Data Collaboration Is Required to Achieve Personalized Marketing

Marketing teams are often manually pulling together audience, sales, social, and other data sources from silos in an attempt to bring about personalized marketing for customers and to formulate their overarching strategies. Manual curation can be time-consuming and expensive. This comes as no surprise, as enterprise level marketing teams use 52 marketing tools on average, according to Snowflake, a data cloud solutions company. Snowflake has put together a few pointers on ways to best align your organization and data sources for max impact, creating a truly data-driven organization.

Start by aligning marketing departments and IT departments. (A decision will have to be made on a platform where almost all the company’s data should be housed for cross-departmental access.) The database should be minable by any department by implementing a no-code solution to reduce barriers to usage, and the IT people should be appreciative that some of their time has been freed up. A unified database should help in answering marketing questions to facilitate momentum and data-driven decision-making (e.g., bringing together point-of-sales data with merchandising-performance insights to determine the best product to be featured in a timely advertising campaign and the demographics for best targeting the ads). Having that sort of horsepower behind decision-making is a surefire way to be intentional with company resources and to produce results. It all comes down to a company-wide trusted source of data that is secure, concise, easily used, and shared between teams.

Advanced Google Ads Targeting Tactics

Search Engine Journal has assembled a list of four tactics for implementing an effective Google Ads campaign by diving deep on campaign settings and configuration:

1. Segment remarketing lists for search ads. Example: Identify shoppers at a higher-than-average order value weekly. Then use that list while targeting competitor-branded terms as a way to intersect high-value customers at a point of considering changing stores.
2. Combine social audiences with remarketing on search. Example: Use your preferred social channels to uncover new potential customers by driving landing page views. Then from search you implement a retargeting list based on that landing page and deliver search ads to users when they are actively searching top-of-funnel terms.
3. Using custom-affinity audiences. Google Ads, being able to take full advantage of a worldwide database of search and user-behavior interaction insights, has created audience-targeting groups based on demographic, interest, and other criteria that can be selected to be layered on top of keyword strategies. Google Ads can also build custom targeting based on URLs of sites visited to target.
4. Combine in-market segments with remarketing. These targeting segments are based on user behavioral indicators in what they are actively searching for, and are further down the funnel and closer to conversion as they are actively searching for a product or service.

Consumer Segments in 2022, According to Resonate

Resonate, an audience research and syndicated data company, has provided their take on where consumers are in 2022, identifying three key groupings to represent this. One is the Overwhelmed Consumer, which has clearly been exacerbated by the uncertainty caused by the pandemic; this segment was characterized primarily by parents who are juggling the day-to-day of work and childcare demands. The second segment is the Influenced Consumer, which is highly swayed in purchasing decisions by social ads and influencers, particularly in regard to cosmetics and clothing. Lastly, Resonate identified the Activist Consumer. This grouping prioritizes corporate responsibility, and its members are willing to pay for products supporting various causes. Let’s take a deeper look at each audience segment.

The Overwhelmed Consumer is 158 percent more likely than the average consumer to indicate they’re planning on buying a bar cabinet. They’re also 45 percent more likely to buy alcohol online and 57 percent more likely to say drinking at home increased during the pandemic. This segment, on the flip side, is likely to turn to uplifting, pleasing products and experiences that offer a reprieve from the fatigue of ongoing uncertainty. They are likely to purchase products that are family friendly, fun, exciting, or innovative, and they’re also more likely to be in the market currently for home-improvement products, major appliances, toys, craft supplies, or sports and fitness equipment than the other segments.

The Influenced Consumer is 50 percent more likely to have accent chairs on their wish list, and 70 percent more likely to have their eyes on ottomans. According to Resonate, this segment is more likely to be starting families, pursuing online education, or helping a family member into a retirement community than the other segments. Home-goods companies should be scaling up influencer marketing if they are not already, as members of this segment are 59 percent more likely to consider social media influencers as an influential source of information in their apparel purchases. However when considering purchases, four out of five cite best prices as their number one retailer selection trait.

The Activist Consumer is 80 percent more likely to shop from DTC brands that ship directly to them—from a brand’s website, primarily. They focus on corporate responsibility, but that does not mean they are opposed to large corporations. The Activist Consumer is more likely than other consumers to have an Amazon Prime membership, Costco membership, Instacart, and others. This group is 151 percent more likely to shop at women- or minority-owned stores. According to Resonate, they may be more likely than the other segments to be experiencing life events such as looking for new jobs, adopting pets, starting a small business, or having a teen driver at home.

Where do these groups stand on brand loyalty? According to the research, the Influenced Consumer is the most likely to sway to new brands. (Considering price is a high factor and reliance on influencer input this is no surprise.) The Overwhelmed and Activist Consumers are much less likely to change brands, the Overwhelmed Consumer has less time to evaluate a brand change and the Activist Consumer is more likely to stick to their already vetted philanthropic, socially responsible product choice

(Editorial) Methodology: We help brands grow based on data, research, data analysis and synthesis, and a hefty dose of proven processes, tactics, and channel-specific strategies. | Objective: To distribute timely insights and information about tools, trends, and research and data strategies that work. | Sample size: n=the entirety of the Internet. | Audience: Smart brand marketers that understand the importance of using data and research to inform strategic decision-making.