Gridsum: Clear strategy driving progress

Gridsum has long been a leading provider in enterprise-level big data and AI solutions in China. Their work gives clients a top-to-toe understanding of the often complex relationship between data and success, and the company’s customised platforms also reveal insight that may otherwise fly under the radar or fall out of a marketer’s grasp.

Catered specifically towards corporate and government enterprises, Gridsum has served nearly 400 customers from different industries including: digital marketing, intelligent CRM, convergence media and data intelligence, justice, e-government, and industrial internet.

Their roster of clients rank among Fortune 500 and China’s top 500 companies, and also features over 30 Chinese government agencies. Gridsum boasts 90+ software copyrights and 2,200+ invention patent applications, with 580 of them focusing on big data, and 200+ on enterprise-level AI.

At the commercial marketing level, the company’s one-two punch of technical capabilities and business acumen has been imperative to their sustained success. By pouring resources into product R&D and addressing each client’s needs on a case-by-case basis—Gridsum’s business solutions have gradually evolved from simple result analysis to trend prediction, and from data acquisition and processing to gleaning unique, higher-level insight.

Owing to this development is another two-tiered approach, combining more classic theories from the marketing field with specific business scenarios. This deep-dive often reveals the initial pain points of different brands. The rest naturally follows, from the prediction of solutions, to the transformation of data into assets.

The new plan of action

Marketing author and professor Philip Kotler proposed his core 5A theory in his latest book Marketing 4.0, and the work served as inspiration for Gridsum’s marketing strategy.

While the framework’s major stepping stones are owed to Kotler (aware, appeal, ask, act, advocate), Gridsum has geared 5A towards digital. The company’s theory driving the framework posits that, in the era of “internet of everything”, user traffic has transformed the way we do business. People now sit at the core of all work that’s done, the period of purchase has been greatly shortened, and brands need to be accutely aware of consumer touch points—intercepting interest in as timely a manner as possible. The work as a whole can serve as both a road map for campaigns and a primer on Gridsum’s own products and services.

Gridsum's new map for digital success