If there’s one truth at the heart of modern marketing, it’s this one: Brands no longer own the narrative. Consumers do.
Once formed around the boardroom table, brand perception is now in the hands of consumers as they turn to digital spaces to share their opinions, recommendations, and needs. Instead, the narratives that define brands are created through the conversations consumers have with one another, evolving by the second.
At a time when consumers rely on their peers for advice and recommendations, one of the best things investment executives can do is to understand consumers better. This is where insight-driven marketing enters the strategic picture, bringing consumer needs to the fore.
The Need for Insight-Driven Marketing
Consumer insights are rare, based on static data obtained from time-intensive processes such as surveys and polls. As billions of new posts are uploaded to the internet every day, organizations have countless opportunities to get to know their customers better. But almost overnight, brands are overwhelmed by digital sources for more dynamic views. Between 60% and 73% of all data within a business is not available for analytics, according to Forrester Consulting.
To stay competitive and relevant, businesses need advanced ways to keep pace with consumer conversations across all channels and markets. This is why insight-driven marketing is so important.
Using Artificial Intelligence, advanced data structuring, and other technology-enhancing capabilities, insight-driven marketing is revealing the direction of that chaos. This can give executives a deeper understanding of what truly matters to their audience, which can inform their business decisions.
The Critical Role of AI in Insight-Driven Marketing
Today, next-generation AI and large-scale language models are streamlining the journey from data noise to actionable insights.
Natural language processing and visual analytics provide marketers with advanced tools to understand brand narratives and perceptions in real time. AI-powered tools such as pattern detection algorithms and digital “assistants” are also improving the contextual intelligence of marketers so they can better predict what will happen next.
As AI continues to advance rapidly, there has never been a better time for organizations to embrace tech-forward solutions. With them, brands are equipped to future-proof their operations with capabilities such as trendspotting, predicting viral content, and predicting campaign return on investment.
Solutions for Enterprise-Level Challenges
The benefits of insight-driven marketing are synonymous with business growth. Brands that do data-driven marketing at scale can increase net sales value by up to 5% and marketing efficiency by up to 20%, according to McKinsey & Company. However, with increased benefits come increased responsibilities and increased opportunity for critical information to fall through the cracks.
Insight-driven marketing solutions provide executives with an overview of their consumer data sets across key business elements, including marketing, public relations, strategy , and research and development. However, all information loses its potential utility without a system and a team for analyzing and delivering it to key stakeholders and decision makers.
With so many potential knowledge loss points to consider, large enterprises need customized solutions for successful insight-driven marketing. But only solutions that combine technology-forward tools with premium services are geared to meet business-level needs.
Real World Results
Many industry-leading brands are already winning in their markets by applying insight-driven marketing at scale, with transformative results.
Since 2016, Shiseido used a suite of enterprise-grade solutions to consolidate and optimize its international multi-brand social media operations. Bringing more than 200 users into one suite with a unified data set and a custom analytics dashboard gives Shiseido a single source of truth about its customers’ needs and perspectives. “We were able to create a globally consistent KPI framework that then made the transition from returning marketing objectives to linking them to return on investment,” said Amit Naik, SVP, global head of analytics at Shiseido.
Give quality uses enterprise-grade social intelligence solutions to manage its portfolio of more than 25 owned brands, available in 170 markets. “Now, our brands are more competitive, because we give them insights that no one else in the business can,” said Danny Gardner, Haleon’s head of social intelligence. “And we did it fast.”
With globally aligned social intelligence, the benefits of insight-driven marketing reach brands and teams. So while Haleon’s dental department sales team saw an 80% increase in consumer research efficiency, one of the ointment brands’ social media teams used insights to drive 272% year-over-year engagement growth at the same time. .
Looking ahead
As the most powerful force in brand management today, conversations with consumers can inform business decisions at every level of the organization. Only insight-driven marketing allows organizations to focus on the voices of their customers at scale. And as technology at its core advances, brands get ever-increasing opportunities to understand their consumers.
Learn how the Meltwater Enterprise Intelligence Suite helps organizations put the voices of the customer at the center of their marketing.
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The views expressed in this sponsored article are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global Meltwater organization.
