So many heads of marketing discuss with me, “Data-driven or creative-driven. Which one are you?” Perhaps, you’ve faced this dilemma when seeking a philosophy and were pushed to choose one direction for your business. Gone are the days of simple choices, going with your gut or addressing a group of thousands or hundreds of thousands of prospects based on a simple survey or focus group. We now live in a world of endless resources with vast selection, and with that, comes an over abundance of noise.
To answer the question, we are outcome or results driven. We focus on the desired result and use four pillars, each equal to the other. As a former portfolio manager, I designed the firm around process to achieve the desired result, outperformance. The corollary to marketing is apparent.
Marketing continues to expand in effectiveness and measurement, along with technology and budgets, in recent years. There is no longer a struggle to obtain marketing data, technology or creative and media resources. While marketing has grown across industries, it is also growing internally and adding vocabulary terms, such as data analysis, media optimization and so many others. Having trouble keeping up? There are always marketing consultants, agencies, media and tech groups available, whether you’re a new or small business looking to build your brand, a company looking to launch a new product or expand into a new market or audience segment, or a mature company with plateauing revenue in search of a new method to drive revenue or gain new assets.
With a new multitude of opportunities, and with businesses moving at internet speeds, companies are challenged to quickly pick partners solely based on one function – process, data, tech or creative.
At E5A, we believe there are now four aspects to successful marketing – process, data, creative and industry knowledge that weave-in all other disciplines. We suggest that you not compromise on any of these four pillars.
Process – Does your partner know exactly how to achieve your desired result? If you are seeking to add to AUM or raise sales 20%, what are the mechanisms in place that will assure success? A clear sign is if you are presented with a media plan and a creative concept as process. Guess what – that is a subset of process, not the strategy and precise process to achieve success.
Data – This is omnipresent in every aspect of a program or campaign; targeting, segmentation, message optimization, media performance optimization. Don’t be intimidated. Ask for plain-English explanations. If they have a real process, as Einstein stated, “you don’t truly know it if you can’t explain it simply.”
Creative – Is it clever and motivating? Is it compelling? The real question is, will it resonate with your target audience based on their demographics and psychographics? You probably are not representative of the audience and are therefore a really bad focus group of one. Now the big question… how will your creative improve and optimize based on market testing? There isn’t a robust process in place without this one.
Industry Knowledge – Are you in a highly regulated industry or is your client selling into one? Does your team know the regs and have 100 workarounds that will keep you away from trouble and delays? Is there relevant jargon that lets your prospects know that you know and understand their pain, industry and that you have real proven solutions based on the way you write and design?
As the world continues to evolve in marketing, so must our thinking. Media and creative are the cost of entry, but today you also need to be effective real data science, and of course the client industry knowledge to use them properly and thus, successfully. Many marketing firms love and can spend enormous budgets and all the potential tactics in large scale campaigns. However, spending a lot of money and doing a lot of everything too frequently means there’s likely a lot of waste, polluted (frequently pointless) data and most importantly, overrated and non-correlated results. Senior marketers must filter through the smoke and mirrors of budget sizes and pretty samples, and discern if their marketing agencies know what they’re doing to help you reach your goals and how to prove it.
State a goal, achieve real ROI, work with partners who have all four pillars and are excited to implement them on your behalf.Then have them add enough transparency to provide you milestones, predictive models and assurances at every step, in a well defined process.