From Gut to Growth: What ‘Data-driven decision making’ looks like for the modern-day Marketer.

I’ve missed this! Writing my unsolicited thoughts and experiences on (digital) paper. But hey, I’m back with what I can only describe as a banger! A marketing one ;-)

Data-Driven Decision Making (DDDM) is as much of a buzz word -or in this case ‘buzz-phrase’- in the marketing world as ‘visibility’ is in the corporate word. They fit together like a Russian doll. It’s used to spice up resumes and when brandishing your interview speeches - you know you do it Jane. But what really is DDDM and why should you care about it as a marketer?

Well, that’s why I’m here. To give you my rendition of what it is, and realistically*, how you can really hone it.

What is Data-Driven Decision Making?

HubSpot describes, Data driven decision making as the process of using facts, metrics, and insights to guide strategic business decisions. If I was to break it down, I would say that it is letting data (as opposed to your gut) tell you what to do. This looks like, basing your marketing decisions on data, from problem-identification, goal setting to post-campaign analysis. Reviewing your data constantly and asking the question, ‘What is this data telling me?’.

To drive the point home, I’ll use the example of an FMCG Marketing Manager, Jane, whose goal is to drive increased penetration of their brand in a highly competitive category. This is you for the rest of this post and we’ll take a DDDM journey together.

Where and how do I interact with data?

'Data is everywhere!' I know, cliche, but ain’t it true! As a marketer you have access to multiple sources of data. Whether it is quantitative data from your company dashboards or digital channel data on engagement, reach and impressions. Or more qualitative data like angry tweets about your product or feedback consumers give during that on-ground activation. All are sources of data and they are available to you every day, you just have to know where to look.

Sure, but why should I care?

Well Jane, statistically, companies who use data to drive decision making experience 5-8 times higher ROI on their Marketing investment according to Invescpro . Yes, remember how Jesus turned the 2 fish and loaf of bread into a lot? That could be you with your 2 cents of BMI , -or you know Millions, maybe. Jokes aside, DDDM helps you drive results and impact for all the hard work and tears you put into your campaigns and activities. You get to understand the real reason why @kama254** says he’d “… rather swallow needles than try out your brand” and probably try to fix it, as opposed to just ignoring that tweet and hoping it goes away, you very well know KOT or is it X, do not forget. You also are able to craft more compelling and effective campaigns that actually meet the functional and emotional needs of you target consumers, I mean we’ve all seen Spotify wrapped, you can’t tell me you haven’t been excited to see how many minutes you played Adele (while crying) all year or Bien, because it's well . . . Bien!

Okay then, how do I leverage it, actionably?

Well, it all starts from setting clear and SMART goals, that will be what you are trying to achieve for a set period of time.

These can look like:

1. Drive +100bps penetration growth in the next 6 months - because you have been losing penetration in the last quarter.
2. Grow Market share by 20% in 12 months in Modern Trade
3. Improve brand health metrics of salience and differentiation by +30bps in 12 months

Now that you are clear what you are chasing, time to dive into the data. You want to use as many quality data sources as you have access to. This means sources that are accurate, relevant, timely and fit for the intended purpose. This can look like internal Meta analytics data, Marketing dashboards, internal sales data, qualitative feedback from consumers and even focus groups among so many others.

Clean the data up, make sure it is ready for the next part which is … you guessed it! Analyzing the data you just got! This is basically looking at the data and noticing any patterns, trends and correlation. It might look like noticing that your sales dipped in one quarter at about the same time competition launched an aggressive online campaign. Or it may be that penetration declined, but double clicking on the data shows your penetration declined in only two regions where cultural or seasonal effects saw the category decline in penetration for a period.

Next is the fun part, making the data-driven decisions and running low-risk experiments. It’s quite straight forward really, the data showed you that you are declining in a specific region because of a specific preference or culture of the region, well then, you probably should focus on that region by doing a targeted campaign that communicates the benefits of your product in response to their pain points and drives up consideration of your product. Well, you can choose to try different activities targeted on solving the problem and review performance to see whether you need to iterate or not. On digital this looks like doing A/B testing on copy to see which one gets better engagement based on your objective.

And once you are done of course you create a feedback loop where you monitor and iterate. Did the metrics change with your experiment vs initial data? If it did, yay! if it didn’t, you simply iterate and test it again.

See, sounds quite easy right? No? Well, the good news, while you may not be born a data guru like Mark, your resident data whizz, getting insights from data is a skill that can be learnt and a muscle that when exercised will grow. So regularly look at your data and ask yourself what the data is telling you, and take it from there.

**subjective 🙂

** Not you Kama, I meant a fictional Kamau*

References:

1. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/data-driven-decision-making
2. https://www.invespcro.com/blog/data-driven-marketing

#marketingstrategy #datadrivendecisions #growthmarketing #marketinganalytics