How Leaders Achieve Customer-Centricity Through Connected Advertising Experiences

There are cer­tain things that sim­ply can’t be done in iso­la­tion. You prob­a­bly wouldn’t buy tick­ets to the cin­e­ma with­out check­ing if your friend can join you, and you def­i­nite­ly wouldn’t book a hol­i­day with­out look­ing up the weath­er. So why do so many brands run their pro­gram­mat­ic adver­tis­ing in iso­la­tion from their over­all mar­ket­ing efforts?

At the Con­nect­ed Adver­tis­ing Expe­ri­ences Break­fast, recent­ly held at the Adobe HQ in Lon­don, experts from the field told us why con­nect­ed adver­tis­ing is key for brands to extract the most val­ue from their paid media bud­get, whilst pro­vid­ing their cus­tomers with bet­ter experiences.

Top-notch cus­tomer experience

Today’s media land­scape is more frag­ment­ed than ever and many brands are strug­gling to keep up with what’s hap­pen­ing cross-chan­nel. As a result both the brand and con­sumer lose.

Toc­cara Bak­er, Senior Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at Adobe said: “If you’ve already sold some­thing to a cus­tomer, it will be inef­fi­cient to adver­tise that same prod­uct to them. At the same time, it’s cre­at­ing a dis­con­nect with the con­sumer in their over­all journey.”

On the oth­er hand, brands that are able to syn­chro­nise their mes­sag­ing across all chan­nels, both paid and unpaid, are able to pro­vide a seam­less and coher­ent jour­ney to their audi­ences. This puts brands in a bet­ter posi­tion to con­vert, and ulti­mate­ly get the most out of their paid media spend.

“Con­nect­ed adver­tis­ing means that you’re dri­ving rel­e­van­cy, but also that you’re real­ly under­stand­ing how to delight your cus­tomer with those serendip­i­tous moments,” adds Toccara.

Bet­ter data picture

The rea­son why some brands are adver­tis­ing prod­ucts to cus­tomers who have already pur­chased them, is because there’s a dis­con­nect in their data. Con­nect­ing adver­tis­ing with over­all mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties also means build­ing a uni­ver­sal data pic­ture of a customer’s jour­ney across all channels.

Luke Ellis, Head of Solu­tions Con­sult­ing at Pub­li­cis Media, said: “The way I define con­nect­ed adver­tis­ing is through data and tech­nol­o­gy. It’s about tak­ing a more holis­tic approach to what you’re doing with data across all of your var­i­ous chan­nels to ensure you have one sin­gle view of the consumer.”

Gain­ing this over­ar­ch­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty helps brands gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the full audi­ence life­cy­cle, and make more informed media buy­ing decisions.

Seg­ment­ed messaging

Bet­ter insight doesn’t just lead to bet­ter buy­ing deci­sions, it also helps mar­keters exe­cute their paid media con­tent more strate­gi­cal­ly. Savvy brands use data to per­son­alise and seg­ment their con­tent accord­ing to a target’s needs and inter­ests. This con­tent becomes even more pow­er­ful when the teams who cre­ate it are able to tap into data from the over­all mar­ket­ing team.

Accord­ing to Head of Pro­gram­mat­ic Trad­ing UK Ogury, Joy Dean: “It’s about hav­ing a through line from the begin­ning of the con­ver­sa­tion that you want to have with the con­sumer to the time that they get into your store, or web­site, to buy. Mak­ing sure that you’re speak­ing to them in a way that con­nects with their behav­ior through­out the journey.”

When data and mes­sages are aligned across chan­nels, mar­ket­ing is no longer about a brand’s inter­nal struc­ture or indi­vid­ual depart­men­tal con­cerns, it’s about the needs of the cus­tomer and the goals of the busi­ness. Quite sim­ply, con­nect­ed adver­tis­ing is the only way to tru­ly put your cus­tomer at the cen­tre of your over­all mar­ket­ing efforts. Which is why it’s the only way to do adver­tis­ing real­ly well.