Insight for indies: 6 ways to win a pitch with data-driven ideas

Every agency knows the key to winning new business and delivering successful pitches is to know your consumer in intimate detail.

But it’s not enough to rely on experience or hunches.

The only way to prove to clients you truly know their audience is to use trustworthy data, and present it so that the client can immediately see the value and ROI that can come from its use.

Here’s how to become pitch perfect and wow your clients with data-driven ideas.

1. Ensure your source is credible.

Any data source worth its salt is transparent about its methodology, allowing its users to know exactly where the information is coming from, and how it’s been harvested.

After all, the credibility and quality of data comes down to how it’s collected. Here are some key things to look at when researching your provider.

• Team: Is there information on who the analysts are? Can you verify they’re real people who have a voice in the industry?
• Clients: Who has chosen the business in the past? Do they align with your brand or are they ones you look up to?
• Values: A company’s values reflect how it conducts its research. Is it respectful, ethical and open? Do they reflect your own values?
• Transparency: Are they transparent and clear about their approach to data collection and methodology?
• Content: Do they produce regular thought leadership and valuable content that portrays the breadth and depth of their data set?

You need to ensure you’re investing in a product that not only offers all the data you need, but that it’s coming from a credible business that will help you develop your expertise, not hinder it.

TIP: With stricter regulations on data collection, it’s essential to ensure the data provider you choose puts consent first. Here’s how we do it.

2. Find the insights your clients don’t have.

What makes you special to clients? Having knowledge and insight they don’t.

By basing your pitches on solid fact, you’re showing your value to your client, proving that you’ll bring something unique and new to their equation.

Come prepared with deep insight into their target audiences, and showcase not only your ability to generate successful campaigns, but your eagerness to know their consumers better than even they do.

3. Understand more than just behaviors.

In the past, behavioral data was enough to put together true and detailed stories about your target consumers, but this is no longer the case.

Now, your data source of choice must offer insight into not only behaviors and demographics, but motivations and perceptions.

Picture this: You know which devices they use. You know which channels and social media platforms they favor, but you don’t know what they use them for, or what they’re looking for.

You don’t know what interests them beyond what their actions say.

Without this knowledge, your marketing efforts are sure to fall short, as you’re missing an essential piece.

Why? Because people have different reasons for doing different things, and our research proves it:

Reasons for Using Social Media
Millennials	To fill up spare time (43%)
Gen X	To stay up-to-date with news and current events (40%)
Baby Boomers	To stay in touch with what my friends are doing (39%)

4. Visualize the journey.

The best way to win a pitch is to prove you’re an expert on the audience in question.

To do this, it means providing insight into everything from a day in their lives to their path to purchase.

This is where data-driven consumer journey maps become essential.

Consumer journey maps provide a detailed overview of the customer experience and what touchpoints really matter along the purchase journey.

This is fundamental for clients to understand, because it helps to build a foundation for their strategy.

They can take any size and shape, depending on the needs of the client, to portray any journey these consumers can take, at any stage of the funnel.

By offering clients bespoke consumer journey maps, you can prove you have an end-to-end solution – your mind is not only on landing the pitch, but actually carrying through the work to success.

5. Be a data storyteller.

Anyone can mindlessly mouth off stats, but getting the impact you want means harnessing a deep understanding of the data.

For your client to really believe in what you’re saying, it takes creating a story that will resonate, just as you might do with any campaign.

Do this by putting the insights in context, clearly outlining the story this data tells about the consumer in question – whether that’s how they spend their time online, or what drives them to get up every morning.

This not only showcases the data in a relatable way, it allows you to show off your creative side and help the client visualize the ideas you have in mind.

6. Show them the return.

In the end, it’s all about the ROI, both for you and the client.

Putting granular consumer data behind your ideas proves to the client you have a solid, reliable foundation to work from, rather than turning to educated assumption.

This will help to eliminate the risk involved, ensuring the client sees the return they want.

Integrating ad effectiveness studies in your proposal will also help you to assess uptake and offer peace of mind that the impact of your ideas will be measurable.

With this information at hand, you can make confident promises, or prove prior success to prospective new clients.

Insight in Practice: Katté & Co PPC and Biddable experts Katté & Co are enjoying a meteoric rise in the agency world, having just been highlighted as one of The Drum’s Top 100 Independent Agencies. The team knows the true value of consumer data and the impact it can have. Here’s what Jack Giddens, Head of Biddable at Katté & Co, has to say. How do you use consumer insight from GlobalWebIndex to prepare pitches? Getting an understanding of how consumers behave gives us real insight into how to frame a pitch. Being able to get in front of a prospective client with real data on their consumers is invaluable. We use GlobalWebIndex to show prospective clients that we have a deep understanding of their target market, and that we have the data to prove it. How has this strengthened your pitching? Being an agency that prides itself on data, this information helps us highlight that and put more weight behind the pitch. Any words of wisdom for other indie agencies? We’d highly recommend investing in a granular consumer data source, like GlobalWebIndex, and taking the time to get to know your audience. The more information you have on who you’re targeting, the more detailed your targeting can be and, effectively, the better your ROAS will be.

Where to start

So you want to make your ideas and decisions as consumer-centric as possible, using global and local insight to back you up. But how do you go about incorporating it into your agency?

Start by taking a closer look at the consumer, market and industry research at your disposal and assessing what’s missing.

• Are you clued into what your consumers are doing but not so much why?
• Do you know what channels they’re using but not which influencers they follow?
• Do you know what kind of products they like to buy, but not what interests them?

Once you’ve identified the knowledge gaps you need to fill, you can find a solution. Using a source like GlobalWebIndex will ensure you’re clued into your audience at all times, with quarterly research that goes far beyond basic demographics.

Start asking the right questions on your audience, and give your clients the answers they can’t find elsewhere.