As each dollar a marketer spends becomes ever more important, utilizing data to spend smarter has become vital. Utilizing and relying on data can help marketers design and launch superior campaigns and optimize them along the way for maximum results.
For years, many marketers have considered search and affiliate as the two dominant performance marketing channels, thanks to their focus on direct response, measurement and optimization.
Increasingly, effective marketing in the digital age applies these principles to all channels, and doing so requires a keen understanding of the people who interact with your brand. Every segment of your audience has specific needs and information- gathering preferences. Consumers now dictate what, where and how they interact with you. Brands that embrace this reality can then measure and optimize campaigns across all channels accordingly.
Shifting realities for both consumers and businesses can create confusion for marketers who seek a clear, concise and effective marketing mix. The landscape has certainly changed. The tools, processes and philosophies of marketing are changing, so where do we go from here?
Harnessing Collective Intelligence
First and foremost, marketers have a huge opportunity to utilize data to calculate, predict and implement strategies that provide consumer insight and maximize investments.
A fascinating University of California, San Diego, study estimated the American data diet to be 34 gigabytes a day (and that number has most certainly grown since the study was conducted in 2009). That means most Americans consume 11.8 hours of information a day — and humans now have the average attention span of a goldfish: 9 seconds! This information overload limits the effectiveness we have on our audience and our ability to cut through the clutter and noise.
Evolution Forces & Factors
Increasing media fragmentation, often referred to as the “Splinternet,” has hindered marketers’ ability to effectively engage consumers and deliver messages, but it has also enabled individuals to share their activities, post their location, kill time (Angry Birds, anyone?), and, not surprisingly, shop with others. In today’s marketing world, social commerce and social shopping are on the rise.
Marketers with goals of inciting more actions, driving conversions and increasing online and offline sales must develop strategies that engage consumers. Consider these factors for effectively building programs that build unified communities:
Challenge: Consumers like to be challenged and feel competent about their skills and abilities. This is one of the reasons games thrive in social networks. What can you do to build an environment that taps into the competence of your brand community? Invite them to share their knowledge and expertise about products and services, for example.
Sense of Autonomy: Prospects and customers perform best in a self-directed, empowered environment that supports actions, desires and preferences and embraces feedback. Understand that as a brand, you do not “control” the environment and messaging. As the marketer, you are the curator, providing rich environments in which consumers thrive by asking for their opinions and feedback and being ready to respond. Marketing is now a relationship.
Context: Consumers operate best when they receive acceptance, security, and immediate contextual support for autonomy and competence. Remember, they want to relate to you and your brand, and to others with similar interests. What can you to do connect consumers to your brand — and to other consumers, as well?
From within this context, marketers can effectively create tools, utilize technology and implement tactics to build and strengthen their message. The depth and breadth of the tools and technologies may vary — from attribution to customer segmentation to social listening, but they should all facilitate deeper analysis and optimization and enable modeling of successful programs.
Daina Middleton (daina.middleton@performics.com) is CEO of Performics.
THE QUESTIONS TO ASK
If you’re unsure how to define the right tools and technology to optimize your marketing mix, ask yourself and your teams these important questions:
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What role do websites and other analytics play in our customer segmentation?
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What staff is required to effectively analyze data? This can include dedicated analytics resources or often times be incorporated into a media planner/strategist role.
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What are the challenges to analyzing audience performance data? Do we have diverse data sources, untrustworthy data sources or large volumes of data to decipher?
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What tools and technologies will better enable our own analysis? — DM
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