A sustainable insights strategy for an ambitious tech firm
Who
Fast-growing Welsh broadband and telephone provider Ogi saw an opportunity in Glew’s market research and insights services to help them develop the structure and rich insights they needed to drive tactical marketing and business-wide strategic decisions.
In 2020 they had received a landmark investment to bring ultrafast, fibre optic connectivity to 150k+ homes and businesses across south Wales.
“Ogi is a fast-growth business,” explained Mari Stevens, Chief Marketing Officer at Ogi. “Two years ago we had a new brand and ambitious rollout and sales targets to deliver. However, as the only alternative telecoms choice in some of our target communities, we had no real data benchmarks upon which to base crucial business-wide decisions, or tactical marketing and sales activities.”
With employee numbers already at 135 and growing 3 a week, Ogi needed a strategic and sustainable approach to managing insights so they could better understand their target audiences and evaluate the impact of their roll-out.
Specifically, Ogi was looking for:
- A roadmap to manage their insights and evaluation processes efficiently as they grew.
- A way to understand and analyse demographic patterns of customers versus the wider communities so that they could proactively respond and identify the best prospect future communities for the coming years.
- Established benchmarks on brand awareness, sentiment, and satisfaction to help them manage expectations and track progress long term.
- Improved marketing evaluation approaches to allow for a more data-orientated culture.
Why Glew?
Ogi recognised the value of bringing in someone with an objective perspective who could work closely with in-house teams to derive a full, unbiased picture of where they were at in terms of insights and evaluation. They also needed someone with the skills to coordinate data reports and present the findings clearly to the rapidly growing business.
Georgie had carried out some previous insights work for them into the business market, producing some visual maps of the target market which helped them to clarify their opportunities and the direction they needed to take.
“Georgie is strategic but pragmatic – she is clear-minded, and a pleasure to work with,” said Mari. “We benefitted from Georgie’s flexibility and ability to truly embed herself within the team and business, enabling her to truly ‘get’ our ambitions and dynamics, and provide us with the rich and unique insights we really need.”
Chief Revenue Officer for Ogi, Sally-Anne Skinner added: “Georgie can lend her hand to a myriad of tasks, and is professional, approachable and knowledgeable.
What Glew delivered
Through a series of in-house workshops with different teams, Glew carried out a review of the data currently being captured and how it was being used to develop actionable insights. The results were mapped out in line with the customer journey to show the intersections between teams and support cohesive cross-function working.
The resulting roadmap and projected outcomes were well received by the senior exec team and the initial budget aligned to the project was doubled in recognition of its company-wide benefits.
Part of the delivery involved Glew project-managing the integration of various data sources into a Power BI dashboard to allow the team to access live demographic insights.
Glew then undertook several research projects culminating in their most comprehensive customer and community research to date, to provide a balance of robust and emotionally intelligent insights. These included:
- Project managing a barometer style survey with research agency Strategic Research & Insight to develop brand benchmarks and quantitative demographic insights.
- Designing and issuing a customer survey and call script to develop a mix of qualitative and quantitative insights into buyer behaviours and satisfaction.
- Coordinating a series of more qualitative focus groups with Strategic Research & Insight to explore broadband preferences, barriers to uptake and perceptions of Ogi among non-customers, as well as test specific propositions.
The results of the various research projects were then triangulated into a report which will shortly be presented to the senior exec and build teams to inform Ogi’s next stage of delivery.
How it helped
The insights acquired through the various research projects have already contributed to early discussions around Ogi’s build strategy as well as informing its competitive marketing campaigns.
Sally-Anne said: “Now more than ever it is crucial for businesses to fully understand their customer base and their potential audience. Georgie’s work has really helped us to get under the skin of purchasing decision making and customer sentiment.”
Mari said: “Georgie has worked closely with us to plug our insights gap with clever, considered approaches to capturing and interpreting key data as it increasingly became available. We now have a deep and multi-layered understanding of our marketplace and performance to date, allowing us to adapt our business strategies and plans to deliver impressive and improving roll-out and take-up results.”
Sarah Vining, Head of Brand and Engagement for Ogi added: “We’re delighted with Georgie’s work. She is extremely knowledgeable and skilled in several fields and got to grips very quickly with the complexities of what we’re trying to achieve. Georgie has added real value to the team, consistently exceeding expectations. She is a people person, likeable and a strong communicator who is sensitive to how to get the right results from others.”
On the 3rd July 2023, Ogi announced that it was running ahead of schedule having surpassed 60,000 premises and 6,000 customers.
With clear benchmarks now established and a roadmap in place to maintain and develop these insights further, Ogi’s ultimate aim of becoming Wales’ first choice internet company may well be on the horizon.