Trends are Trendy

The hard truth is that one of the biggest factors holding back data-driven marketing is that we may need to be focused on the right challenge.

Marketers and agencies typically focus on the last mile where data can deliver value – and ignore the underlying data challenges that are truly holding you back.

In order to identify and focus on the right challenge I turn to Michael Porter’s tried and tested value chain framework.
Data is a raw material, and the end objective is increased commercial performance. Companies need to optimize four critical activities to create value from data-driven marketing.

• Data procurement – does your organization have the right reliable data on hand?
• Data processing: Does your organization have the right capability to connect and integrate your data into a single view?
• Data distribution – how accessible is data in your organization?
• Data application – how agile can the rest of your organization adapt to a data recommendation or insight?

All too often, marketers look to the newest trends in data-driven marketing—AIcreated audiences, omnichannel orchestration, programmatic delivery—and are disappointed with the results or their ability to execute. This is because they often overlook the challenges they face through the data value chain.

For example:
A typical HCP data lake will mostly include commodity data—claims, coverage, and HCP profiles mixed with first-party engagement data. That is a good start, but it offers a relatively narrow view of an HCP’s reality and will limit your ability to optimize beyond your perspective. If you have not been able to bring in data that lets you see a complete or differentiated view of your target HCPs, you likely have a data procurement problem.

Organizations often have streams of data. However, they face a data processing challenge because they are not connected and integrated. In theory, your organization knows everything it needs to know about your customer, but no one person has a complete view.

Even if your data is integrated, a commonly overlooked challenge is that it is not democratized. Great, big insights are delivered once a year during planning when, in reality, specific, timely, monthly, or even weekly adjustments are needed. However, end users and activators are rarely included in the data distribution.

Finally, and this is a common challenge in organizations big and small, our go-to-market models are built for tent pole campaigns vs agile optimization – think twice a year’s POAs instead of weekly optimized journeys. And for a team to pivot its approach, it’s not just on the data to be in-house, processed, and available – it’s on the organization’s capacity for change. Have the content creators embraced templates, modular design, and even gen AI; has MLR evolved to approve modular content and more 1-1 customized journeys; is your tech stack connected across all the deployment channels, and does your reporting take a customer-centric pov vs. a traditional tactic level report?

I truly believe data can help marketers unlevel the playing field and better meet their customers’ needs. Evolving with the next wave of data-driven trends will unlock that value. But before that can happen, we need to look at the entire data value chain and ensure every step, from data procurement through data application, is aligned to embrace what will be next.