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On Using the Federal Media & Marketing Study Dashboard for Strategy Development

In order to understand how federal marketers are using data from the Federal Media & Marketing Study (FMMS) dashboard first-hand, Market Connections president, Aaron Heffron recently reached out to Sarah Kemple, Director of Brand at Booz Allen Hamilton, a long-time FMMS user, on how teams at Booz Allen are using the full set of data for their procurement, business development (BD) and marketing strategies.

Watch the interview video or read the Q&A below for more details.

AH: Sarah, you’ve been a long-time user of the FMMS data… that we’ve been doing for the past 10 years. You all use it on a regular basis within the brand area. Can you tell me how you use the data and how it’s useful for you?

SK: Absolutely! One of my jobs as brand director is really helping the marketing leads understand their audience better, get better insights, and figure out where best to put their tactics and so… there’s a number of ways that we use that.

In particular, what I’m really working on right now is developing our personas. We have a number of buyer personas that we have developed with federal government and really what’s interesting is to understand behaviors and where they start to differ based on who they are and where they play in terms of the procurement process…

So what I like about the dashboard is you can really hone in and say, “Listen I want to look at somebody in defense who’s role is really more about being a contracting officer in procurement,” and you can look at their patterns of behavior versus maybe someone who’s more senior level in the decision process like a senior executive… You do start seeing trends about who’s more engaged on podcasts and who might be more engaged on conferences and webinars and you do start seeing certain differences about whom you’re engaging…

We use that information then, to work with different teams. For example, we’re working with our BD team and they’re starting to figure out maybe there’s a particular procurement and they’re trying to figure out what tactics they need to take. It helps them determine where they want to go, what kinds of digital engagements might be right or what types of pubs they’re interested in, based on the types of people they’re looking to target… So, it does give us some great information on what content to do across that buyer journey and what are the more effective publications for a particular group.

AH: That’s one of the main reasons we started this so many years ago is that, often people had a blanket approach in the federal space…you know, just kind of did it… the same thing across everyone. You kind of knew in your gut there were some differences in there, but you couldn’t really point to it and make that kind of justified case that, “Hey I need to do things a little differently for one group versus the other.”

Beyond brand, are there other areas or other groups within BAH that seem to be using this information or this data?

SK: Well, as I said before… so there’s the BD team, we use the tool working with them, we collaborate with them to help them figure out different strategies. Our content team, also the same thing. They’re going to look at different ways that they can engage, what kind of content they should be developing, and for whom.

We like to be focused with our budget, you know, nobody has money to waste. You want to make sure you’re really choosing the right avenue and the right people. And so wherever anyone across the firm is looking to do certain kinds of engagement, we like to partner with them to really help them understand that market space and really hone in as much as they can on who they’re trying to talk to, because there definitely are a lot of differences. Particularly when you start getting down to the civil level, there are so many different nuances there, so it really does help to have something help you target those nuances.

AH: Yea, certainly get the biggest bang for your buck. You know, everyone is dealing with limited resources, so you want to apply those in the best way you can.

SK: Absolutely, especially now with everything being a little different.

AH: Yeah, that is the understatement! And with that… I want to just thank you… for jumping on…I really appreciate your time.

SK: Anytime! Thank you and thank you for the dashboard.

AH: My pleasure.

About the Federal Media & Marketing Study:

For over 10 years, Market Connections has provided the federal marketing community with insights around the media and marketing habits of federal employees. The latest release of the Federal Media & Marketing Study on-demand overview is just the tip of the iceberg. We remind the federal marketing community that beyond the overview, lies a robust database filled with three year’s worth of data that can be sliced and diced by specific target audiences such as agency type, agency, job role, product category and location.

Learn more about the study, purchase the overview or subscribe to the dashboard.