DISCOVERING OPPORTUNITIES
& CREATING A ROADMAP
FOR LONG-TERM GROWTH

Marketing+Tech is more complex than ever.

CMOs aren’t just determining brand strategy and creative direction. They also must juggle a growing number of marketing technology systems and tools while developing unified programs across diverse marketing channels – often with limited internal resources.

Mastering this complexity is essential as marketing+tech contributes around 50% of a business’s enterprise value according to Forbes.

The myriad of choices available to marketers today can make it difficult to determine which go-to-market strategy, budget allocations and mix of channels and tactics will be most effective in meeting a company’s growth or revenue attainment goals.

For every business seeking to maximize growth potential, taking time to evaluate every aspect of business performance through a guided exercise of self-examination is vital to success, especially before allocating finite resources and laying out the implementation stages of your growth roadmap.

For Moving Minds, the first step in comprehensive marketing+tech strategy and growth roadmap begins with the Discovery phase. The Discovery process lays an essential foundation, including:

• Identifying obstacles and opportunities,
• Aligning marketing, sales and operations,
• Baselining existing performance metrics and KPIs,
• Evaluating internal resources, systems and capabilities,
• Developing a preliminary go-to-market strategy and then
• Finalizing the implementation roadmap.

Discovery Sets the Transformative Process in Motion

Effective marketing+tech is no longer based on hunches or gut feelings. The proliferation of new technology, analytics and software enables marketers to build their growth strategies on actual data-driven analysis and performance metrics.

The Discovery process is an in-depth process of evaluation in which our CMO-led team of marketing+tech experts participate in a collaborative dialogue with executives and senior management to gain a holistic view of a business and its growth opportunities.

This is the earliest phase in the marketing process and will inform every step afterward. The discovery phase employed by Moving Minds provides executive management the opportunity to participate in a collaborative dialogue to share insights with our team. We can also baseline the performance of key business areas before developing a more comprehensive growth roadmap.

Our team of CMO-led marketing+tech experts go deeper than what you might expect from a traditional agency. We examine every aspect of the business and conducting analysis to find inhibitors to growth and scale – whether they be strategy, processes, people, programs, tactics, data and/or systems. This deep dive into the business allows our agency to gain robust insights that will lead to transformative recommendations and results.

While you may have your marketing team and strategy intact, don’t discount the value of an objective third-party view. When you’re constantly driving day-to-day activities, it can be easy to narrow in on one problem rather than linking it to other areas of your marketing, sales and operational performance.

Research from Bain & Company found that taking a holistic view of commercial capabilities is much more effective than tinkering with each capability on its own. In fact, companies that carried out an “X-ray diagnostic” and addressed their commercial performance holistically often gained 3 to 5 percentage points of profit margin and increased their revenue growth.

Discovery as a Collaborative Process to Uncover Value

Led by seasoned CMO-level experts, Moving Minds will gain a comprehensive understanding of a business, including its marketing, sales, operations and delivery capabilities during the discovery process.

The Discovery process is customized for each client, but it generally involves:

• Meetings with executives to understand strategic goals and perspectives,
• Interviews with employees to gain further insights into specific areas of the business,
• Analysis of current and potential customer segments,
• Analysis of competitors marketing strategies, messaging, tactics, keyword search ranking positions and levels of advertising spend,
• Mystery shopping to evaluate the customer experience online and offline,
• Examination of your existing business’s marketing strategies, programs, brand, creative, as well as the internal and external resources responsible for execution,
• Website traffic, search discoverability and content audit (SEO, social media, blog, etc.),
• Analysis of customer data management processes and the existing suite of martech systems and platforms being utilized within the business, and
• Alignment of existing personnel to performance metrics and contribution.

Over the course of a few weeks, Moving Minds’ team of martech experts works together to align goals, bring opportunities to light, and solutions to growth impediments, achieving a 360-degree view of the marketing+tech organization. While the depth of discovery will depend on your organization’s needs or timescale, the process should be as comprehensive as possible.

How Discovery Brings Tangible Opportunities to Light

Businesses may be surprised to learn that the agency’s discovery phase is also a time of discovery for them.

At Moving Minds, we find the Discovery phase is the starting point for creating highly sustainable, long-term growth roadmaps for clients ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies.

One example of how the Discovery process yielded significant shareholder value and immediate revenue impact for a client was our work with one of the nation’s fastest-growing dermatology group. The group came to Moving Minds for help in developing a comprehensive marketing strategy and boosting overall growth trajectory for its 35 practices located throughout the New York City metro area.

Moving Minds met with the company’s leadership and senior management over two days to gain a complete picture of the business. The process included:

• Audits of search engine position rankings for its various lines of business and keywords,
• Website traffic lead volume and conversion rates,
• Advertising campaign and programs,
• Marketing organization personnel review and responsibilities,
• Targeted patient personas and demographics,
• The patient in-office & retail experience,
• Inbound call volume, call center conversions, lead prioritization, performance, methods, and personnel,
• Provider utilization,
• Business processes,
• Database quality, management and practices,
• Inbound and outbound marketing promotions and programs,
• Events & corporate wellness programs,
• The use of automation and technology,
• The spectrum of existing services and vendor & manufacturer partner relationships.

The two-day discovery led to some remarkable insights on how the company could increase marketing and operational performance and efficiency. Some of the benefits reaped from the discovery process were:

• Discovered they could offset almost 50% of marketing costs by developing advertising co-op programs with various manufacturers and vendors, as well as other opportunities like gift cards and a patient email program.
• Uncovered and fixed significant call center issues, like high wait times and lack of follow-up, by implementing an online chat session that allowed the company to reduce internal resources.
• Increased website leads and conversions nearly 500% by redesigning and moving the schedule a consultation intake form on the website.
• Identified poor data management and quality practices that resulted in limiting annual patient scheduling to costly, paper-based direct mail vs. less expensive email communications and text messaging.

Moving Minds’ analysis found many ways this leading NYC dermatology group could increase marketing capabilities without adding tremendous costs. Rather than suggesting expensive new strategies, Moving Minds identified problems that were impeding growth as well as found existing opportunities that had not yet been utilized.

As marketing grows more complicated, the discovery phase is becoming increasingly important in diagnosing businesses’ unknown opportunities. Just like a good doctor does a thorough examination of a patient rather than administering treatment based on gut feelings, Moving Minds takes a holistic view of each client’s business to identify opportunities, implement best practices and unlock incredible growth potential, revenue growth and shareholder value.

But of course, finding opportunities and knowing how to execute solutions to seize on opportunities is another story in itself and we’ll address how we help companies create an implementation roadmap for taking the findings and changing the course of each client’s business to drive long-term value.