Great things happen when you put your target market first. Everyone wants to feel valued, and that goes for your customers, too. You can’t run a business without customers, so it’s a sensible move to prioritize them. That might sound easy, but where do you begin? The answer is analytics. They’re those juicy bits of data that tell you everything you need to know about your target market.
When you take your analytics seriously, good things will come your way. Most importantly the effectiveness of your sales strategy will improve, providing a handy boost in sales.
WHY ARE ANALYTICS IMPORTANT?
Analytics are an absolute goldmine for any serious marketing strategist. 53% of high-performing organizations consider themselves effective users of analytics, and there’s no question why. When you see how powerful this data is, you’ll be kicking yourself you didn’t implement it sooner. In the world of business, we are now firmly in the age of analytics. Get ahead before you get behind.
A market insight might unveil an untouched market that would love your brand. Knowing these people exist and that you can market to them opens your business up to potentially millions of new customers. That’s a hefty boost in sales for you. With all that new attention, it will soon be time to start outsourcing call centers.
Importantly, analytics show you how consumers interact with brands. They will also show you their unique shopping habits, which often differ wildly across demographics. When you know the behavior of your target market, you can get to work tailoring your strategy around them.
Perhaps there’s a particular brand message your audience will engage with? Say it to them. Perhaps your target market is after new and exciting products? Innovate and create these for them. You already know they will sell.
Your analytics show you what’s working and what’s not. Data doesn’t get embarrassed and it certainly doesn’t lie!
If your chosen strategy isn’t working out, analytics will show you where, why, when, and how it’s gone wrong. If you’re lucky, you should only need a few tweaks. On occasion, it’s time to abandon the entire strategy altogether and get back to the drawing board. It’s better to find out about it now than never.
Analytics can tell the future too. Well, not literally, but they can make a very accurate prediction of sales trends and outcomes. They do this by analyzing large volumes of significant data on the social trajectory, media behavior, and current shopping patterns.
By utilizing predictive analytics models, you can avoid nasty surprises while capitalizing on new opportunities you wouldn’t have noticed. This gives you a clear picture of tomorrow — giving you plenty of time to plan.
AREN’T ANALYTICS JUST METRICS?
Analytics can sometimes be confused with metrics. To make sure everyone’s got the right end of the stick, here are the differences:
- Metrics: These are what your business is measuring. For example, churn rate and conversion rate. The numbers that go with these are called the data.
- Analytics: These take onboard metric data to find patterns. Businesses use these patterns to inform them in their decision-making.
HOW CAN ANALYTICS DRIVE SALES?
Analytics is an undoubtedly powerful tool that your brand needs in its arsenal. The thing is, 67% of senior managers or higher aren’t comfortable using them. This gives you a perfect opportunity. Educate your employees. Make sure that they are comfortable with analytics. It’s like that time you learned how to transfer a call to another phone in the office. Confusing at first, until someone showed you how to do it.
We know that analytics is capable of driving sales for your brand. 48% of companies with the strongest analytics cultures have significantly exceeded their business goals in the last 12 months. If you’re not embracing analytics, the big question is — why not? The evidence shows they’re incredibly effective when it comes to sales strategy.
Here’s how implementing analytics into your strategy can help you achieve the sales figures of your dreams:
The Ultimate Lead Generation
You’re not going to sell to new customers without generating some leads. You need to find people interested in buying from your brand if you ever hope to expand. Well, luckily for you, analytics can help you with your lead generation.
Data-rich analytics help businesses spot the right customer at the perfect time. By using data tools such as algorithms, you can highlight potential leads who would be interested in spending money on your products and services.
Analytics can also highlight which potential customers are most likely to buy. This allows you to get specific with who you decide to reach out to. By narrowing your communications to those who are most likely to make a sale, you save yourself precious time and effort.
Most importantly to lead generation, analytics spot opportunities. They show their users where potential sales might be hiding and direct you right to them. They’re perfect for converting an opportunity into a success. Find enough new customers and your brand will grow.
Once you’ve gathered your leads, make sure to be using some sort of appointment scheduling software. It makes meetings quick and easy to set up, improving the customer’s experience. If they need to reschedule, they can do it online, making sure you don’t lose a customer. This is especially helpful when you’re dealing with high volumes of meetings.
Optimize Your Prices
Pricing is crucial. It can make or break a sale. Price something too high and you make it inaccessible to your target market. Price something too low and consumers start to perceive your products and services as low quality and budget. Then there’s the added hit of making less money, meaning you have to make even more sales to successfully stay afloat.
Understanding your customer data analytics will help you nail your pricing. This even works in highly competitive industries. Pay close attention. The data will tell you what price is right for each product or service. The trick is to figure out how much people are willing to pay you. Data on consumer behavior and price will determine how shoppers will respond to various price points. This is perfect data for maximizing your profits. Take note that it’s entirely possible your prices should go up.
You don’t just want to analyze pricing analytics for your brand alone. You need to keep a firm eye on what your competitors are up to. 96% of consumers plan to compare prices before they make a purchase. People are constantly on the lookout for the biggest and best bargains. By analyzing your competitor’s price data, you can make sure your prices are optimal and eye-catching. This is a great technique for increasing both sales and revenue.
Improve Your Products & Services
Once your product or service is out on the market, your journey doesn’t stop there. Far from it! You need to be continuously gathering new data such as product analytics as well as taking into account the customer experience. Use this data to improve both your products and the customer’s experience. This doesn’t have to be expensive, either.
Customer feedback highlights key areas you can improve on, and it’s free. They often reveal problems with your marketing strategy, allowing you to adapt and take on your competition. This feedback is likely to reveal pain points with your products and the customer’s buying experience, too. A smart strategist would take these onboard and improve upon them. Great products with a great buying experience sell well.
Another great way of gathering useful data is to run an A/B test. For the uninitiated, these are when multiple versions of a variable are released at the same time. This could be the wording on an ad, the layout of a website, or just about anything else you want to test online. The version that gets the most engagement determines what version your business should go ahead with. Used correctly, A/B testing is a valuable tool for showing you what will likely be a success and what is likely to fail.
On the customer service end of things, sales call reporting analytics are invaluable. For one, their metrics help track how well your team is doing and point out areas for improvement. They also make it much easier to optimize the sales process. Analyzing the data, we can see how close potential customers are to making a purchase during a call. For those who don’t purchase, you can get data on why they didn’t. You can then use this to improve your sales call strategy.
Consumers want products and services to fit their unique needs. By constantly improving your products and services with the help of analytical data, it will allow you to give them exactly what they want. They’ll have a great experience, meaning they’ll want to keep on coming back. Better yet, they’ll put out a good word, and news of your brand spreads. Watch out — customers incoming!
Customer Segmentation
Consumers want brand messaging that speaks directly to them. Most shoppers are unlikely to react to generic, one-size-fits-all marketing. It’s that marketing that tries to appeal to everyone but in the process just comes off as boring. Your messaging should look very different depending on who you’re selling to. To add fuel to that fire, the popularity of a product is largely dependent on demographic factors such as gender, age, and buying habits.
Analytics show you how different people interact with your brand. This enables you to put consumer data into separate segments. For example, you could have separate segments for age range, location, habits, and so on. This does magic to your marketing strategy. Now you can custom-build messaging designed to speak directly to each individual segment.
Pinpointing your audience in this way makes your marketing more attractive to an individual’s interests. Think about it: Messaging that appeals to a 21-year-old student is going to be worlds apart from what appeals to an 80-year-old retiree. Use analytics to really understand who your audience is. Speak directly to your audience and they’re much more likely to spend money on your brand.
Enhanced Email Campaigns
Analytical data can enhance the way we communicate with our customers. This further drives your sales. Email is still one of the genuine ways for reaching out to your customers. Analytics can highlight specific words or phrases that your customers are likely to find appealing. By taking these into account when creating messaging, you can tailor-make your emails for engagement.
Analytics can help with your timing too. The time and day an email gets sent on can have an impact on its response rate. Knowing when the best time to send out communications maximizes the effectiveness of your campaigns. This in turn squeezes out those extra sales.
WHAT ANALYTICS SHOULD YOU USE?
You get the message. Analytics are powerful at driving sales when used with a data-driven strategy. You know how they can be used to drive sales. You also know that you need to be using analytics, but what exactly should you be using, and how?
To successfully use analytics in your sales strategy, you need to be tracking sales metrics. These metrics will then be analyzed to spot patterns and trends. Some metrics are more important than others. You need to be tracking the metrics that are important to your decision-making process. The most important sales metrics include:
- Sales by region
- Product performance
- Opportunities
- Sell-through rate
- Cannibalisation rate
- Sales growth
- Sales target
- Sales per rep
- Sales to date
- Average purchase value
- Lead conversion rate
HOW TO IMPLEMENT ANALYTICS TO DRIVE SALES
You’ve worked hard to gather important insights for your business. Now it’s time to act on them. Your insights are useless unless you do something with them. Don’t be afraid of change. It could be the best thing your business ever did. A cheeky pivot might be exactly what you need to drive your sales figures up. Here’s how to successfully implement those analytics into your sales strategy.
Stage 1: Recognise The Problem
In case you have a lot of data on your hands, you might be wondering what to do with it. It’s important to know which problems you are planning to solve. This tells you which metrics you need to be paying attention to.
Once you recognize your problem, you can decide how data can be best used to solve it. This enables you to customize your analysis so that the results are relevant to your sales strategy. Use different types of data so that you can see the big picture. This will help you fix problems throughout your sales strategy, from the product right through to the marketing.
Stage 2: Find An Analysis Tool & Analyse Your Data
The next step is to analyze your metric data. To do this, you’re going to need an analysis tool. Do some due research and find one that works with your business needs.
Once you’ve got the tools ready, crunch the numbers. Make sure that you have enough data for the analysis to be accurate. This should give you a view of behavioral patterns. Successes and failures become obvious. This allows you to make a smart and informed decision on how best to move ahead.
Stage 3: Ask The Experts & Get Educating
It takes a skilled eye to appropriately use data. Analytics experts are trained to interpret this data and have years of experience within their fields. Show your data to them, and they will be able to spot trends, opportunities, and mistakes affecting your business. For example, getting experts to analyze your call history and logs could reveal new ways to improve your productivity within your call center.
You need to be employing these analytics experts at all levels throughout your business. If they don’t know how to use analytics, train them! They’ll become a highly valuable asset to your team. There are plenty of data analytics courses out there to take advantage of.
Educating your team in analytics is a big step towards achieving your goals. The numbers don’t lie, either. Within companies where all employees are responsible for gathering analytical insights, 82% exceeded their goals. Compare that to companies where only key members are responsible for gathering analytical insights. Just 57% of these exceeded their goals.
By educating everyone to become analytics experts, your team will be able to integrate more insights into their work than ever before.
Stage 4: Deliver Change
It’s time to use all those insights and create some real change within your business. Don’t ignore your data. It’d be just like throwing your money in the trash! Take the data you have acquired and use it to improve your strategy. Get things right and you will see a healthy uptick in your sales.
PUTTING THE CUSTOMER FIRST
Designing a sales strategy that uses analytics puts the customer first. Customers love this because they feel listened to and can identify with your brand. This in turn drives sales for your business. But it’s not just marketing that analytics can help with. They can even help improve your sales strategy from the very beginning, at the product development phase. Get it right and enjoy the profits. So, get out there and start implementing analytics into your data-driven sales strategy.
Author’s Bio
Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform specializing in contact center analytics. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.
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