Look at the data – and dodge quick and dirty decisions
When it comes to marketing your business there’s no room for seat-of-the-pantsers or hope-for-the-besters.
No matter what your services or products, without gathering the relevant information and insights at the start of a campaign or launch you might as well be throwing them to the wind and hoping they land somewhere useful.
``It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.``
Sherlock Holmes
Ready to stop scattering and start focusing?
To create effective messaging and brand image you have to pare things right back.
Back to the numbers. Get stuck into the data and you’ll create a roadmap for success. But not just any old data – the right data.
On average people spend £8 per week buying food and non-alcoholic drinks online.
Does this fact help you reposition your supermarket brand or create memorable retail messaging? Not so much.
But if you knew that fruit and vegetables were the most popular item sold online, well now you’re getting somewhere. What’s the story here?
Is it that shoppers make healthier choices shopping online when they’re not tempted by the crisps and chocolate aisle? Is there an opportunity to show how you add value by ensuring your in-store pickers choose only the freshest, ripest produce for online shoppers?
When you combine the right data with storytelling you get powerful results.
Find the story and you’ll find your customer
At F6 data underpins all our work. Show us the numbers and we’ll show you the story. The value. The return.
Why? Because when you combine the right data with storytelling you get powerful results.
To get the right data – the figures and juicy details that will help you make strategic and clever rather than ‘quick and dirty’ decisions (as data storyteller Sam Knowles puts it) – you need to ask the right questions.
According to Knowles, by the age of five we’ve asked the question ‘Why?’ 40,000 times.
But we often forget to use that curiosity and inquisitiveness when it comes to our own business.
And it’s not only numbers that count. We gather important information in many other ways, like simply having conversations or listening to what people are getting excited about in the wider discourse. It’s all part of building up a rich picture.
We need to probe, trawl the analytics, dive into KPIs, and forensically examine what our competitors are doing. Follow our nose. Hold our brand up to the light. Channel our inner five year-old dawdling on a pavement looking at dandelions.
Behind every one of the figures you uncover there’s a story. Find the thread that holds them together, and you’re flying.
When you’ve got the right data you can start shaping the insights and stories that will power your brand.
Puzzling it out: data-driven decisions in action
Take our work with cloud communications software brand, Sesui.
Despite years of experience in the industry, across multiple verticals, Sesui were struggling to land their message with their key customers. Their team was expanding and they needed a clear identity that reflected and guided these changes.
Our task was to develop a brand identity that worked. First, we ran workshops with the team. We asked questions, uncovered their values, and helped tease out their purpose.
Armed with all that information we set to work on a brand identity and messaging strategy.
One thing we noticed was that the team had something in common.
They all loved puzzles.
Problem-solving was central to their work at Sesui and, we discovered, a key part of their leisure interests. So we put it at the heart of the new creative strategy. From anagrams to tangrams, this informed everything from the visual language to their marketing communications.
Then we dug deeper into the data and created a strategic lead generation campaign to land the brand refresh in front of the ideal target audience.
The fundamentals are simple:
Ask good questions. Collect good data. Make informed decisions.
Then craft it into brand messaging that delivers.
Need some help? We’re glad you asked.
Our MD and founder, Candice blends strategic marketing and business development support to help owners and marketing managers grow their business.
She’s ensured businesses of all sizes have made tangible returns from their marketing—from netting a £1.44 million return for one of the UK ’s top network operators, to supporting a budding tech startup’s revenue growth from £33k to £6m+ in just five years.
