7 Reasons Why Manufacturing Marketers Should Adopt Omnichannel Data Analytics

Manufacturing companies are a powerhouse of customer and product data. According to a study from LNS Research and MESA International, effective data analytics can improve manufacturing performance across 3 key areas — product demand and production (46%), understanding plant performance across multiple metrics (45%) and providing service and support to customers faster (39%). However, an often-overlooked area to use omnichannel data analytics for manufacturers is marketing. In fact, well-analysed data can form the basis for running marketing campaigns for manufacturers, by providing information around industry trends, customer expectations, and competitive analysis. But first -

 

What is Omnichannel Data Analytics?

Omni-channel data analytics is the practice of understanding how consumers interact with a business, both online as well as offline. Data about the consumer’s behavior is collected at all touch points, and then processed in a transparent analytics environment, to gain actionable insights about consumer behavior. These insights are then used to create a strong data-based marketing strategy, make business decisions regarding cross-selling and up-selling, as well as to choose channels of outreach.

 

How Omnichannel Data Analytics Helps Marketers?

In this digital age where customer needs and expectations are evolving at a fast pace, manufacturing marketers have to offer a seamless experience to customers irrespective of the mode of interaction. Omni-channel data analytics enables manufacturers to create this connected experience for each customer on each interaction. When used efficiently, omnichannel data analytics helps marketers improve operational activities and enhance customer experience. It enables manufacturers to offer targeted and specific propositions based on customer’s history and behavior noted across multiple touch points. By analysing large amount of data produced every day, manufacturing marketers can understand the current position of their outreach campaigns with respect to how it was in the past. They can make also make predictive and prescriptive decisions which are critical to their ROI and growth. Various industries, including ecommerce, healthcare, and fintech, have already adopted omnichannel data analytics to drive their marketing campaigns and deliver data-driven experiences to customers. The manufacturing industry is only gradually picking up pace in leveraging omnichannel analytics to achieve their marketing KPIs. What manufacturing marketers need to understand is that their real asset is their data. They are missing out on maximizing its true potential when they do not fully leverage it via omni-channel data analytics and obtain actionable insights for critical marketing decisions.

 

Ways Manufacturing Marketers Benefit from Omnichannel Analytics

As we talk about the importance of analytics for the manufacturing marketers, we need to consider the key areas of business that can benefit from it. Here are crucial reasons why manufacturing marketers need omni-channel analytics:

 

1. Understand customer expectations: Analytics helps marketers assess trends as well as customer expectations. It enables businesses to take productive steps for the future and differentiate the otherwise similar products.

 

2. Obtain operational insights: Analytics help marketers to identify data silos, segregate the useful data to provide actionable insights and recommendations, which helps in value creation and market leadership. When marketers use analytics, they can get to the deep-rooted problems and the bottlenecks that hinder day-to-day activities.

 

3. Product profitability across channels: By closely looking at the performance of products through an analytics dashboard, marketers can understand the demand and supply cycle better. They can thereby understand which products to run more campaigns on, products that need paid promotions, and how sales stack up against each campaign. Data helps marketers identify which product yielded the maximum ROI.

 

4. Data-driven competitive analysis:Analytics helps marketers know what their competitors are doing and what they are doing better. Marketers can thereby change their strategies to position themselves better than their competitors. Analysis also proves useful for doing SWOT analysis, enabling manufacturers to modify their current as well as future business plans to retain their competitive advantage.

 

5. Single view of the customer for 1:1 personalized experience:Capture client intent across channel and touch points helps manufacturing marketers create holistic and consistent view of the key clientele. They can also leverage omnichannel data analytics to update client profile data iteratively across the buying journey and deliver personalized experiences.

 

6. Orchestrate superior customer experience:On the basis of customer data collected from various sources, manufacturing marketers can deliver the right product at the right time to the right audience, thereby meeting the customer expectations and providing a satisfactory CX.

 

Prepare for the digital today:In the digitally connected landscape, especially in the post COVID era, businesses are inclining towards brands that have a great digital presence. Analytics has the potential intelligence of initiating digital marketing activities for the overall growth of the business. Without analysis, online campaigns can fail miserably. Analytics not only helps understand the various sources of customer data but also their dynamically changing expectations.

 

Driving innovation in manufacturing with omnichannel data analytics

By offering measurable insights for all the data collected by a manufacturing business, analytics enables manufacturing marketers to compete with their competitors while delivering a highly personalized customer experience. However, omnichannel data analytics in manufacturing has the capability of benefitting not just the marketing function, but operations, sales, and the business as a whole. They can also use the insights to manage production costs, process flaws, inventory cost savings, supply chain, customer safety and compliance, removing unplanned downtime and better collaboration between teams.