Marketers want to harness the power of data, but they’re not sure where to begin. So, Renzo DiPasquale, Vice President of Self-Serve & Enterprise at AcuityAds suggests three steps to lay a powerful data-driven foundation for marketing campaigns: get personal, go mobile and get educated
The writing is on the wall when it comes to data’s business value – data-driven companies are almost 3X as likely to increase revenue. So it’s no surprise that it has become an essential element of the strategic toolkit belonging to marketers focused on concrete, impactful results. Deploying a data-driven marketing strategy and applying first-party customer insights effectively are fundamental to remaining competitive and supporting a healthy bottom line. The rise of programmatic marketing, or the automation of digital advertising, is the result of technologies converging to produce ultra-sophisticated, data-driven campaigns.
But, with practically limitless data sources out there, the landscape can often look insurmountable. Many marketers want to harness the power of this abundance, but they’re not sure where to begin. There are three steps they can take today to lay a powerful data-driven foundation for their marketing campaigns: get personal, go mobile and get educated.
Get Personal
These days, to really catch the attention of your core market, you have to get personal. Consumers are accustomed to highly relevant experiences, thanks to the customized environments of companies like Amazon and Google. Weather targeting, which serves ads to consumers based on weather conditions, is a unique example of the strategies that can be unlocked by leveraging customer data. But it’s about more than just programming umbrella ads to target San Francisco customers as a thunderstorm approaches – innovation in both data analytics and automation has moved the goal posts and left marketers in a whole new ballgame.
For example, advanced data-driven tools like weather reactors enable marketers to embrace a broader, real-time programmatic strategy that sees each customer individually in their own real-world context, complete with weather factors. Armed with the right tools, marketers can go straight to the core of what a consumer wants, and communicate in the way that’s most relevant to the customer’s unique preferences.
Instead of marketing a winter coat to everyone in Denver on a 30-degree day in October, a marketer should be able to target each individual based on their individual characteristics. That means piecing together not just weather and location, but consumer age, sex, annual income, social interests, previous purchase history and other factors to build a clear persona. With that persona in mind, marketers can then target them at the perfect time, on their preferred platform, in the tone and with the product that will resonate most.
Social media and mobile devices play a central role in both building these personas and targeting consumers with the most relevant ads.
Go mobile
Mobile is dominating data-driven marketing, and, more specifically, the programmatic space, which enables marketers to automate their ad buying for more efficient, precise targeting. A third of marketers are already using programmatic for mobile advertising buys, and by 2019, more than 75 percent of all programmatic buying is predicted to be on mobile. This is because users are on mobile – whether tablets or smartphones – nonstop, simultaneously generating more data across social platforms than ever before while also being contactable by brands.
Leveraging social media apps like Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook and more, alongside our always-on mobile culture, marketers can gain insight on consumers and reach them at the most opportune moment, in the most customized way. Cutting-edge technology allows marketers to easily build individual personas based on targeted mobile and social data. For example, you follow LeBron James, and the Cavaliers on Twitter, post photos of your kids on Facebook, and have Pinterest pins about planning your vacation to San Juan? A savvy marketer at Jet Blue just hit you with an email featuring family-friendly vacation packages with flights out of Cleveland to the Caribbean. That’s the power of social data.
But, how did that savvy marketer know all the tools and tricks to achieve a segment-of-one marketing tactic such as that? It takes education.
Get educated
A recent ANA report on media transparency made the strong recommendation that marketers brush up on their knowledge of digital advertising technologies, including programmatic, in order to be fully accountable for their campaigns. But, the marketing technology world is evolving faster than many can keep up with. That means, for a vast majority, data-driven excellence starts with the education that programmatic partners can provide, which in turn almost immediately empowers marketers to harness in-depth campaign reporting and insight-driven targeting that grant them superior control of their media spend.
Every day, we’re seeing more hybrid approaches that allow marketers to execute campaigns when they want, and flip over the controls to a partner when they need to. These hybrid models allow the best of both worlds for marketers, as marketers learn to master programmatic tools on their own terms, eventually taking over the wheel completely to drive their programmatic campaigns. Once marketers are fully steering their campaigns, these hybrid models are especially valuable because they easily transition into a robust, intuitive Self-Serve platform that marketers have full autonomy over.
With the safety of additional guidance and resources provided by hybrid models leveraging these Self-Serve platforms, marketers can be met where their needs are, eventually learning to take full control and achieve effective, targeted, data-driven digital advertising campaigns, all while gaining confidence and independence.
Championing a data-driven future
In a data-driven future, marketers must evolve into champions of their digital advertising campaigns by understanding how to harness the power of data. By rolling up their sleeves and getting personal, going mobile and getting educated, marketers equip themselves with a strategic toolkit that delivers impact. Armed with the ability to target the right audience at the right time using the knowledge and insights born from data, marketers can intelligently connect with their audiences and execute effective, targeted digital advertising strategies across all platforms.
