When it comes to data, as an industry, we are still only scratching the surface.
Prior to Oracle Data Cloud, I spent 10 years at a digital marketing agency. The campaign planning and development process used back then, sadly, has not evolved.
In the last few years, the industry has become better about using data for audience targeting, but there is a ton of missed opportunity for data to inform the process from start to finish. At a macro-level, brands and agencies must be data-driven. To do that, legacy processes need to be left behind.
Here are a few milestones in the planning and development process that are ripe for an overhaul:
1. Defining the target audience.
This is where “opinion marketing” still reigns supreme. All too often the marketing strategy starts with an opinion about who the customers are, as opposed to who the data tells us they really are. Planners still use survey tools to validate their pre-determined target personas instead of using real purchase and behavioral data to lead the creation of those personas. This is a huge missed opportunity to add data-driven value and insight to your marketing strategy.
2. Creating the media plan.
The majority of the media planning process still produces recommendations based on a platforms demographic profile. Data available in that platform is then used to refine the target, leading to audience inconsistency across channels and reach dilution of the intended audience. Taking an “audience first” approach instead of a “media first” approach ensures that the intended audience is reached across all platforms.
3. Concepting creative.
Once the campaign kick-off is complete, the account, media, and creative teams go their separate ways to work. This is a FAIL. The creative process is inextricably linked to the media format and channel. The creative team needs to work collaboratively with the media team and create in a “format first” environment while fully understanding the data being used for ad targeting.
It all goes back to audience. If both the creative and media teams are working from an over-generalized or incorrect target audience assumption, the brand will end up with creative that’s irrelevant and marketing that won’t move the needle.
So what needs to change?
Brands and Agencies Need to Move to Centralized Audience Planning
Centralized Audience Planning starts by bringing all of your experts and disciplines into the conversation from the start.
It’s basing your strategy on real data from real purchasers. It’s understanding the differences between your current customers and your prospects as well as the nuances between your current customers and your aspirational customers. It’s knowing what and how often people are buying. It’s knowing which brand affinities your customers maintain — and, most importantly, where and how your brands fit into their lives.
Having — and understanding — this information is at the core of a solid, actionable, and data-driven strategy.
Once you have that unified understanding and have defined your target audiences based on real data, the next step is to take a centralized approach that feeds all channels. This means that your strategies for TV, social, digital, programmatic, email, etc., are all being driven from the same audience data.
As you move further down the creative process, and the creative and media teams are working together, creatives can better understand what’s going to motivate each target audience, allowing them to build concepts based on those motivations.
From a performance standpoint, there might be subsets of audiences that perform better. This is an opportunity for creatives and planners to go back and refine their work.
The bottom line is that using data cannot be only one step in the process. It cannot be linear. Data has to operate end-to-end, in a closed loop. Use it to inform your target audience development. Use it to understand how your audiences performed. Finally, use data to create a seamless process of improvement.
This “audience first” transformation is mandatory as more brands are forced to do more with less. Marketers must prove to leadership that they should be seen as a revenue driver, not a cost center to their organizations. Data, discipline, and Centralized Audience Planning will be paramount to success.
Develop A Deeper Understanding by Increasing Your Circle
Just as the process for optimizing strategy and planning internally includes a more inclusive collaborative effort, we also need to expose ourselves to more and different points of view in order to maximize our efforts. That’s why I love events like the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, which is coming up in Palm Desert this February. It is one of the premier forums for brands, publishers, and agencies to get together and share their insights. This year’s meeting theme is How to Build a 21st Century Brand, and it is sure to reveal the kinds of data we all need now to succeed.