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In today’s world, marketing has to go beyond mere guesses and broad-based advertising. At Emulent, we’ve strategically transformed our marketing into precise, impactful content and experiences that grows businesses, builds brands, and positions you as a thought-leader in your industry.

We utilize a data-based problem-solving framework to deeply understand our client’s challenges and goals, ground our approach in data to offer preemptive solutions, and create content that balances the need to drive immediate growth with the imperative of building long-term brand value.

Our process often looks a little like this:

Identify the Problem

At Emulent, we know that the foundation for successful marketing strategy begins with clearly identifying the specific problem or challenge. Most often, the top challenge is identified as attracting prospects; in fact, 61% of marketers believe that generating traffic and leads is their top challenge. However, attempts to rectify this challenge can be misdirected without identifying the exact barriers, potentially ranging from poor content strategy to ineffective SEO practices to targeting the wrong audience.

To diagnose the problem or barriers, we deep dive into various aspects of your marketing strategy:

Initial Insights: Firstly, we broadly assess your current marketing efforts by reviewing performance metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, and engagement levels to identify patterns or anomalies that might indicate a problem area.
Feedback: Then, we engage with various front-line teams, including sales, customer service, and product development, to gain their insights into where actionable issues lie. We also like to analyze reviews, surveys, social media comments, etc., to gain customer feedback about their common pain points.
Competitive Landscape: We ask: What kinds of tactics do your competitors use? Are they different? More successful? And, most importantly, why?

Using these insights, we articulate the problem and ensure it is specific, backed by data, and actionable. For example, we would never simply state that your issue is “low conversion rates”; rather, we would report that your challenge is “a 20% drop in conversion rates from mobile users in the past quarter”.

Gather & Analyze Data

Once the problem has been identified, the next crucial step is gathering the right data and extracting meaningful insights to understand its root causes and identify potential solutions. This is so important, in fact, that companies that use analytics to inform their decision-making are 2.8 times more likely to report double-digit year-over-year growth and 1.6 times more likely to report that using analytics has increased their revenue. However, today’s complex digital landscape can create challenges for collecting and managing data.

At Emulent, data is the cornerstone of effective marketing problem-solving–indeed, 49% of high-performing companies strongly focus on data-driven decision-making–so we prioritize collecting, managing, and analyzing data the right way. Below are some insights into the way we might gather and analyze your data:

Unified Data Collection: To mitigate the common challenge of siloed data, we can implement integrated data platforms such as a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to unify your data sources and provide a well-rounded view of marketing performance. Additionally, tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Tableau can help filter through the sheer quantity of data available and visualize this data so that we’re focusing on what’s most relevant. The ability to simplify data and focus on critical metrics can increase the decision-making speed of businesses by about 42%, according to Gartner.
Quality Data: We can also ensure that this data is of quality through rigorous validation processes, including regular audits, data cleansing, standardized input methods, and technology used to reduce human bias. But equally critical is prioritizing compliance with privacy regulations and collecting good-quality data from consenting customers. According to Cisco’s 2021 Data Privacy Benchmark Study, 90% of businesses report that data privacy is imperative, with 88% experiencing benefits such as improved customer trust.
Technical Expertise: We can implement user-friendly data analytics tools like HubSpot’s Marketing Hub or IBM’s Watson Analytics to simplify complex analyses, making it easier for marketing teams to derive insights without extensive technical expertise.

Extract Insights

At Emulent, we recognize that gathering and analyzing the data is just the beginning and that what matters is what you do with what you’ve collected–extracting actionable insights that drive decision-making. In fact, companies that are effective at deriving insights from data are 23 times more likely to acquire customers and six times more likely to retain them, underscoring the critical role of insights in customer acquisition and retention, which are key metrics for any CMO.

However, extracting appropriate insights from complex datasets can be daunting. These insights are not simply numbers on a page but interpretations and conclusions thoughtfully and analytically drawn from the data to inform strategic action. This process requires analytical skills, industry knowledge, and a keen understanding of your business objectives. We focus on extracting insights that are:

Productive: Insights should always be productive–they help you understand not just what’s happening but why it’s happening. For example, your data might show a decrease in website traffic, but insight indicates that a recent algorithmic change by Google affects your search rankings. These insights enable you to decide where to focus your efforts and how to adjust your strategy.
Contextualized: Unfortunately, even though 74% of businesses say they want to be “data-driven,” only 29% are successful at connecting analytics to action. This disconnect between analytics and action–whether through incorrect conclusions or misguided strategies–can arise when data is misinterpreted. Data must be contextualized with qualitative insights such as customer feedback or market trends. Here, data tools can help identify patterns and make data more understandable.
Actionable: Not all insights are actionable, so it’s crucial to differentiate those directly impacting your business goals from those merely interesting. For example, knowing that your email open rates are high is interesting, but knowing that certain subject lines correlate with higher conversion rates is actionable.

Hypothesize

As a crucial bridge between understanding a problem through data and testing potential solutions, a well-formed hypothesis provides a clear direction for your marketing strategy, guiding the experiments and actions to address the identified issue. According to a study by Harvard Business Review, companies that regularly text hypotheses as part of their marketing strategy are 45% more likely to report better business outcomes.

At Emulent, we can help you form an effective hypothesis through the following process:

Use Insight-Driven Insight: The hypothesis should be rooted in insights extracted from your data. For example, suppose your data shows customer engagement drops after the third email in a campaign. In that case, your hypothesis might be that reducing the number of emails will increase overall engagement rates. A sample hypothesis using this scenario might be: “If we limit email campaigns to two per week, customer engagement will increase by 15% over the next quarter.”.
Ensure Testability: The hypothesis must be testable, specific, and measurable. Overly broad or vague hypotheses are difficult to test and can lead to inconclusive results. For example, instead of simply saying, “Improving website design will boost conversions,” specify the design element and expected outcome: “If we simplify our homepage layout, we expect a 10% increase in conversions over the next month.”
Identify the Variables: Clarify the independent variable (the change you’re making) and the dependent variable (the expected outcome) to test your hypothesis accurately. For example, “If we increase our social media ad spend by 20%, then our click-through rate (CTR) should increase by 5%.”
Align with Business Goals: Even though it’s a common mistake to form interesting hypotheses, there’s no reason to test hypotheses that aren’t aligned with your business goals. Every hypothesis should be connected to a strategic goal: increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction, or enhancing brand visibility. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, your hypothesis should focus on actions that directly influence purchase behavior.

Prioritize Impact

We understand that, unfortunately, not all hypotheses can be tested at once; therefore, we prioritize impact to ensure that your marketing efforts are effective and efficient. This prioritization is important because companies that effectively prioritize their marketing activities see a 15% to 20% increase in marketing ROI compared to those that don’t. We recommend using a prioritization framework, like an ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) score, to quantify each factor, providing a clear score that can be used to rank hypotheses.

Impact: Not all marketing actions will have the same level of impact–some drive minor improvements, while others could lead to substantial growth. To prioritize appropriately, we can estimate a hypothesis’s potential impact on KPIs, often using historical data and industry benchmarks to make these assessments. You will also have to weigh the potential ROI of the hypothesis with its resource requirements since some hypotheses require more resources, such as budget, time, or specialized skills, than others. Here, tools like project management software, including Asana, Trello, etc., can help determine the time and resources needed for each initiative.
Confidence Level: In short, the confidence level refers to your team’s belief in the accuracy of the hypothesis based on available data and previous experiences. In other words, a high-impact hypothesis is only really valuable if there’s a reasonable chance of being correct. Historical data, market research, and expert opinions can help gauge the confidence level for each hypothesis.
Testing Roadmap: A clear roadmap makes it easier to maintain focus and ensure your efforts aren’t spread too thin. The roadmap outlines when and how each hypothesis will be tested, including timelines, resource allocation, and expected outcomes. The timeline should also be detailed with clear milestones and deadlines and assign team members to each task. Gantt charts or other visual timeline tools can help track progress and adjust as necessary.

Implement

At Emulent, this stage is where strategy meets execution, turning insights and hypotheses into results. This is a crucial step, as organizations that excel in implementation are 38% more likely to hit their strategic goals. Some essential elements to consider when implementing hypotheses or new marketing strategies include:

Team Alignment: To ensure that implementation is coordinated across teams, we often recommend using a project management software. These tools can help facilitate clear communication and team alignment to avoid miscommunication or misalignment that can cause delays, budget overspending, or sub-par outcomes.
Resource Management: Since effective implementation often requires juggling multiple resources, including time, budget, and personnel. We can work with you to develop a proper and detailed allocation plan before implementation to prevent outcomes from becoming compromised and resources depleted unnecessarily.
Flexibility: Markets can shift quickly, new data may emerge, or unforeseen challenges may arise that require quick adjustments. However, we will work to help you build flexibility into your implementation plan to facilitate a culture of adaptability in which changes can be made quickly without disrupting the whole project.

Measure & Iterate

Measurement and iteration are key to continuous improvement as they help us understand the effectiveness of your strategies and provide insights needed to refine and optimize your approach.

We can help ensure that the metrics you’re tracking are aligned with your business objectives. Since data alone doesn’t tell the whole story, benchmark metrics based on past performance, industry standards, and customer preferences can provide context for the collected data. Tracking both short—and long-term metrics will help measure the immediate and delayed effects of marketing efforts.

Once we have measured the results of your marketing efforts, we move on iteration which means refining and optimizing your strategy by making small, incremental changes to improve performance. Organizations that regularly monitor and adjust their implementation efforts see a 20% improvement in achieving their strategic goals. At Emulent, we optimize the iteration process by:

Reviewing and reflecting on the current campaign before moving on to the next one, including setting aside time to review the data, discussing successes and areas for improvement, and documenting these insights.
Making informed adjustments such as tweaking messaging, adjusting targeting, or reallocating your budget..
Experimenting with new approaches. For example, if you’re iterating on an email campaign, you might test different subject lines, send times, or call-to-action buttons to see which variations perform best.
Creating a knowledge base with relevant stakeholders to ensure that the insights gained from one campaign are retained and leveraged for future campaigns.

Conclusion

At Emulent, we know how a structured, data-based approach to problem-solving can transform marketing strategies from reactive to proactive, enabling businesses to stay ahead of the competition. We can help you not simply solve immediate marketing challenges but also build a culture of continuous improvement to grow your business, build your brand, and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Data-Based Problem Solving Framework For Marketing Campaigns