Data Strategy in a Market Oriented Business

Finding your future customers where they are today

The market oriented series by Rachel Fairley & Mark Baker

As market oriented marketers, we have memories of countless meetings where we have felt bewildered as opinions and anecdotes have been asserted as facts.

“My friends have never heard of us. We aren’t well known in the market.”

“These are the 80 opportunities we must win this year.”

“Customers are really unhappy. Last week one of my customers told me they didn’t like…”

“Our renewal rates are great. My customer renewed last week…”

“The event was a great success. I caught up with the rest of the team...”

“Customers hate the campaign. I had a call from a CEO this morning asking me about it.”

Often there is a data point or two behind the story: a call, a spreadsheet, a set of numbers. Data puddles rather than the comprehensive data lake.

A vested interest in finding a specific answer to support an opinion is often the starting point. It isn’t unusual for the data to be incomplete and out of date, because data is spread across systems and owners making it hard to get a holistic view. We’ve seen expectations heaped on colleagues who have no training to analyse and draw ‘aha!’ conclusions.

In B2B we often think that we understand the customer because our product, marketing and sales colleagues talk to them every day. But that reliance on impressions from a small number of data points isn’t a recipe for understanding market dynamics, customer needs and how well we are meeting them.

As a team we know we need data strategy that informs our decision making on where to play, how well we are doing, where to improve and when to change. Here’s how we think about it.

Facts, facts, facts

We accept the discipline Mark Ritson teaches that “you are not the customer”. The consequence is we can’t excuse ourselves for not having the necessary data because we don’t have time, money, or are under pressure to execute. Research disruptors have made it quick, quality and affordable to ask our audiences what they are thinking. We fear arrogance of not listening more than fear of finding out what the customer is really thinking. We refuse to take anecdotes or assumptions as facts.

We must know what customers need and what they want, which isn’t always the same thing. That takes market research, but it also takes asking and mining unvarnished feedback from customers - not ‘how did we do today?’ but ‘what one thing can we do differently or better?’ We have to make it easy for customers to talk to us, to share and ask questions. We need to make visits to customers to learn how they use the products and services live.

What data do we need?

Some of the data we can build, some rent, and some buy - whatever our model it has to be scalable and sustainable.

Mark Ritson talks through the demographic/firmographic data, attitudinal data and behavioural data, and secondary data we need to understand our buyers, the users, our competitors, and ourselves on the Mini MBA Marketing and Mini MBA in Brand Management (outstanding courses).

We spend time agreeing who our competitors are and which products are our priority.

For market segmentation we need market size (from analysts like IDC and Gartner), including number of companies with current and projected category spend by size, product and country. And from internal sources we need account lists with company sizes, the products they have bought, current revenue, net promoter scores - ready to be sliced by size, product and country.

To drive demand we need intent data, web traffic, product or service consumption.

Make the insights available

“Information on all important buying influences should permeate every corporate function.”

Benson B. Shapiro, What the hell is “market oriented”?, HBR, 1988

It is perfectly reasonable for customers to think that as a business we know them. That we remember what they have told us and are doing all we can to service them brilliantly.

Respecting their expectations and data has to be part of the fabric of our culture, rather than who is currently in a role, because people come and go.

Easier said than done, but making sure all leaders have access to all the research and use it is critical. To execute together with a shared sense of commitment we need to have made the strategic and tactical decisions inter-functionally and inter-divisionally.

To do this we need the infrastructure that brings together a range of conflicting and overlapping data sources. Tools that allow some or all of the data to be put in the hands of the people who need it and help them understand the ‘so what’.

Data strategy is a leadership role

Owning the data strategy is a leadership role, creating a team that can be relied on to drive the analysis and insight, to inform planning and help colleagues make decisions.

Building a great data strategy to support a market oriented strategy is hard. Fast decision making causes people to make educated guesses unless the process feeds and supports them with data and insight. Analysing data comprehensively, accurately and relevantly, is a skillset most businesses covet. Data analysis is important, but there is also the challenge of interpreting data and drawing out relevant conclusions, insights and lessons. We need a team to source, integrate, and maintain the data, with a plan to constantly review quality, enrichment, archives, and additions. That team must teach people to read the data with confidence.

There is a separate issue around ethics and the legality of data collection and usage. We believe GDPR is the hygiene level globally, rather than only applying in certain countries, because it sets a standard for respecting a customer’s preferences for how their data is collected, stored and used.

The benefits make data invaluable

When we build a great data strategy it provides huge benefits and answers many questions. How does the market work and what is achievable for us in it? Who are our target segments, how do they think and what do they need? How can we best position ourselves for them? Is what we are doing working the way we think it is? What can we do better or differently? How are our competitors responding?

These insights help us orientate to the market, to better serve customers, so that we can increase market share to grow. A data strategy is necessary but it is not sufficient. Implementation of a comprehensive data strategy is crucial as without it we are just looking at data puddles, feeling bewildered.

We’re all used to bringing together data from the perspective of giving greater insight into internal working more than understanding markets and customers. To build a great data strategy for a market oriented business we:

1. Hire a qualified data strategy leader and embed them in our leadership team

2. Bring together all the customer data in the business into a single, usable location

3. Buy, rent or build important data we don’t already have

4. Write a data strategy and implement it

5. Hire data specialists who can analyse, interpret and learn from the data, sharing actionable insights with all the different business functions

6. Require data centric decision making across the business to move away from opinion.

The first step? Say yes to having a data strategy and appoint a qualified data strategy leader.

Read about the 5 steps to market orientation to grow and why it is your job to embrace a customer centric approach for your B2B business.

Adopting market orientation is a cultural change but there are clear ways to make it happen. These four articles explain how to effectively re-orientate your business to the market in order to grow:

1. An open letter to the CEO asking them to embrace customer centricity

2. Creating a scalable marketing organisation that is structured and empowered to respond to market needs in an agile way

3. Adopting a dynamic planning approach that aligns the whole organisation around the customer

4. Measuring what matters means seeing everything from the customer’s perspective and setting metrics that focus on delivery of the agreed strategy.

Rachel Fairley and Mark Baker are friends and work allies, with a combined experience of over fifty years. Rachel is a marketer and brand strategist whose focus is on driving growth, contributing to over 25 business transformations across more than 100 countries and many industries. Mark is an international tech marketer who leads digital transformation to accelerate revenue with the right people, strategy, technology and operational business models.