Speaking at the Marketing Association’s recent ‘Smarter Data’ conference, Loyalty NZ’s Chief Data, Analytics and Technology Officer, Brian Ferris, shared his insights into how data is transforming our world in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As businesses, we know that the needs and wants of our customer are constantly changing – and changing fast. We can no longer rely on staying in touch with customers by testing the waters once a year through a survey and using this to guide our actions. We need to be using our data to constantly measure and evaluate to ensure we continue to be relevant.
This became very evident during the various Covid levels when we all saw examples of tone deaf marketing and how quick and brutal consumers and the media were in punishing those businesses that allowed themselves to get out of touch.
So how do we use data to ensure we are tapping into our customers?
Being truly customer centric is more critical now than ever before. Use data to help identify customers and their needs but this can’t be a substitute for your messages or your value proposition.
If you don’t know what to say, don’t guess. Use data to learn who your customers are and what they really want. If your message and value proposition is clear, use data to personalise, amplify and scale the delivery.
Trust has always been critical. It takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair. So behave ethically. Remember, just because the law allows you to do something, that doesn’t mean you should. Spend time, as a diverse team, to work out and document what your principles are. Invest the time up front to work out and document what your principles are and make sure they are are understood by your whole organisation. Principles will stand up to a changing reality much better than hard and fast rules will.
So what should you do?
· Know your customer
· Have something to say
· Be prepared – get data literate
· Pick a problem, not a technology
· Don’t be evil – discuss ethics and principles
And finally, start somewhere with what you have. The first step is the hardest.
Brian will be sharing more insights at D&A Live ANZ on 4-6 August 2020 and again at Marketing/South on 20 October 2020. Or, to get in touch with Brian directly, email brian.ferris@loyalty.co.nz