and republished with permission.