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In today’s ever changing marketing landscape, which, as it happens, just about every single company is a participant in, whether they want to be or not, data is abundant, but actionable insight is in short supply, and worse still, sometimes not even recognizable as actionable.
So where is the intersection between Inbound Marketing and datawarehousing and more importantly, how can you, the digital marketing person, make sure those points are working to drive customer engagement and ultimately, sales?
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It starts with your sales process.
If your sales process is all online, you probably have a very clear idea of what people are doing, and when and what they bought, though you may not exactly know why, despite your algorithms.
But what about a business that is a blend, with people asking for a quote, but then, maybe buying?
You already know that most people who hit your website are not ready to buy on their first visit, nor maybe even on their 5th visit (when tthey have visited your website 250 times, as some have visited this one, then probably you can say they are a qualified lead).
Here is where the first major intersection exist.
Your datawarehouse, in whatever form it takes, can tell you how many visits someone made, what they visited, perhaps even what pre-determined questions they asked.
Your Inbound Marketing platform is where you will have to put this information to good use to make sure one of those visits is the one that actually answers their questions, whether it be price, product or benefit and turns them into a sale, even if that sale is actually eventually made off-line (but if it is made off-line, make sure your sales force does it homework and records it in the system).
At high data volumes, the above complex interplay of events requires a datawarehouse and related systems, i.e., Inbound Marketing and CRM, to handle as much of the process as automatically as possible, while reserving the parts of the process best done by H2H (human-to-human) to the humans.
I said it starts with your sales process, but in reality, there is a process before that, the imagination part, hopefully informed by actual sales transaction data or lacking that, educated guesses about the potential market.
That process is the development of a buyer persona.
There is a lot of information out there about deciphering how and why people behave the way they do.
It works a lot better when you can formulate a hypothesis and run a test and collect the data and refine your answer. I like to use a mindmap when I do mine, and you can try out our method with this handy kit.
Take a complex sales process, for example, the introduction and launching of a new aircraft.
There is an almost infinite amount of data regarding passenger demographics, routes, airports, taxes, operating and maintenance cost, marketing, and seat pricing, to name but a few of the factors that might go into designing, developing and selling a new airplane.
This is one of those areas where you can actually get very close to knowing each and everyone of the potential buyers and it is very much a relationship based sales process.
You can also get very close to knowing the details about the existing fleet, and by extension, when they will need replacing.
Yet, it all comes down to a hard fought mud fight to make the deals, and keep them closed once made.
This is an almost ideal use of datawarehousing (really, just a system to keep track of what you know and report it) and marketing, to really target not just aircraft buyers, but in the case of aircraft component manufacturers, to target aircraft manufacturers.
These are just two of the areas where we are seeing 'big data', however you define it, and Inbound Marketing techniques come into play.
There, are of course, touch points all along the process, and it depends on your role and view point as to how to best use these rapidly evolving toolsets.
Keep one key point in mind, the core is Content, and content is still generated by Humans as it most likely will be for a while longer, if it is to be compelling, engaging and interesting. The systems can only shine a light on where you might want to go content wise.
People who read this also read:
5 Reasons a Datawarehouse is Critical to a Solid Balanced Scorecard
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