Don’t Guess, Test: Use Data To Evolve for a Changed World
Analytic Partners’ tagline, the three words that sit beneath our logo, are “Adapt. Evolve. Thrive.” These challenging days have really shown the importance of the first word “adapt.” We all, individuals, families and businesses, have had to adapt to difficult situations and drastic changes to our lives. We have written quite a bit how marketers and their organizations can adapt in order to come out of this thing strong and “thrive.” But what I want to talk about today is that middle word “evolve.”
In the matter of weeks our lives have drastically changed, and our daily routines are thrown to the wind as we work to find a “new normal.” We all look forward to the day when we can get back to the way things were before. When that will be is a question up for debate, but even when cities, businesses and homes open up again there are things that will never go back to the way they are before.
It takes only 21 days to cement a new habit – and here I am on day 30+ of lock down. How many of the new ways of doing things are going to stick for me? Will my shift away from paper towels to cloth rags for clean up duty stick? And when I have had a hard time finding products my family relies on I have been forced to try new brands and new websites to order from. I have rethought how I shop all together. I can’t get to the gardening store right now – but did you know you can order lawn food directly from Scotts? I would never have even considered that before. My mother and many other members of her generation who have held out adopting technology are now experts on video chatting. (We even colored eggs together over Microsoft Teams.)
And it’s not just my family. We are seeing consumer behaviors change across the board. Some of these changes will stick. The world will look different when this crisis is over. There are the obvious accelerated shifts in behavior like the move to ecommerce and DTC. Priorities will also shift as people have a new-found respect for the importance of their health. And there are open questions to whether we will ever feel comfortable without significant social distancing and reduced contact. Those who understand the trends as they are being developed can, like consumer behavior, evolve.
What we are seeing today is an accelerated shift in behavior and likely the most significant creation of trends since the end of World War II. Over the past 20 years AP have seen many trends lift companies who were either lucky or proactively leaned into a trend. This results in meaningful business growth which can be amplified with a strong marketing and product support.
How do you identify these trends? You need to make data-driven decisions. Guessing where consumer behavior is going is a sure-fire way to waste time and resources. To evolve as a company, move quickly, test, measure and repeat. Always-on holistic measurement like Commercial Mix – LIVE Models will help to quickly respond to changes and conducting experiments through tools like Agile Learning enable you to adopt a test and learn mindset and quickly detect opportunities.
As the world changes and consumer behavior shifts, companies need to evolve in order to thrive. Understanding your customers is more important than ever and having a strong measurement and analytics discipline to make data-driven decisions is at the center of that. We at Analytic Partners are working with our clients across the globe to help them not only survive but be prepared to thrive once we are beyond this crisis. Get in touch to discuss how we can help you.