How predictive analytics can help businesses create a successful marketing strategy

To make your products or services successful in the market, you need to know how to market them. 

Predicting market trends, however, is easier said than done. Trends and customer preferences vary with time—the market is never set in stone.

That said, marketers can tackle this dynamic market by using the power of predictive data analytics, which involves using past and real-time data to predict future outcomes, helping marketers gear up for the future. 

In this post, let’s take a look at how predictive analytics can help marketers create successful marketing campaigns.

It helps you identify the right audience 

Marketers need to know who their target audience is before they start marketing their products and services. To be more precise, they need to have a deep understanding of their market—and predictive analytics can help.

With advancements in data collection techniques, large amounts of data can be collected, such as past sales figures, consumer behaviour and demographic data. The collected data can help businesses build consumer profiles that include consumer preferences, needs, and even the circumstances across every purchase that occurs.

With a clear picture of who their ideal customer is, marketers can predict the likelihood of success across their marketing strategies. 

Predictive analytics helps us develop marketing strategies

Just knowing who your customers are isn’t enough—you also need to know the best way to approach them and get them to notice your product or service.

Qualitative data, like age, gender and even race, can help marketers predict which kinds of marketing techniques will prove successful for a particular demographic. 

Studies show that 56% of all Australians research products and services online. Predictive analytics use quantitative data to help marketers predict how their target customers will react to their marketing tactics and how likely they are to purchase their offerings.

Predictive analytics helps marketers avoid mistakes

Marketing is like walking on a minefield—one wrong step, and it’s all over.

Sometimes, marketers try to experiment with different sales tactics, only to end up with a marketing failure on their hands. A failed marketing campaign means losing money and respect, something no marketer can afford to go through. 

If famous marketing failures of the past, like the introduction of New Coke by the Coca-Cola company back in 1985, have taught us anything, it’s that marketers should always look for red flags before going ahead with their campaigns.

Fortunately, with predictive analysis, marketers can use qualitative and quantitative data from their past sales and marketing campaigns to predict which strategies, approaches, and tactics will be successful and which won’t.

Marketers can improve a company’s relationship with its customers

Maintaining a good relationship with your customers is advantageous for any marketer—you want your customers to keep coming back for more. With predictive analytics, it’s much easier to maintain these mutually beneficial relationships.

Regular interactions provide plenty of information about each individual like their buying habits, tastes, preferences, and spending patterns. Using this data, marketers can now predict each customer’s journey and determine what kinds of products and services they may be interested in, in the future.

Knowing what a customer expects from you, and giving them what they want, can drive up revenue, loyalty and engagement in the long run—a hard-earned win for marketers in today’s market.

You don’t need a crystal ball to predict sales—you just need data analytics 

Predicting the future isn’t a thing of fiction nowadays, especially with all the technology that allows us to see what’s unfolding and what we can expect in the near and distant future.

Predictive data analytics has come a long way and with its insights, you can give your customers what they want, even before they know they want it.