The 3 Biggest Reasons Why Your Sales and Marketing Teams Need Predictive Analytics

Strong data is the foundation of effective marketing and sales. The more high-quality information you can obtain on your target market, the better chance you will have to connect with consumers and close sales. Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing marketing, and predictive analytics is a pivotal part of the AI toolkit when it comes to optimizing marketing and sales efforts. This rapidly-improving tool incorporates approaches from data mining, statistics, and machine learning to evaluate and present data to make predictions about the future.

Increase productivity

Predictive analytics enables more productive days by removing the need for employees to gather and analyze consumer data. By organizing enormous amounts of data and applying statistical analysis to data, predictive analytics can produce actionable insights. With minimal effort, sales and marketing teams can proactively apply these predictions to best decide how to reach and convert consumers.

The process of hunting down and pursuing leads can be incredibly time consuming. Predictive analytics can speed up this process by analyzing the patterns and actions of existing customers to help influence future efforts. Sales and marketing professionals can leverage customer data to efficiently identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities. As Oracle CEO Mark Hurd explains, machine learning-based features such as predictive analytics can help companies make better decisions and ultimately improve the lives of their employees while also boosting their bottom line.

Reduce costs

AI predictions provide insights on the possible futures of a company and anticipate consumer behavior. Forecasting a potential customer’s likelihood of converting based on the activity of pre-existing customers saves money on research and also helps avoid misplaced efforts and resources. Moreover, predictive analytics can preemptively save businesses money by helping to develop more effective marketing initiatives, reducing employee and customer risks, and improving overall operational structures. Intel’s 2016-2017 Annual Performance Report noted that “incorporating predictive analytics across the enterprise has transformed our IT environment and created hundreds of millions in business value.”

Optimize business efforts

Armed with AI-powered data, teams that utilize predictive analytics can easily develop a reliable understanding of customer pain points and market needs. Because this technology provides accurate demographic data, including the behavioral and psychological data of consumers, better strategies can be developed. Furthermore, predictive analytics helps companies avoid potential risk by leveraging historical business data. This optimization of business processes can help companies across several industries, including IT organizations, healthcare, insurance, financial services, transportation and logistics, and energy.

As our world becomes increasingly data-intensive, predictive analytics will revolutionize the meaning of effective sales and marketing. C3 IoT CEO Tom Siebel says that by enabling high-level cost efficiencies, increasing customer satisfaction, and streamlining business operations, predictive analytics can change everything. Don’t miss out on the perks of predictive analytics. Start improving your business by implementing smart technology today.

By Amanda Peterson

Author Bio: Amanda is a contributor to Enlightened-Digital and software engineer from NYC. When she's not trying to find the best record store in the city, you can find her curled up watching Netflix with her Puggle, Hendrix.