Data-driven marketing vs. Conventional Marketing

Chapter 3

Overcoming Obstacles

Causality

Uncertainty around concluding that which action or campaign caused which effect.

In other way marketers find it complex to correlate relationship between cause and effect of marketing affairs, distinctly.

This ostensibly complicated roadblock, can have a very painless and simple solution, these days called MVP (Minimum Viable Project/ Plan or Product).

An MVP is a plan for a product or a solution with sufficient features, to assess and validate a nearly completed idea, early in a product or a solution development cycle.

Eric Ries, who introduced the concept of the minimum viable product as part of his Lean Startup methodology, simply explains the grounds of an MVP in this manner:” It is the version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least amount of effort”.

Accordingly, marketers can apply this method to a marketing activity or a campaign, by executing the idea on a control group and predict the results of the final product or solution, as a whole, with a great extent of certainty.

The concept and the term of the MVP aside, this methodology seems to be rational and straightforward. In another word, it makes sense.

Example:

Airbnb

With no money to build a business, the founders of Airbnb used their own apartment to validate their idea to create a market offering short-term, peer-to-peer rental housing online. They created a minimalist website, published photos and other details about their property, and found several paying guests almost immediately.

(Source: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/minimum-viable-product/)

But why do majority of marketers avoid to perform this way?

The main reason is that the individual or group performance evaluation of marketers have been usually based on the quantity or the quality of ?the plans and implementations, and not the actual result. Although this trend is changing and more KPIs are being defined around actual result and impact in the market, which is most importantly measurable and improvable.?

Data relevant challenges

Capturing the customers data and analyzing it appropriately, is a very common hurdle across majority of the companies and even several industries, but all may be resolved with the tools, proper strategies and today’s technological means.

Nevertheless, B2B companies may claim a legitimate data collection challenge, since the actual process of sales is being carried out through numerous channels or partners, and not directly to the end users.

However, there are also potential solutions for this obstacle as well, such as channel partner data sharing.

This methodology requires the partners/ channels to be convinced, ensured and explained about the intention, usage and security of the shared customers data.

At the end of the day, this data will have a positive impact on the sales, while expediting the quality of customer engagement and enhanced satisfaction, thus there are no rational reason for the sales partners to avoid sharing anonymous information with the supplier about the end users.

Another methodology is to come up with a plan to collect consumers data. Here is an interesting example of a solution, mentioned in Data-Driven Marketing book, written by Mark Jeffery.

Frequent Drinker Campaign

“Suntory is one of the largest liquor distillers in Japan and brews a beer called Suntory Malts.

The three major brands of beer in Japan are Asahi, Kirin, and Sapporo. Suntory Malts beer is in the third tier of popularity, in terms of sales revenue and brand awareness. In the late 1990s, Suntory 36 Data-Driven Marketing did something through online means, that at the time was particularly innovative: it created a frequent drinker web site.

Suntory sells all of its beer indirectly through beer distributors, bars, restaurants, grocery stores, and vending machines. The idea of the web site was that consumers would come to the web site and input the number of beers they drank, given by codes on the bottles, and in return get points. With the points, customers got to purchase silly hats, bottle tops with their name on it, or the chair that is too uncomfortable to sit in.

What brilliant marketing! At the peak of the campaign, Malts reported 300,000 visitors a month to the web site: these were the high value customers, the frequent drinkers. And the web site enabled the collection of data for direct marketing of other Suntory products”.

Large scales survays or focus groups can be another lower rated solution for B2B firms, to adapt and use collecting data and insights from the customers.

Further obstacles and corresponding solutions, alongside ethics of data collection are main topic of the next chapter.

#datacollection #datadriven #marketing #datamanagement #Suntory #innovation