How Data-Driven Strategies Get Built

When developing a strategic communications plan for a client, data is often as much about deciding what’s not useful as identifying what is useful. Intelligence derived from data can help companies find their most profitable customers, identify new business opportunities, deliver better targeted leads to the sales organization, offer real-time insights to make smarter campaign decisions and much more. But data can also have a paralyzing effect if you cannot separate the meaning from the noise.

An early step in the strategic planning process at Movéo involves developing a detailed list of information/data sources (those required to perform an effective situation analysis), as well as a plan for obtaining these inputs. However, it is critical that you know the problem you’re trying to solve, before you embark on the journey of data collection.

• We’ve seen that clients are often struggling with one (or more) of a few major challenges, for example:
• They’re losing customers, but they don’t know why.  
• Their “pitch” is becoming less effective and they’re struggling to remain connected with their audience.  
• Their campaigns are not generating the expected response.
• The content they’re developing is not creating an adequate level of engagement.

Depending on the problem the company is trying to solve, the types of data required to understand the conditions that will contribute to (or detract from) the company’s ability to realize its objectives can vary dramatically. It is important to design a system for obtaining the “right” data, not merely the data that’s most readily available.

The most appropriate data can take the form of “1s” and “0s” but it can also take the form of less structured data, such as survey responses and customer interviews. And, even if the data is easily tabulated, there’s a great amount of thought that needs to go into filtering the data for its relevance to the situation at-hand.

Data should be seen as an input, and it requires attention and cleansing, but the real heavy lifting is in the analysis of the data. How do all of the datasets (research, analytics, CRM, etc.) relate to each other, and how do they come together to tell a story? What are the real insights that can be gleaned from the data…what can we learn from the data that truly provides a competitive advantage?

Movéo believes that gathering facts and maintaining objectivity is key to strategy. We rely heavily on all forms of data (market research, behavioral, performance, etc.), to inform any strategic recommendation.  We collaborate in the design of original research studies, when necessary, to help identify opportunities and inform objectives, and we also leverage data generated from our efforts/campaigns, to fine tune and optimize our recommendations. The plans we develop require data to set us on the correct course, but we also leverage data to act as a rudder ensuring we maintain this course over time.