Connecting marketing to business outcomes
MediaiQ has rebranded as MiQ as it refocuses the business around marketing intelligence and its ability to drive “transformative business decisions”.
The amount of data being created and collected continues to explode, theoretically giving marketers the ability to track consumers, predict outcomes and react intelligently. However, despite the profusion of data, marketers are not always making meaningful decisions from it and are falling foul of widespread knowledge gaps around data, insight and appropriate action.
Against this landscape and seeking to better reflect the role of data in marketing, Media iQ has rebranded to MiQ with a new focus – marketing intelligence.
“Data is one of the most important currencies a brand has access to, and is essential for businesses growth,” says Rebecca Mahony, chief marketing officer at MiQ. “This new position will help reimagine the value of marketing and put the CMO at the centre of decision making within business.”
The importance of marketing intelligence
Mahony explains further: “Really simply, marketing intelligence connects marketing to business outcomes.” In her view, marketing intelligence provides the solution to marketers’ current dilemmas around data: if marketers understand the importance of marketing intelligence but they are not sure how to best respond and use their data, this analysis and analytics offering gives them the means to develop strategy.
By definition, marketing intelligence gives those businesses, previously struggling to find valuable, actionable insight, the crucial information to make better decisions for their brands.
The aim of the discipline is to connect marketing to business outcomes by turning siloed, unstructured data into meaningful action that fuels brand strategy.
“We will be the company that connects all the data dots and offers businesses actionable insights, whether that’s across our media offering, analytical solutions or tech platforms that result in transformative business decisions, says Mahony.”
Educating companies about marketing intelligence
MiQ is seeking to educate the marketplace on its definition of marketing intelligence and how it applies it to gain results.
“Marketing Intelligence is a bit of a buzz word today so we are trying to explain what it is and how it can help you in your business,” says Mahony. “Clients have seen so many examples over the years of what we have done in marketing intelligence and it is something we want to be talking about in a much more public way.”
One such example of how MiQ has applied marketing intelligence to its client work is with a car rental brand in the US that was challenged by the fact 30% of bookings did not arrive to collect rental cars and the company didn’t understand why.
Using a range of data filters, MiQ eventually discovered the reason customers did this was because there was no need to pay for the car until collection.
The resulting marketing intelligence revealed the customers most likely to keep their reservation versus those most likely to break it and allowed the brand to revise its strategy.
MiQ developed a dashboard to help the company manage its vehicle fleets. The work has significantly reduced reservation costs by 57% year over year.
Closer focus on analytics
With a heritage in programmatic media campaigns, MiQ is one of the first companies in the media and marketing industry to fully adopt marketing intelligence into its core business strategy. While media continues to be critically important to the MiQ business, it is realigning the business strategy to focus closer on the analytics offering.
“As a business we want to take a step back and have a long-term view about what is going to happen in this industry,” explains Mahony. “So, we have realigned our business, realigned our tech and realigned the focus.”
Currently, there are three ways that clients can work with MiQ: media, analytics and tech. While media is the foundation of what MiQ offers and provides the majority of its revenue, it has an ambition for over 50% of client work to be analytics by 2020.
“Traditionally we start an engagement with clients through media and that is not going to change, however, we are focusing more on analytics,” says Mahony. “And, with this particular focus we are looking at bringing on new people and new skill sets.”
The change in name from Media iQ to MiQ allows the company to capitalise on the brand equity it has in the iQ moniker without being limited by the word ‘media’.
Shortening the name also allows for further associations for that letter M beyond media. “‘M’ for marketing; ‘iQ’ intelligence: it kind of fits and felt like it is a nice transition to where we are now,” adds Mahony. “Also, obviously we are a British company and MI5 – intelligence – MiQ – there is a little bit of fun there as well.”