6 Ways to Increase Revenue in 2020 with Market Intelligence Data

Data analytics tools are increasingly being used in businesses, but many people still make critical decisions based on assumptions and guesses. The most common reason for this is the lack of a single, integrated source of information that gives executives accurate and consistent data whenever needed.

As consumer behavior changes erratically after the pandemic hit, it is almost impossible to make guesses and assumptions about the market or rely on biased, survey-driven market share data. It is now more important than ever for organizations to utilize machine learning technology to understand market trends and consumer needs so that they can position themselves accordingly. For this purpose, your marketing and sales teams need impartial data intelligence to conduct sales analysis and implement strategies that will help them to increase business revenue. 

Let’s look at 6 ways to increase revenue in 2020 with market intelligence data.

1. Identify consumer behavior and attention

You can start by identifying the segments with maximum consumer attention and determine their buying patterns. The key is to understand your buyer’s shopping behavior, product preferences, and average amount spent per checkout. 

Such insights will help you to understand your consumer behavior better and answer questions such as:

1. What product categories are receiving maximum consumer attention?
2. Which brands and retailers do the consumers prefer?
3. What is their preferred shopping channel (online or retail)?
4. What underlying needs are the consumers looking to fulfill with these purchases?

2. Shorten the sales cycle by focusing on demand

With limited resources and delayed stock deliveries, it is not feasible to concentrate on your entire product and brand offerings. Now more than ever, every resource needs to be used effectively to produce, market, and sell the inventory that is trending the most in the market right now. You should plan and target your efforts on trending segments to cut down on costs and reach revenue goals faster. 

To be able to do this, you need to have answers to questions like:

1. Which market segment category is generating the most sales?
2. What are the total units sold for a category against the total inventory units?
3. Which retailers and stores are selling the most items?

3. Target new demographics

This is probably the best time to revisit your older buyer personas and revise them according to changing market demands. By doing so, you will identify new buyer profiles that didn’t exist in the market before, but are increasingly growing now. 

An example of this would be the group of 30-40-year-old people who preferred going to the gym pre-pandemic, but now they are buying and setting up workout equipment at their homes. To identify and target new opportunities in your market segment, you should answer questions such as:

1. How a market’s sales have changed after pandemic?
2. How the market share is trending across states?
3. What are the reviews of your competitor’s customers in the same market segment?

4. Reduce loss and risk

In such challenging times, organizations cannot afford a loss, whether it is losing sales to competitors, failing to meet client expectations, or inventory investments going to waste. 

So, it is appropriate to play safe and identify factors such as:

1. What are the emerging competitor brands in your market segment? 
2. Are consumers viewing your products but end up buying from a competitor?
3. What are the ratings and reviews submitted by your customers?

5. Perform whitespace analysis

Whitespace analysis can lead you to discover new opportunities within a crowded market segment. You can start by analyzing various buying patterns of your own customers and other potential buyers in the market. Look for unnoticed segments in the market that can be utilized to address buyer pain points or gain more traction than competitors.  

See if you can answer questions such as:

1. What other categories are your customers interested in that you don’t offer services in yet?
2. What product attributes are the most important to consumers?
3. What other market segments can you capture to increase sales?
4. What are the market segments and categories where your competitors are making more sales than you by state and store?

6. Implement optimal pricing strategy to build the customer relationship

Consumers have certain expectations from leading brands and retailers to help them adapt to the challenges posed by the pandemic. So, it is important to be vocal about how your brand is operating and helping its consumer-base in these difficult times. See how your brand can position itself in the market right now with certain pricing and promotional strategies to ensure economic growth and customer loyalty. 

You can answer questions such as:

1. What are the regular and promo prices of different products in your target market?
2. What is the nature of the reviews submitted by your customers?
3. How are your competitor’s products priced?

Pre-pandemic, market giants based their marketing, sales, and pricing strategies on experience and intuition. But after the pandemic hit, entire industries are hit by uncertainties regarding annual business revenue. It is more important than ever to utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to become data-driven and implement sales and revenue plans based on near-time market trends.

An ML-enabled market intelligence platform deep crawls market data and covers thousands of data points, brands, and categories stocked at major retail stores in both in-store and online channels to give you near real-time, accurate, granular reports.

Previously published at https://pricingexcellence.com/2020/07/how-revenue-analytics-will-empower-your-teams-in-2020/