Using the things you sell to understand the people who buy them.

1. The Data Strategy Edge.
Competing In South Africa With The Future In Hand
The Promotional Data Strategy

2. The Data Strategy Edge. Competing In South Africa With The Future In Hand
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Data Strategy is becoming increasingly relevant in the South African landscape.
As businesses and brands, there can be no under-estimation about the
importance of knowing more. It’s not good enough to merely think you know your
audience, your target market or your customers. You have to start making sure you
do. Antiquated systems of measurement and data collection have been replaced
worldwide by sophisticated data mining platforms and techniques and the
headache posed by Big Data is not a new one. But that headache is often one that
could have been averted. Growing piles of data sit, unmanaged, untapped - why?
Because no one planned for it. No one asked why the data was being collected in
the first place and so now the job of trying to turn that knowledge into something of
value in a business sense is proving difficult. South Africa has a chance to be
ready. You have a chance to ensure you’re equipped with a forward thinking
strategy that looks to produce and mine data in line with achieving your business
goals. Just like brand, content and management, data too requires strategy. To
those who do it right, competitive edge and high performance await.
To those who fail to prepare, well let’s just say you know the rest of
that proverb.

3. Use Discount Power to Drive Strategy
Creating Relevant Strategy That Achieves Business Goals
What is a Promotional Data Strategy
A global survey called Big Data: Lessons From the Leaders has been completed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Nearly half of the
companies that were reported as “significantly outperforming their peers financially” said a well-defined data strategy was one of the
cores of that success. The report suggests that businesses can only benefit from clearly defined goals that allow for the formation of
practical data strategies that make achieving those goals a focus.
A promotional data strategy is just one tactical pillar in your comprehensive corporate data strategy. It uses, as its foundation, your
business’s potential promotional value in the form of product discounts or other items of value in order to gain insights into product
related or other information. This type of strategy is excellent for:
‣ Using the products you already sell to gather data from buyers about their perceptions of those and other products, their price points
and their true demand.
‣ Using the products you already sell to convert anonymous traffic on your website and social spaces into data profiles.
‣ Using the products you already sell to educate, up-sell and share more information about other opportunities that current or
prospective buyers may not have known about otherwise.
‣ Using key product promotions to create data profiles that will enable you to serve salient content to the specific mindsets and data
collections you have attained.
A promotional data strategy is also very flexible in that it allows for:
‣ A business or charity that doesn’t necessarily sell product online to also offer product for a time that it knows will relate to specific
customers, members or mindsets. (An e-commerce platform of some sort would be needed.)
‣ A business to run the promotional activation part of the strategy at any time and in line with data needs (It’s not required to be running
all day every day.)
‣ A business to not only gather data but also to activate other action-for-discount interactions (social sharing etc)
‣ A business to create value for the customer’s data and actions hence building relationships of substance with them in a two-way
interaction.
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4. How Do I Get There?
Creating Relevant Strategy That Achieves Business Goals
Steps Towards Your Data Strategy
Before You Start
A lot of companies in South Africa recognise the need for data strategy in some shape or form however factors like lack of organisational
readiness and appropriate skill sets are just two critical areas that may hinder its inception. You may find within your own business that these,
along with other elements, would be holding you back from a shift towards the competitive edge that a successfully implemented data
strategy provides.
Take the time to give some thought to these obstacles now and bring them top of mind by filling in the blank cells below:
1. Lack of organisational
readiness
2. Lack of appropriate
skill sets
3. 4. 5.
Now fill in what you’ll need to consider as next steps to preparing your business for the successful progression towards overcoming these
obstacles. We find that good old fashioned conversation is often the best and lest pressured place to start:
Highlighted
Challenge
1. Lack of
organisational
readiness
2. Lack of
appropriate skill sets
3. 4. 5.
Suggested Next
Step
Highlight Key Areas
For Focus
Discuss Data
Strategy with Peers
While this may not seem like rocket science, it’s amazing how choosing to plot momentum building actions can create a daisy chain within
your organisation. If there is a genuine benefit that you’ll take from a data strategy, the key stakeholders will quickly let you know what it should
look like. This will create new filters for you when it comes to hiring new staff and how you perceive data within your company.
The Data Strategy Edge. Competing In South Africa With The Future In Hand
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5. What Does This Thing Look Like?
Creating Relevant Strategy That Achieves Business Goals
Where Can Data Help You?
Defining Your Need
Your promotional data strategy should be built around
specific business goals. How does data help one achieve
these goals? Often a great place to start is to define areas
of your business that may not be working exactly the way
you want them to, in effect, a place of ‘pain’.
There are many areas that may come to the fore when you
conduct this exercise and so it’s best to hone in on the
areas that could be solved or made better by you knowing
more. For example you may be seeing high volumes of
traffic on your site or social media spaces but are not able
to convert them. Another example could be that you have a
high bounce rate on your home page and that people are
not moving through to the purchase phase.
Alternatively it could be something as simple as you having
a promotion you’re going to be running or a discount you’ll
be offering anyway that could be turned into a unique data
gathering exercise for you. Or perhaps you’re wanting to
turn your traditional advertising spend on platforms like
radio and TV into more focused pieces of content that drive
your prospective buyer through a number of interactions
while also allowing you to successfully measure whether
those platforms are reaching the right target markets.
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The Possibilities Are Endless
From the simplest of interactions to data strategies that
define your entire content strategy, a promtional data
strategy allows you to move and change through the
product you offer and the way you offer it.
The power to offer discounts on unrelated product to
customers who are currently with competitors in order to
tailor make your direct marketing to that customer is
immense.
Imagine, for example, a particular supplier of insurance
would like to know when non-members are having their
anniversaries on their current insurance product. They could
offer up a discount on aspirational products from one of
their loyalty program’s service providers in order to
ascertain the perfect time to start comparative marketing.
The amount of data derived from the promotion means that
the nature of the prospect along with their preferred
methods of communication can be discovered and utilised
effectively.

6. Are You Customer-Centric
Creating Relevant Strategy That Achieves Business Goals
The Customer, and then Content is King
The Data Strategy Edge. Competing In South Africa With The Future In Hand
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The More you Know the More you can Care
We all know the feeling that we get when it’s quite evident someone took the
time to give us what matters most to us. It’s a relational aspect of human
beings that can never be underestimated and the current climate means if
you’re not leading the way in this space, then someone else is.
Your promotional data strategy has to focus on efforts that will provide you with
real business value. Customer analytics is key to this in order to offer better
services. Better services mean happier clients, more referrals and ultimately
customer retention.
This is self-evident but the challenge increases as more potential customers
become become increasingly clued up on the variety of market options
available to them.
Experience is the New Reality
A well balanced promotional data strategy will see you interacting with clients
and not just mining data from them.
Properly done, your strategy can incorporate content, social sharing and
creative touches that when coupled with the discounts you’re giving away
generate a key term in the business-customer relationship spectrum:
Experience.
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7. Don’t Start Until You Know
Creating Relevant Strategy That Achieves Business Goals
It’s A Lot of Fun but more so when it Works
The Data Strategy Edge. Competing In South Africa With The Future In Hand
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Don’t even begin to plan any form of data strategy until
you are very clear on your business goals and vision. If
this means walking around the building to every
employee to get a better understanding of the
company’s true needs - then do it.
From marketing to data quality to internal
communications to PR - what do you need this data to
achieve?
If you’ve got a content strategy working for you already,
this data may be the best news its had all year.
Content’s best friend is data.
Research
We ran a Promotional Data Campaign with a well known smart phone
manufacturer. They used just 10 products, smart phones, as their
discount product. The campaign ran for 3 days in which the smart
phone company received the following conversions:
3790 people visited the campaign resulting in 12079 clicks
690 people logged in to the campaign of which 313 produced full
profiles (they produced 15 pieces of data each equalling a total of
4695 new things the business knows about their customer in just 3
days).
This is a conversion rate of just under 10%. Imagine converting 10%
of your traffic into data on a regular basis, especially if that data was
clearly lined up with achieving your business goals?
The traffic sources showed a 400% viral effect. What? A data
strategy can create viral? Yes.
The product discount average was 33,9% meaning that the buyers
never waited to redeem the full discount but still happily gave the
business 15 new pieces of data. This resulted in a profit per profile
scenario where the smart phone producer actually made money
while gathering data. This is just one example of how a well planned
promotional data campaign can add to the impetus of your
organisation.

8. Thanks for Taking the Time
Creating Relevant Strategy That Achieves Business Goals
Remember, Conversation is Key.
The Data Strategy Edge. Competing In South Africa With The Future In Hand
© The Happy Media Content Agency 8
There is a lot to be excited about as a business leader in
the current landscape. The power of strategy has never
been better lined up to be rewarded. The targeted and
focused nature of digital means that when you take the
time upfront to discern your next set of tactics that you
should, when this is applied with wisdom and to the right
data sets, make significant strides in the marketplace.
Combined with your management, content and brand
strategies, your data strategy will ensure you’re at the top
of the pile when it comes to practical innovation in
business.
As mentioned earlier, the best way to introduce new
thinking into your organisation is through relationship and
conversation. Become the new thinker you want others to
be and start a journey. The board room isn’t always as
successful as a casual lunch or a coffee to start.
The Happy Media Content Agency
Is a boutique Content Agency that works closely with
organisations in introducing and developing new thinking
in the marketing and native content space. Specialising in:
Content Marketing & Strategy
Native Content Concept and Production Projects
Content Curation & Modeling
Creative Data Strategy
With years of real experience on both sides of the
commercial publishing coin (at broadcast and brand) the
focus of the Agency is to introduce new thinking and
market leading innovation into the Southern African space.
The time is right and business needs edge. That’s what we
like to help provide. We believe our partners are excelling
while the market sleeps.

9. !
The Happy Media Content Agency
Strategic, intelligent content & concepts
Johannesburg, South Africa, wwwDOThappymediaDOTcoDOTza
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