Becoming more data driven requires a roadmap: Dun & Bradstreet explain The Multiplicity Strategy
Data driven marketing decisions is something of a holy grail for B2B marketers and although there is no clear roadmap, some best practices have clearly worked for companies like the 170-year old New Jesey-based Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) one of the worlds leading sources of global business insight.
This venerable company faced facts recently that although their services run on data, their marketing department was, in fact, decentralized and not data driven. According to a case study, they decided to move forward and the results have created not only a dynamic marketing department but a cohesive method of using data.
What D&B decided to do was begin the process of becoming a “premier digital exchange.”
In order to become a "premier digital exchange," D&B's digital team applied the multiplicity strategy which was created by Google's Digital Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik. "It's a strategy that speaks to the qualitative and quantitative aspects of web analytics," said Jacquelyn (Molchon) Kearns, senior vice president at D&B in the case study.
The multiplicity strategy consists of seven “circles” that include analysis, testing, competitive intelligence, voice of the customer and the like. The goal is to gather all of the information to get to a “golden circle” in the middle – which is the insight, according to the case study.
Building a B2B marketing strategy built on data needs an infrastructure to support it. The D&B team wanted to tap the skills in house rather than go to an outside vendor to interpret data. They created a roadmap that looked to in-house solutions and personnel for data interpretation.
"How many people have reams and reams of data and reports and they couldn't begin to tell you how that makes their business work?" noted Jacquelyn Kearns formerly of D&B and now head of corporate marketing at Workiva. "Everybody can spend two years designing something great, but if you can't maintain that and be agile on a regular basis, then that's a problem," she explained in the case study. "The way you do that is to be able to measure your successes and keep going."
The “roadmap” included the development of an IT foundation (tools, software and platforms) to collect that data and then have the skilled team in place to analyze it. They did an extensive job making sure to have more ‘tagging’ associated on each page to get the right information. Becoming more content-focused enabled the team to discover what visitor are looking at and why.
The team needed to also track behavioral information on D&B users for B2B marketing purposes. They selected web analytics tools that allowed them to to see how visitors to the D&B website were engaging
According to the case study, it learned that "tools have boundless uses but the results are defined by the amount of people and resources that you can bring in and hire to understand how to use and apply those tools." Since D&B wanted to keep the knowledge in-house, the case study notes that they brought in consultants for their expertise, but not to actually move business forward.
To build internal resources and skill sets, the team hired individuals with analytical and scientific backgrounds, and not necessarily with traditional marketing backgrounds.
They learned that new opportunities in marketing have drawn those with analytic and digital fields skills. In fact, according to the case study, the director of SEO at D&B has a doctorate in physics. Another employee who manages the multiplicity strategy has a medical degree.
Having grown with new hires to support analytics decision-making has also been key for D&B. "I think that is why we also attract talent, because marketing is now the leader in that space for D&B, and I think that's what excites people to join our team," said the team.
The results are outstanding. Utilizing this data and strategy has resulted in numerous wins for D&B, including a 21 percent reduction in homepage bounce rates, a 200 percent increase in clickthroughs from the homepage to other product and informational pages and doubled lead generation from improved communication.
A a clear goal of becoming a premier digital exchange being set meant the company could use multiple types of data that encompasses clickstream, multiple outcomes analysis, experimentation and testing, voice of the customer and competitive intelligence to inform insights and decisions.
Many marketers focus too much on the clickstream data, the team felt, such as traffic to the site and number of clicks. The strategy for D&B is to now use that information with the knowledge it takes different types of data to get a full picture.
It also values competitor information. D&B puts additional resources towards analysis of competitor information including site traffic, clickstream data, domain authority, reviews of the site experience and social media interest and participation.
Being a 170-year-old company with an established brand presence can provide the opportunity to build a great digital experience, the case study concluded. However, it's the integration of all of the existing informaton that has given the marketing department the strength and depth that they now have.