According to a survey by the Corporate Executive Board of 800 marketers at Fortune 1,000 companies, only 11 per cent of marketing executives depend on data for customer-related decisions. There are many opportunities for brands to make faster, more effective marketing decisions if they find the right balance between ‘art’ – gut instinct and ‘science’- data. Yet, many are still finding it hard to capture and integrate the data from various customer touch points to provide a 360 degree customer view that enables decisions based on hard facts.
By leveraging the latest programmatic technologies to gain valuable insight and increase engagement, brands can adopt a more customer-centric approach to marketing, ultimately leading to improved acquisition and better ROI.
A data driven approach to marketing
An IBM survey of 1,734 CMOs found that marketers are struggling in one vital respect — providing the numbers that demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) for marketing. With real time analytics, marketers can easily identify the campaigns that are resonating most effectively with their customers, on which channels and prove ROI.
However, taking a data-driven approach isn’t always easy – many companies use disparate technology systems or work with multiple partners, services agencies and consulting firms. This means that data is often collected and stored in silos, which makes it difficult to have a single customer view across the organisation.
The solution
A fully-integrated enterprise programmatic marketing platform enables a business to implement a programmatic approach to marketing – one that combines the use of technology, people and processes to interpret data. Ford Motor Company took a programmatic approach to running multiple live campaigns on premium and endemic sites which offer audience profiles within their targets and guarantee a high-quality, relevant context. This approach helped the company to determine the consumer’s position in the purchase funnel and using this information, deliver an across vehicle type or name plate that best matches the consumer’s profile. The result? Ford experienced a substantial increase in brand lift and double-digit campaign result improvements (20% increase in the conversion rate for key shopping outcomes.)
The new digital universe has changed the way people consume content and decide what to buy and from whom. Using gut feeling and intuition alone will no longer be enough. With the help of data and analytics marketers can adapt their campaigns to this new consumer-driven buying journey and thereby deliver better returns on their marketing investments.
