Building Data-Driven, Consumer Marketing Strategies And Capabilities
DirectMark provides data-driven marketing strategies, marketing programs and analytics, in addition to helping organizations build their marketing operations. We have extensive experience driving dramatic results in customer acquisition, engagement, retention and creating lifetime value.
Our intent is to become the additional, deeply experienced marketing resource for consumer organizations
We Are Not Just Consultants
Our group consists of Fortune 100 marketing executive alumni from various consumer industries that have deep experience and successes in building marketing strategies and programs, operations, and analytic capabilities.
Try Our Preliminary Review
Our preliminary review is an inexpensive approach to helping solve the right marketing challenges and gaining an understanding of the tools and resources that would be required. The outcome is a specific set of marketing recommendations that are prioritized and ready to implement.
Although we have helped solve singular marketing challenges, the optimal approach is to engage a preliminary review so that we can understand how to best improve your marketing. Very few organizations can implement all desired marketing solutions at once.
GOALS, MARKETING STRATEGIES AND PRIORITIZATION
Strategic Planning
In aligning marketing with corporate goals, search for areas of opportunity or gaps. Review quantified acquisition, engagement, retention and LTV results. Review or build models to understand the drivers of customer behaviors.
Quantify gaps and opportunities, including financial impacts, and prioritize strategies which could quickly provide results towards marketing goals.
Develop the strategic marketing plan and align staffing, data, technology and processes around the strategies. Shift tactics with trends but keep laser-like focus on selected strategies.
PERSONALIZATION AND SEGMENTATION
Target Your Market and Optimize
Identify the purpose of the segmentation and determine the appropriate variables. Utilize analytics (e.g., Cluster, CHAID) to group customers with similar behaviors and needs. Then, for each segment, understand the customer journey, creating many microsegments that will form the basis of 1-1 relationships. Evaluate the potential of each to prioritize for targeting.
Utilize behaviors or algorithms (e.g., next-product-to-buy modeling) to develop trigger events. Develop a library of creative, offers, prices, etc. that can be dynamically combined in response to trigger events. The right combinations require a test-and-learn process.
CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE
The Right Offer at the Right Time and Place
Apply the spiral lifecycle and ensure metrics may be had along the customer journey. For each targeted segment determine opportunities along the customer journey and provide dynamic offers and messaging via the appropriate channels. Be cognizant that influences of media channels and touchpoints change over the journey.
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Identify the nature of the journeys from the customer’s point of view.
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Understand how customers navigate as they move through the journey.
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Anticipate the customer’s needs, expectations, and desires during each part of the journey.
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Analyze - what is working and what is not.
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Set priorities for the most important gaps and opportunities to improve the journey.
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Understand root causes and redesign the journeys for a better experience.
Case Study: Improving the Customer Lifecycle for an Individual Healthcare Plan
TEST AND LEARN
Competitive Advantage By Building Customer Insights
Continuous learning requires valid test designs, test roadmaps and agile but rigorous processes to create insights and competitive advantage.
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Let the marketing objective drive test design
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Create a testing plan – a screening-refining test cycle over a series of campaigns
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Simple is better
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Increase your focus over time – understand the big picture before digging into the details
Case Study: Customer Insights Driving Acquisition and Profitability
ACQUISITION, CROSS-SELL AND RETENTION
Growing Your Business
Continuous testing and leveraging of quantified insights requires a disciplined but agile process in campaign design, execution and analysis. Ensure that the 4 P’s, (i.e., product, price, promotion and placement), are all tested while being aware that product and price are primary drivers.
Allocating an increasing share of marketing spend on winning combinations drives increasingly greater results but ongoing dedication to testing and results measurement is needed to provide insights into shifting consumer needs.
Case Study: Customer Retention - A Superior Marketing Investment
MARKETING INFRASTRUCTURE AND TECH
Build Your Marketing Capabilities
Develop your marketing strategy before building your marketing stack. The technology must be shaped around the product set, targeted audiences and how to interact with them. Developing concise process and data needs specifically focused on driving your marketing strategy will help automate and scale with the right marketing-automation tech stack and customer relationship management tools (CRM).
MARKETING ORGANIZATION, STAFFING AND PARTNERSHIPS
Build And Enable Your Marketing Staff
Going from the traditional marketing calendar to personalized triggers sent in response to individual customer’s signals means shifting to a radically different way of working. The secret to kick-starting this change is to empower a small group of the right people. Hiring the right people includes those with an understanding of data, analytics, agile processes and software, in addition to the traditional marketing skill sets.
Staff organization for today’s integrated marketing requires tight-knit partnerships and alignment across the company, and with external vendors.