The team at Blis accessed consumer insight they couldn't find elsewhere to get to the heart of consumers' motivations and unlock new markets.

Blis is the global leader in advanced location data technology.

This technology gives marketers access to data that’s playing a more pivotal role than ever in consumer profiling, targeting and attribution.

The challenge

Speaking the same language.

As a leading provider of location data around the world, Blis is a brand that continues to grow.

Setting its sights on new markets further afield, they needed access to reliable insights that helped them understand the opportunities within.

“Understanding the nuances of consumer attitudes in new markets was a real challenge before GWI”, says Alex Wright, Head of Insights at Blis.

“Almost every market will have their own independent data sources, and because you don’t always know the origins, it’s hard to account for the inconsistencies – are they a product of methodology, sampling, or genuine behavior?”

This lack of cross-market reliability made it difficult for the teams when it came to speaking to these prospective clients and solidifying their pitch.

But making that connection abroad wasn’t all they needed. They could also leverage this information to strengthen relationships closer to home.

“The missing piece was the ‘why’.

Although we could get some demographic data and understand people’s behaviors, we didn’t understand the motivations behind this data."

“Most of the business we do is through agencies, so the real benefit of a tool like GWI is that it gives us a common language with them that we didn’t have before”, he says.

Determining the motivations behind the movement.

There was something missing from the Blis audience and their motivations; they could see where people were going, but not why they were doing it.

“What we have is passive data from people’s mobile devices as they move around. We had no source with which to bind the patterns of behavior we saw through our data to the pen portrait behavior agencies wanted to latch onto on behalf of their clients.”

The action

Quantifying common sense.

 Blis invested in GWI as a way of complimenting its vast ‘big data’ pool, with consumer response data.

This gave the team ready access to deep consumer insight they simply couldn’t find elsewhere.

“Before GWI, we could reasonably infer why people were doing certain things from their actions, but this meant people buying into the common sense nature of human behavior. For example, that if you go to a five-aside match, you have an interest in football.”

“We lacked the declarative data we needed to understand consumers’ motivations for doing these things.”

This data also gives them the ability to enrich the insight they can already provide.

One client, a leading telecommunications provider, was looking to connect with commuters - a key audience, and a habitual behavior associated with heavy mobile use.

Blis could then not only give them deep insight into where and how to target these consumers, but also match the client’s audiences in the platform, offering them more information on their target audiences, including whether they’re heavy cinema-goers or sports fans, for example.

“We could plug that audience into GWI and tie the brief to our data”, says Alex.

“Once we had that audience, we could say yes, they over-index for streaming music, streaming video, watching TV shows on the go. This validates the brief and we can also quantify the size of this audience by handset, by region, by income bracket, and so on.”

The result

Investing in client needs.

By being proactive and introducing an external data source to complement their own, Blis has positioned itself as a business that offers a comprehensive solution, enriching their core location data capabilities.

“This data has strengthened our relationships with our clients by showing them we’re willing to invest in additional sources to help us make more intelligent decisions on their behalf.”

Using GWI, Blis has been able to provide their clients with the likely locations of their target audiences, coupled with intelligence into their interests, attitudes and perceptions they couldn’t find elsewhere.

“As marketing budgets are under perpetual scrutiny, it’s more important than ever to have solid empirical support for your proposals, and more effective audience profiling from the start.”

Unlocking new markets.

Blis was aiming to get a much deeper understanding of markets they had yet to tap into, and having a single go-to source to rely on has been highly beneficial.

“It’s so simple to download the market level reports to get the top-level insights I need”, he says.

“To understand the key differences of a market in five minutes by reading through the first few pages of a report is the ideal scene-setter.

It gives us a more informed position from which to approach representatives of those markets with the aim of generating new business.”

Since combining GWI data with its own, Blis has not only seen an increase in new business, but also improved client relations, proving it’s a business dedicated to continuous innovation to ensure client success.