How Digital Technology and Analytics Will Drive Marketing Strategy
Learn from one of the world's savviest marketers, Procter & Gamble, how to compete in a digital world.
Here are rare insights into an $82 billion marketing company that can be applied to your small or midsize business right now. (This is based on "Inside P&G's Digital Revolution" via McKinsey Quarterly.) Use these insights to deveop your digital marketing strategy for 2012.
Business Purpose
P&G: Its stated purpose is "Touching lives, improving life."
Small Business Translation: The company's purpose is stated in terms of the end user, the customer. It is simple, clear, and memorable. It is not a statement of financial objectives. Use the same customer-centric approach to create your business purpose. (For neuromarketers, the purpose is stated in the "you" language customers understand. Learn more about neuromarketing basics here.)
Relationships
P&G Goal: Create intimate, indispensable relationships between company brands and customers. Digital technology enables this.
Small Business Translation: This goal translates to any business, any size. Copy it. And, although your small business will not have the ability to benefit from P&G's level of digital technology, you have sufficient resources to do more digitally.
The Consumer
P&G and the "consumer pulse": The company scans, categorizes, and reports in real-time on what the consumer is saying, enabling real-time response.
Small Business Translation: Your small business has the same listening capability via social media. And, like P&G, you can respond to small issues before they become big problems, and engage in real-time conversations rather than merely be a passive observer.
Accounting Systems
P&G on real-time accounting systems: P&G envisions an accounting system that tracks "any product at any moment as it goes through the manufacturing line of any one of our plants" and the production costs associated with it. The issue, as P&G sees it, is that accounting systems tend to look backward, while competitive advantage lies in real-time reporting systems.
Small Business Translation: This should appeal to small business owners who have a passion for cost control and reporting. Tear off the blinders of what accounting systems can't do, and begin to envision what might be done, then evaluate the digital technology that can assist you.
Retailers
P&G wants to be digitally connected to retailers: P&G is digitally connected to retailers via:
- A standardized data warehouse where data are kept dynamically correct and that automates commerce and reduces costly human error.
- Technology supplied to retailers that otherwise can't afford it
- Visual performance standards (such as product display examples) that are available on smartphones.
Small Business Translation: First, commit to being connected to your retailers, then select one of the above approaches to implement. Hint, smartphones are becoming indispensable workplace tools.
Innovation
P&G: P&G's size (it touches more than four billion consumers every day) and research and modeling tools enable it to speed up innovation, product development, and launch.
Small Business Translation: Social media is the small business research tool, and can be used to listen, monitor, test, refine, and launch new products and services.
Data Sources
P&G: P&G relies on external data partners. For P&G, "data sources are incredibly important" and getting data from a business partner is part of how the business relationship is valued.
Small Business Translation: Look to current and future customers for the data they can bring into your company, to make the relationship more productive and profitable.
Analytics & Data
P&G: P&G places a high value on analytical-thinking skills and data as the drivers for innovation. "We need to come up with the ideas to innovate, and those innovations are always informed by data."
Small Business Translation: Look to improve the data that informs your business and the skills of those who must analyze it.
Key Takeaway
To succeed in 2012 and beyond, small and midsize businesses must embrace digital technology as a source of competitive advantage and innovation. The ability to do this is within the scope and resources of every business: look to the best and smartest companies (like P&G), model them, and refine your strategies to fit your appropriate level.
How will you compete in 2012? Where can you gain competitive advantage? How can you use digital technology to grow? If these questions are important to your business, and you'd like to explore them further, please contact me now for a free, no-obligation chat.
Photo Credit: schopie1 via flickr Creative Commons
Mission: To help small and mid-size businesses sell more.