Insights

As we discussed in our article on digital marketing complexity, smart marketing teams have realised that a few highly connected nodes of data can effectively drive business change.

With big data having become a thoroughly discussed topic, what has been missing is how companies can best interrogate data to drive meaningful change.

The most appealing aspect of big data is the ability to study larger sample sizes. These larger sample sizes enable companies to better examine, with more accuracy, how customer behavioural responses vary for different segments.

But what happens after the data has been collected and analysed? How does a marketing team turn this into an action that will create change? And what questions should teams be asking when analysing this data in order to turn it into action?

One key question we like to ask is ‘what data will enable me to get the best and most competitive insight?’

At a fundamental level, the success of a company’s business and digital strategy in a marketplace largely depends on the strategy of their competitors.

This is known as strategic interdependence.

When your offering closely resembles the offering of your competitor’s chances are that both of you and your agencies will pursue similar strategies. However, if your competitors have different resources or capabilities then you can expect them to react differently under the same conditions.

With this understanding of strategic interdependence, what does this mean for when you are evaluating data?

Start thinking like your competition

Simply put, this means companies must interrogate data for competitive insights against the competitive positioning of existing market competition.

A good way to apply this line of thinking is to break your competitive situation into separate functions based on your understanding of your competitor’s capabilities and resources.

These two functions can be further broken into the subsets below:

Competitor Resources

  • Financial – What insights can you derive by analysing data and considering your competitors level of investment?
  • Human – What insights can you derive by analysing data and considering your competitor’s human resources?
  • Access – What insights can you derive by analysing data and considering your competitors access to customers, technology and physical assets?

Competitor Capabilities

  • Insight – Can your competitors identify the same insight?
  • Action – Can your competitors identify and act on the same insight?

By analysing your data through the lens of your competitor’s resources and capabilities you are able to identify actionable competitive insights that can create real opportunities to exploit for your company.

For example, you may identify that a certain area of your online marketing portfolio is highly effective. You may then evaluate your competitor’s financial considerations in addition to their ability to identify the same insight and action that insight.

The question you may ask might be ‘does my competitor have the financial resource and ability to execute the same strategy in the same segment of online marketing as me?’

With this, your thought process may suggest that due to this area’s strong performance and the weaker competitive factors, that additional investment may be warranted to further test and exploit this opportunity.

If you are interested in learning more about strategic interdependence and decision-making with digital marketing please contact us.

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