By Varun Gudiseva, Tapad
Imagine a world where
every piece of technology around you is always used to help make your life
easier. Your phone captures all your daily habits to forecast what time is the
best for you to wake up to make the 9 am meeting while looking at the traffic
between your home and office. Consumers are more than willing to share their
data as long as it helps them simplify their life.
That’s what we are all
working towards in this industry — that ideal world where we truly know our
consumer, to the point where we understand their wants, needs and issues
and are able to provide solutions in a way that builds trust and loyalty and
simplifies their life. It will be a long road, but we are steadily making
progress.
As Mark Zuckerberg
mentioned during his testimony in the Cambridge Analytica case, consumers are
generally open to the advertising experience as long as it is personalized to
their needs. Think about it: as consumers we give technology access to
every aspect of our lives in order to get a more personalized experience in
return.
Advertisement
Here are a few ways to
improve the consumer experience now that will not only impact immediate
campaigns but in the long-run open the door to a long-lasting relationship in
the future.
Personalization Is The Cornerstone
For Consumers To Share Their Data
Recent research
from Accenture reveals that consumers are
more likely to shop with a brand that treats them in a personalized manner,
with 91% of consumers more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember,
and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations. This shouldn’t come
as a surprise to marketers. If you know your consumer, your consumer is more
willing to interact with you and your brand. So why are so many brands damaging
their relationships with consumers by serving irrelevant content?
Consumers’ willingness
to rely on technology, and provide personal insights that can customize
behaviors on the devices that make their lives more convenient, creates an
immense amount of data that marketers can analyze to truly identify a consumer.
What marketers need to consider is how best to create an experience that
respects consumers’ willingness to share that data without invading their space
and making them feel like they are being taken advantage of.
BYOD (Bring Your Own
Data) To Build A More Personalized Strategy To Connect With Your Consumer
Recently, Facebook announced the removal of
third-party data usage because it felt third parties created segments that may
or may not be accurate, but which brands were indiscriminately using to target
users with the same message. This move is a step in the right direction for the
industry. By removing the third-party resource, marketers are being challenged
to think more creatively about the data they own, bringing their own data to
the table versus activating a third-party segment. BYOD is an opening to
rethink personalization itself. Mastering this creative outlet will allow
brands to leverage their own information to create an experience their current
customers welcome, and attract potential customers they know they are a fit for.
For example, say a
retailer is looking to home in on male college students ahead of back-to-school
season for new footwear they are promoting. As the retailer begins the
campaign, they realize the segment size of male college student buyers is
roughly five million. Traditionally, retail marketers would treat all of these
men the same, serving them the message and offer across the same channels.
With BYOD, the retailer
brings their own first-party data to the forefront and notices that of those
five million male college students, 500K are not the direct consumer because
their parents are purchasing for them, another 500K are shopping for shoes
based on a specific style and 300K are within the retailer’s loyalty program
and thus faithful to purchasing a brand (e.g. Jordans). Retail marketers can
now rethink their approach to targeting this massive segment and can create
three custom experiences — one for each audience within the larger segment.
Treat People Like
People, Not A Measurement
So at what point will
brands be invited into an individual’s personal ecosystem and embedded into
their daily routine? The key is personalization. There are tools being
developed even as we speak to help build a single view of the consumer, so
marketers can analyze all consumer touch points along their journey and take
action appropriately based on the proper insights.
The only way we can get
to this integrated point is if we empower brands to capitalize on consumers’
willingness to share data and the advantage of BYOD strategies, in the right
way. This is something that we need to move forward with as an industry — marketers,
technology providers and consumers. The marketing world is still in flux when
it comes to consumer trust and needs to prove it won’t take advantage of people
for its own gain. This starts with the implementation of highly personalized
campaigns that leverage the power of first-party data to uncover each
individual’s behaviors, lifestyle, intent and purpose for conversion.
Varun Gudiseva is VP of Commercialization for Tapad, with 10 years of analytical experience. Most
recently, he served as the Senior Partner, Director of Account Services &
Analytics at Xaxis to oversee and run programmatic business across all devices
and formats for Mediacom agency at GroupM, bringing an analytical approach to
media planning and strategy. Prior to his career in media, he worked in the
financial services industry at Barclays and Capital One. Gudiseva holds a
Masters in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Michigan and is an
avid Wolverine fan.
