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Developing Customer Insight to Drive Marketing Strategy

One of the highly anticipated webinars from the Graduate Gateway programme by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) was presented by Abigail Dixon on 18 March 2021. Abigail talked about developing customer insight to drive marketing strategy.

The session started off by the introduction of the Marketing Club by Philip Preston, the Volunteer Partnerships Manager at CIM. He later talked about how marketers can make use of the exemptions provided by the Graduate Gateway programme and gain a professional marketing qualification. For prospective marketers and people who are on the lookout of trending marketing tips and techniques – you can sign up for the newsletter

The speaker, Abigail Dixon, is a Chartered Marketer and a Fellow of the CIM. She is an award-winning client-side marketer and consultant with more than 20 years of experience under her belt. Along with being the Accredited Course Director for CIM, she is an ICF Accredited Coach. Abigail is the founder and director of Labyrinth Marketing; step changing the growth of the brands, agencies and people. She has played a vital role in the growth of numerous household brands, e.g. British Council, Pepsi, Barclays, GSK, Pizza Hut etc. To top it all off, Abigail has been successfully running her podcast show - The Whole Marketer.

Abigail started the webinar by differentiating data with insight. The main focus was on how our customers behave and why they have certain behavioural patterns. Further, she discussed how we can leverage customers’ insight for the growth of our business.

Strategy

Abigail highlighted the use of the strategic planning process and strategic tools, e.g. PESTLE, SWOT, Competition/Scenario Planning, Mission, Vision, Objectives, Activation/Tactics Strategy and Performance.

Questions to Consider

• What data sources are you aware of in your organisation?
• Have these data sources been extracted for customer insight?
• What is the level of customer knowledge that I possess?
• Am I aware of the core values, beliefs, motives, and aspirations?
• Is there an insight statement available that can be worked upon?
• How can I ensure that this is the basis of strategic work?

Recommendations

In order to achieve the ideal marketing strategy, we would be looking beyond the population demographic, age and geography. We need to look for more information, using various sources or secondary data source, to identify who the individuals are, what they are involved in and why. Being curious, getting closer to consumers, and being bystanders. Keeping up with the latest happenings by observing the consumers around you.

The key is to look at how people are making decisions – for getting an idea of their natural behaviour. We would aim to draw a hypothesis, asking questions using the Five Whys technique. We should try to hypothesise as to why that certain behaviour is happening.

Another useful game we could use is guessing what the insight behind the advertisements could or should have been. Lastly, we should never hesitate to ‘Ask Why’. Even if you are asking the customer yourself, keep questions until you achieve the emotional richness for your marketing strategy.

Conclusion

There was a Q&A session at the end of the presentation and the attendees were able to discuss any further queries they had in mind after the session.

In conclusion, Abigail Dixon gave an in-depth to-do-list to develop customer insight to drive our marketing strategy and we can all utilise this knowledge in every stage of the business.

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Written by Zain Ahmed, MSc Digital Marketing student, University of Bedfordshire Business School