Much has been said about the pros and cons of predictive marketing. At its worst, the term “predictive marketing” is used as a crutch on which under-performing marketing departments lean when performance falters (“We just used the data we were provided!”). At its best, predictive marketing is a powerful tool that allows businesses to determine, with certainty, how marketing campaigns will perform. This information is not only useful for bringing in qualified leads; it also allows the business to plan for capacity needs and product development.

First Things First

Assuming that you have your data gathering ducks in a row; your first step in developing a successful predictive marketing strategy is to create a goal. Your goal may be to bring in new business or to get to market before a competitor.

Whatever the case may be, your goal must be specific. How much new business do you want? Be reasonable here; while increasing new business by 500% may sound awesome, the business must be able to support the work that this increase will create.

Create Your Treasure Map

With your clearly stated goal in place, it is time to map out precisely how to get there. Predictive marketing allows the business to reverse engineer a strategy based on the goal. It relies on identifying ideal clients, assessing market share and determining lead ratios to assign a specific dollar figure to obtaining a qualified lead. From there, strategist can determine how many qualified leads result in sales and the average value of each sale.

Predictive marketing is creating innovative, risk-averse methods for developing a thriving stream of new client acquisition strategies. It is allowing companies to make marketing decisions based on data-driven hypotheses and forever changing the way marketing goals are set.

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