To stay competitive in today’s fast changing market, companies are collecting even larger volumes of data hoping to spot the next big growth opportunity or operational advantage. For marketers, data collected through customer interactions, web analytics, transactions, inventory movement and even support desks can help provide direction and valuable insight into emerging problems or opportunities. The data is more and more pervasive, but the real challenge is to determine what to look for and what questions to ask when customer behavior is changing in such rapid, dramatic and unexpected ways.
The sheer volume of data collected is a mixed blessing. It can be hard to gather, merge and analyze data from multiple sources quickly and efficiently. And once this data is collected, most companies and marketing teams don’t have the bandwidth to sift through it manually looking for new angles and relationships. Even with the help of data scientists, identification of unexpected changes often comes long after they occur—when their potential impact has eroded, and first-mover competitive advantage has diminished.
Using AI to Surface Useful data
With the help of AI-driven analytics, marketers can understand their business in a way that’s not been previously possible. Through intelligent tools, often called augmented analytics or automated business analysis, marketers can automatically and constantly analyze large volumes of data from a variety of sources and identify the problems or opportunities in an organization’s business and marketing strategy.
By implementing AI-driven automated business analysis, marketers can also uncover the root cause of evolving trends and customer behaviors—saving countless hours of work and quickly translating these insights into changes in go-to-market strategies and campaigns.
In 2020, the coronavirus completely changed the way people lived, worked and shopped. These shifts had a profound effect on even the most common products, like the spike in demand for toilet paper and hand sanitizer. However, for companies that didn’t offer essential products, it was important to find a way to maintain a connection with customers during a time of complex uncertainty. Companies using AI to analyze business data were better equipped to find these areas of opportunity because even if they didn’t know what to look for, their software did.
In one example, marketers at a leading bath and beauty brand noticed a trend in sales that showed an opportunity to grow sales when revenue was generally falling. This “green shoot” of opportunity is a great example of how the next great marketing strategy can be hiding in business data in plain sight, but impossible to find without help.
