by Prakash Patel (@prakashpatel_1) Let’s use the advancement of technologies, the real-time nature of the web and the tools to harvest relationships with our consumers and target them with relevant messages or experiences. This isn’t NEW. This isn’t 2.0 and this isn’t ground-breaking.
It is through data collection and interrogation that marketers may glean insight, which provides intelligence to drive more targeted, impactful, relevant communication.
This is one of the oldest forms of marketing, an area that has been ignored for far too long, either through lack of experience, expertise or know-how.
The data-driven strategy may not win you a Grand Prix at the Loeries, but it should win you Grands Prix at the Assegais and APEX, and, more importantly, greater ROI for your clients.
We all know
We now live in a world that is in a constant flux of transformation, a world where once (many years ago), people believed advertisers, and one-size-fits-all marketing was acceptable.
But, in today’s world, through technological advancements and array of digital platforms, customers have never before been so informed and educated. It has made them more sophisticated and demanding in what they want and what they expect from brands.
It can even be argued that brands are no longer in control of their marketing. Consumers now call the shots — they can, with a click of mouse, simply make or even break a brand through influencing others.
In numerous surveys, it is clear that people no longer trust advertising; a staggering 79%+ prefer and trust recommendations from friends, family and others above advertising.
We are now experiencing unprecedented influence by consumers as they share their personal experiences in forums, give reviews and unashamedly belittle brands.
There may be trouble ahead
Let’s face the music — opportunities for marketers have never been more challenging — or there may be trouble ahead.
To now get noticed and ahead of your competitors, brands need to get smarter (not necessarily work harder) to stand out from the noise of unprecedented advertising and communications to win the hearts and minds of its consumers with authentic relevant communications or experiences, while creating a consistent brand experience, regardless of medium.
We sometimes forget that consumer do not distinguish channels the way we may do. We talk about ATL, BTL and TTL, and then try and fit in digital and social media. The consumer sees one brand, not an array of fragmented messages.
Consumers more demanding
What consumers do want is easy accessible information, quickly, and in a format they desire and in the context of where they are. If they don’t get what they want, they will go elsewhere (while telling everyone about their experience).
So, in any economic climate, brands cannot afford to sit back and hope for the best. They need to not only stop wasting budgets but stop annoying their potential customers with untargeted, inconsistent and irrelevant communications.
The challenge facing brands in this fragmented landscape is understanding these traits and changing the communication and experiences to explore the best techniques and channels available for optimising consumer engagement and experience across every touch-point.
So how do you get smarter?
One area where marketers can get smarter is by using their data. For the moment, I am not talking about only ‘Big Data’ (I will cover that another day) but back to basics — raw data, small data. For me, it’s not the size of the data you have but what you are doing with it to drive your strategy and, ultimately, marketing.
One of my biggest bugbears is hearing clients or strategist talking about how much data they have, how many likes they have got on Facebooks, how many followers the base has grown year-on-year, etc. My answer always is: So how are you using the data you have collected? Otherwise, stop collecting data and asking for likes etc while you don’t have a more thorough plan.
There’s gold in that data
As this is my first column on 3D (Data-Driven & Digital), I thought I would:
- start with a quick introduction into my past experience in how data had the biggest impression in my early career in advertising;
- then define (through this MarkLives column):
- what is data-driven marketing,
- what it means to marketers,
- how can marketers find those hidden nuggets; and
- then start exploring data-and digital trends and news,
- including how to comply to a data-driven and digital strategy across today’s ever changing consumer touch-points.
How data had an everlasting impression on my marketing career
I started my career in marketing after graduating in the early ’90s.
It was a time when marketing departments had maybe one or two personal computers; mainframe systems the size of a room that stored customer data in silos; when data was transferred via magnetic tapes, or later on via cartridges, then floppy disks (yes, way before 3.5” disks and CDs); when mobile phones weren’t even commercialised for the masses; and true digital-marketing revolution hadn’t even begun — in my experience, the this only really started happening in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
So, for most marketers, it was business as usual, using a list of well-documented marketing channels such as ATL and BTL, where direct mail was still one of the biggest marketing BTL communication channels.
But, one thing I learnt way back then, was the power of data through what was then called data bureaux (agencies) — a place where I started my early career.
At that time, I was working for a company called LiveData Marketing, whose proposition was simple. We designed and built marketing databases which extracted and stored prospect- and customer-data, outside of IT systems or warehouses, that could then be used for personalised marketing, based upon insights and intelligence.
We offered everything, from cleaning data (through rigorous data-hygiene routines — for example, deduplication and merging/purging) to ensure we had a holistic view of customers through to suppressing records that were deemed unsuitable, or against national suppression lists such as the Mailing Preference List (MPS) or the TPS list, to ensure we didn’t mail or call people who had opted out from direct marketing — thus ensuring they were targeted and relevant.
We then appended additional information to give a more three-dimensional profile of customers and their behaviors, as well as using this info to find new prospecting lists from data-brokers.
Case #1: Irrelevant marketing and dirty data
Through data analysis and demographics, we learnt that one brand (which was selling lawnmowers), were targeting people who lived in high-story flats — who didn’t even have a garden.
Another targeted people with incorrect or abusive salutations, which stemmed from irate call-centre agents who, after their call, would add their own comments to client records in their databases. This data was then simply extracted and mailed without any form of data processing. You can imagine the complaints when said customers were mailed as Dear Illegal Immigrant, Dear Bastard, Dear Dick… many more come to mind. These are actual examples that I witnessed.
Data-processing and building the marketing database were just one aspect. The most interesting part of database (data-driven) marketing was the interrogation and data analysis we did on client data — from basic queries through to building predictive and behavior modeling, and calculating #LifeTimeValue (LTV) models — to ensure we had moved away from mass mailing to more intelligent, targeted and relevant value-driven marketing.
Case #2: Maximising ROI through data analysis — how data analysis gave us the ‘holy-shit number’ to add value to the bottom line.
There are two cases that come to mind here.
One is when we pitched for a cash-and-carry account (Nurdin & Peacock); we won the account based upon simply finding out who its most-valued customer was. A simple question that the marketer couldn’t answer. Let me explain.
We were given thousands of records of all its customers and their transactional value. Through data analyses, we basically broke down the customer base into ‘deciles’ based upon revenue and margin. Through this analysis, we identified the top 20% of its customer base, all the way down to the bottom decile. We even identified its most-valued customer, who wasn’t even known or managed by its account-management team.
Based on these findings alone, the company restructured its sales account-management team and focused on the top 20% of its customer base who generated 80% of the revenue (the classic Pareto principle of 80:20 at play).
The second, and most recent, example is when, through basic data analysis and interpretation, we were able to highlight staggering ‘holy-shit numbers’ in the potential loss of earning through online booking. We did this by analysing user interaction with a hotel website, and mapped out all of the areas where users had started a journey thinking about booking a holiday and dropped off, through to starting the booking process and dropping off.
Through these learnings, we were able to highlight key moments of interactions where, if changes were made in user experience (UX) and content (within context), we could potentially lift the drop out to maximise bookings.
Data-driven marketing
What is data-driven marketing (DDM)? In a nutshell, just like the famous Ronseal ad back in 1994, it is exactly what it says: marketing that is driven by data (albeit insights and intelligence).
For me, DDM is all about using insights from data, gathered from (or obtained on) either customers or prospects, which is processed to create a holistic view of its base and is then interrogated, using tools and software, to glean intelligence to help inform more targeted and relevant marketing communication that is impactful to the recipient.
The challenges we have is that, while we all may know there are hidden nuggets in the mountain of records we have collected or worked hard in obtaining, the true challenge is how and where do we start? By having a plan and strategy that everyone buys into.
As with any marketing initiative or big idea, we need a vision and objectives.
Driving an organisational data-driven strategy
The first step is to ensure that all departments, and the company as a whole, become data-driven and work together. One of the biggest hurdles I have witnessed is departments leading to dysfunctional or incomplete strategies.
For example, the IT department may think it owns the data and systems (having spent millions of rands investing in the state-of-the-art CRM system), whereas marketing owns the relationship or communication.
This is exactly the area we played in many decades ago, working with both IT and marketing department about creating marketing systems that were not just owned by IT or marketing but owned by both, where one was not hindering the other.
The starting point
So, for me, the starting point is putting together a company charter where departments have buy-in from the top down, a combined vision, buy into the changes required, and work together holistically towards meeting the goal of the company as a whole.
In the next few columns, I will be looking at further defining DDM and the challenges facing organisations in both equipping themselves with the tools and processes and in driving data-driven strategies.
Prakash Patel (@prakashpatel_1) is chief strategy officer at Fogg Experiential Design, a technically-enabled, digitally-led, creatively-inspired, data-driven and strategically-focused design company based in Johannesburg and Cape Town. He has over 25 years of experience in advertising and data planning, a passion for integrated marketing strategies, and believes that the holy grail of marketing has always been — and always will be — data. Prakash will contribute the monthly “#3D” (Data-Driven & Digital) column to MarkLives.com, exploring how data-driven and digital marketing can add value to marketing communication.
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Niche nature
