With a master’s degree in engineering, followed by stints in underwriting insurance at Zurich and Lloyd’s of London before joining a start-up, I’ve seen and learnt a lot about different disciplines. I believe having a range of diverse experiences to draw on is key to developing an effective business strategy and, when it comes to marketing in particular, it’s important to challenge the norm. Why? Because applying the principles and approaches of other disciplines can bring a fresh perspective.
The Build Measure Learn (BML) approach is something I adopted from my time with Simply Business, an insurance broker start-up which launched in 2005 to offer agile and flexible cover for small businesses.
On the surface, it’s a really simple theory: build something, whether it’s a product, service or offer, put it out into the world, measure how your target audience reacts, use those learnings to build something better, and continue until you have something your target audience loves, needs and wants.
It’s the very simplicity of this approach that makes it so effective. Contrasted with the traditional top down marketing model, BML combines a systemic approach with flexibility to quickly adapt and make informed decisions. It works like a continuous feedback loop, meaning that measurement is constantly collected and built into the development of products or services. This helps prevent errors made by assumptions.
Perhaps surprisingly, data-driven approaches are also really valuable when encouraging creativity. By constantly getting feedback on what’s working, and what isn’t, it’s easier and quicker to come up with new ideas that have a better chance of working successfully.
A BML model also has the advantage of making successes and failures transparent. This makes it perfectly suited to a bottom up model where all employees can come up with ideas that will contribute to business success, encouraging everyone to get creative rather than just leaving it to one individual or team.
It’s an approach we use daily at TotallyMoney.com. We’re all dedicated to making the credit market more transparent for people and we always use data to measure how effective our service is.
Overall, we think the wider financial industry has a long way to go to improve customer experience, a belief borne out by the most recent Financial Ombudsman Service complaints data, which showed a 3.5% rise in 2015-16. We want to see financial services brands tackle this by placing customer feedback at the heart of everything they do. Employing a BML model in the development of products, services and strategies is an important first step to bring about better experiences for consumers, a fairer market and greater transparency across the entire sector.
By Alastair Douglas, CEO of TotallyMoney.com
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