How marketing business intelligence empowers you to reach your customers

Awareness. Consideration. Decision. Purchase. The four stages of the marketing and sales funnel. A formidable formula that has explained consumer behavior for over a hundred years, when it was first theorized by advertisers.

But what was once a clear-cut process has become a complex collage of touchpoints thanks to the rise of digital marketing and social media. As Scott Feldman, Customer Intelligence Practice Lead for Canada at SAS describes, “Buying is not linear, and successful brands know it. Skilled marketers understand that digital and non-digital touchpoints all work together to drive conversions…You must add unique value across channels.”

Ultimately, he explains, it’s about showing up on the channels your customers use, and giving them the experience they’re looking for. To do that, it’s essential to tap into marketing business intelligence. In this article, I’m sharing more from my interview with Feldman where he explains what marketing business intelligence is, and how the insights you gain from it lead to more effective strategies for reaching your customers.

What is marketing business intelligence?

Feldman describes marketing business intelligence (BI) as: “The accumulation of data from all of your external channels.” For example, marketing BI originates from a variety of places including social business intelligence, social listening insights, website analytics, email marketing metrics and more. The data can be applied to functions within and outside of marketing, including customer care, product development and corporate strategy.

He goes on to add, “Marketing BI needs to reside in one place to effectively model and market. It enables a single view of your target audience and customers, and empowers you to track the channels your customers are using. Working off of that model allows us to be better connected marketers.”

How can marketing business intelligence benefit an organization?

Marketing BI is essential to empathizing with consumers at every stage of the customer life cycle. With those insights, you can grease the wheels of your marketing strategy, enabling stronger targeting, increased ROI and an improved customer experience (CX).

Define your ideal customer profile

Knowing who you should be marketing and selling to is key to growing your business. Yet, narrowing down an ideal customer profile is a challenge for many companies.

As Feldman explains, “When I work with brands that aren’t [tapping into BI data], I ask: ‘Do you know who your customer is? Do you know who you’re selling to?’ They often answer: ‘We’re everything to everyone.’ No brand should be a catch-all. Even phone companies don’t sell to everyone. Be true to yourself and your business by knowing who your customer is.”

With accurate marketing BI data, you can segment your audience into different buyer personas. The right BI tools enable you to create data visualizations and reports that demonstrate the defining characteristics of these personas—including their needs, pain points, demographics and even personality traits. The marketing BI insights should also illustrate the arc of a persona’s relationship with your brand—from first encounter to final sale.

For example, with social media intelligence insights, you can surface critical voice of the customer (VoC) data from various sources such as social listening, reviews, surveys and contact center interactions to track brand health, improve products and enhance customer engagement and retention.

Sprout Social’s social listening solution uses AI technology to calculate the overall sentiment of your brand, product or CX, and reveal audience insights from social conversations. This intel might reveal that a segment of your customers is using your product in a way that you didn’t realize, helping you better position your product going forward.

Refine marketing attribution

When it comes to asking for resources, marketing BI can help demonstrate the value of marketing initiatives to your CFO.

“The CFO doesn’t give an infinite budget. Your marketing campaign needs to be important to the business. Prove how your campaign leveled-up to revenue with data,” Feldman advises.

Marketing BI metrics like conversion rate, cost per conversion, return on ad spend, customer acquisition rate and marketing-sourced revenue demonstrate the throughline from your campaign efforts to your company’s bottom line. Continuously analyze marketing BI data to assess the status of key performance indicators (KPIs), measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven improvements.

Not only will this data illustrate ROI, it will also guide your future investments in specific channels, and set you up for stronger marketing campaigns. As Feldman says, “Not every channel provides the same ROI. It’s important to attribute revenue and conversions to a certain source.”

For example, when defining actionable social media ROI for your business, using a tool like Sprout Social aggregates your paid campaign results from across channels. These analytics reports directly tie social activity on each channel to business results in shareable, digestible reports all stakeholders can understand.

Deliver a smoother customer experience

What was abundantly clear in my interview with Feldman was his passion for helping brands deliver a smoother CX. It was the crux of his argument for why BI data matters, and how it can help organizations.

“CX should be easy, memorable and positive. That’s what brands need to deliver. That’s what consumers are looking for. Every point of friction is measured against you. What you must create as a brand is an experience that people want,” Feldman emphasizes.

As a real-world example of what a smooth CX looks like, Feldman cites KFC. “Whether you like their food or not, KFC is one of the best brands on social. They’re smart, funny and witty. What you see on Facebook is not what you see on TikTok. They provide different value on each network.”

This girl dinner is GIRLING

♬ original sound ' KFC