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Running a business is a quick way to push your decision fatigue to the limit. While you have more data and tools than ever, the glut of information can create a paralysis of analysis.
Don’t feel alone on this one. A McKinsey survey showed that most business leaders believe that most of the time they spend on decision-making is ineffective.
Scientists haven’t yet created programs to make all of your hard decisions, but decision intelligence tools can remove some of the heavy lifting.
What is decision intelligence, and which tools do you need to be using right now? Learn everything you need to know about decision-making strategies.
Key Takeaways:
- Decision intelligence tools process data to give you predictive analysis and solid recommendations.
- CRM software, buyer intent data, competitive analysis, automation, CMS, and web analytics are vital decision intelligence tools.
- Current decision intelligence software is worth testing but may not be necessary for your team.
- Predictive tools keep you competitive, help you make better decisions, and give you credibility with your team.
What Are Decision Intelligence Tools?
If you look up decision intelligence, you’re going to get a lot of jargon and deep scientific bluster. Simply put, decision intelligence is a system that processes your available data and gives you recommendations for a course of action.
Powerful decision intelligence tools include programs that gather and organize your information. The next evolution in that technology is artificial intelligence, which makes predictions and provides recommendations on its own.
Developers are improving these tools to automate the data collection, analysis, and decision-making process. Depending on the complexity or gravity of a decision, a human may not get involved.
What Are Examples of Decision Intelligence Tools?
A common example of decision intelligence tools is loan approval. In the good old days, you talked with your local banker, who would approve (or deny 😬) your loan.
Now, lenders input an applicant’s data into the computer and receive a decision. These tools allow institutions to handle the loan process electronically and disburse funds more rapidly with less risk.
Another example is inventory management software. A small business owner doesn’t have to run dozens of calculations to know when to order something. A program can make the decision and reorder products by considering sales volume, the season, the budget, and any other applicable details.
What Are the 6 Decision Intelligence Tools That Should Be in Your Marketing Toolkit?
The following tools are not specifically decision intelligence software. Still, many of these offerings have predictive analytics to help you make decisions.
Keep the following decision intelligence tools in your martech stack.
1. CRM
Successful businesses run on strong relationships, and customer relationship management platforms are essential tools.
Use a CRM with built-in predictive analytics to gain deeper insights into your customers and their patterns. The information is critical to building buyer personas that don’t suck.
Predictive features in a CRM show you which customers to target more aggressively. The best CRM products include HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho.
2. Buyer Intent Data
Buyer intent data is an exploding field that uncovers online behaviors from your target audience. As the name suggests, you find out where prospects are in their buyer journeys and forecast who to target.
Buyer intent is a competitive sector, so you can probably customize a good deal by haggling with your sales rep. Shop around between companies like DealSignal, Cognism, and ZoomInfo to see who can score you a bargain.
3. Competitive Analysis
Other essential decision intelligence tools perform competitive analysis. These programs show you how your brand stacks up against your rivals.
Use these to determine your market position and track trends. Then review the data to isolate new opportunities and ways to differentiate yourself in your product and messaging.
Try Semrush, Open SEO Stats, SpyFu, or BuzzSumo to uncover how your competitors are doing. These tools can tell you which keywords and subjects to focus on and when.
4. Marketing Automation Software
Automate your marketing to gain multiple benefits. First, you save time creating and executing campaigns, which gets your messaging out in a timely fashion.
Furthermore, your decision intelligence programs and models live and die by the data you feed them. Automating your campaigns and collecting rapid feedback makes your decision intelligence tools and models more accurate.
Your CRM will likely already have automation features, but you may need more programs or plug-ins. Mailchimp and HubSpot are good choices for email, while Sprout Social and Brand24 are great for social media automation.
5. Content Management System
Marketing automation also means your competitors are pumping out content constantly. The only way to keep up is with a content management workflow that keeps you on track with scheduling, uploading, editing, and examining your content.
Consider WordPress or Drupal for a CMS. The data is critical to your data intelligence process.
6. Website Analytics
Your marketing should be sending people to your website, where they’ll hopefully engage and eventually contact you for a purchase.
What if your marketing is getting them to your website, but then the buyer’s journey comes to an abrupt halt? Use website analytics to understand your target audience and segment them effectively.
Usually, web data is the first piece of your decision intelligence tools and is easy to access. Google Analytics is still the tried-and-true first stop for this information.
What About Decision Intelligence Software?
Dedicated decision intelligence software pulls all the data from your other programs into one system to generate decisions. The software models potential scenarios and predicts the results of each choice.
In theory, you could work with any company offering decision intelligence tools. However, RevOptics is worth the free trial specifically for your marketing.
The software tells you which opportunities to prioritize and the most effective activities to move buyers through the funnel. You get direction on where to adjust marketing budgets and actionable insights.
Why Do You Need To Be Using Decision Intelligence Tools Right Now?
Decision intelligence tools can offer your company the following advantages:
- Stay competitive: Count on your competitors to be using the latest tech to get ahead. Be ready to fight back with top tools and strategies.
- Gain confidence: Minimize guesswork and present your ideas more confidently. Make paralysis of analysis a thing of the past (mostly).
- Execute more rapidly: Time is money, and decision intelligence tools make you more agile than ever. Studies show companies that cut decisions from nine months to one month and saved millions.
- Get more buy-in: Increased success from data-driven decisions gets you more support from the executive team. You can justify budgets and reduce pushback.
- Cover your tail: When something doesn’t work, you’ll have concrete data to defend your actions. You can also pinpoint what to do better next time.
Don’t delay in accessing the benefits of decision intelligence tools.
How Does MIG Use Decision Intelligence Tools To Maximize Your Marketing Efforts?
New tools mean an investment in time and training to get up to speed, and that’s time you may not have to spare. At MIG, our expert team knows how to use decision intelligence to produce content that gets results.
Contact us to take advantage of our content builder services. We generate millions of views monthly, and we’ll make sure you get full value out of decision intelligence tools for marketing.
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