Digital Value Marketing Loop

Digital transformation and it’s impact on marketing and sales in your business is important. This article, (and these practical 3 Steps) share practical methods of supporting digital transformation by creating a “marketing value loop” for your company.

So, what is a marketing value loop? Simply put, it’s integrating customer insights, comments and criticisms into your products and services, so they better serve your customers. Put another way, you currently have unprecedented access to customers’ preferences and behaviours from their digital activity … so why not use it to shape your business, generate more or new revenue, create referral business from happy customers, and ensure existing developments are on target.

Two Challenges

There are two challenges to be aware of when implementing a value loop:

• Challenge #1 is determining the frequency and amount of “feedback” data needed to make informed decisions.

• Challenge #2 is deciding how to manage decision making within your organizational structure. Incorporating regular feedback often results in the need to break down traditional organizational silos (marketing, strategy, sales, finance, HR, etc.) while still involving every group in integrating digital insights and transformation. It’s important to get this right since “culture is known to eat strategy for breakfast”.
  

3 Steps to Success

• Step 1 - Social Listening and Observation - "Tune In” to your social media environments, web platforms, client posts/likes/emails/dislikes/suggestions and email communications. Use simple analytics tools to access online conversations and customer experiences about brands and topics. This can reveal opportunities to increase brand awareness or reputation.
  

• Step 2 - Digital Insights - Link the digital data from social media, Web data and research, to paint a picture of the current situation. Identify trends, “good news” and “bad news”. Closely monitor trends. Integrate the insights you gain with branding, positioning and product development.
  

• Step 3 - Digital Foresight - Review consumer trends, your competitors and media reporting. Visit your top 3 competitors digital product and read what people say. Use SEO and AdWords tools that monitor to see how you compare to your competition. Incorporate this information as insights that provide a sense of competitive overlap and to integrate into you business/product plans and decision making.
  

Bottom Line: Harvest value from your digital assets and insights from others. Maximize the information being gathered using the 3 steps to success.

Suggested Additional Reading

PwC, Digital IQ report
Using Digital to Enhance Customer Experience

Joe is a digital thought leader, strategist, author, blogger and CEO of Concentric. Read more about Joe on this site and/or joewozny.com