When Advertising Meets Marketing in the Digital Transformation Journey

    Sales, Marketing, Advertising, Advertisers, Marketers, Data Management, Digital Transformation, Customer Experience Management, CXM, Adtech, Martech

    As advertising dives into marketing, the ability to harness both unstructured and structured data is the key to deliver a superior customer experience

    The universe of customer experiences, nature, and the way data is analyzed—the way marketers and advertisers take action on it—has evolved dramatically.

    The advertising world has moved on from merely gathering and analyzing data collected in disparate ad tech or martech systems to utilizing data for building a more holistic view of customers. The reason leading to this change is that now, technology enables marketers can understand context, location, demographics, preferences, and behaviors in real-time.

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    Today’s data-centric customer experiences are created with a holistic, customer-first approach. It’s no longer about using insights and data to create the right advertising message; instead, it’s becoming ever more urgent to unify data from all available sources to understand customers in real-time.

    It is better for marketers to intelligently reach out to them across all channels with the next best experience. This might take the form of an advertisement, but it might be another touchpoint, like an email providing customer service on the consumer journey.

    .  A smartly and strategically planned customer experience management (CXM) platform always makes a significant impact. As per the data provided by MIT Technology View, 84% of companies are working to improve customer experiences to increase revenue, classifying themselves as “very advanced” experience-wise are almost thrice more likely to exceed their top 2018 business goals by an unexpectedly significant margin.

    Trying to overcome fragmented, siloed data living in different departments is no small task—but it is necessary for effective CXM. It’s also considered as a pervasive challenge as 55% of companies confirmed working in silos.

    Reconciling and bringing all data types together is a mandate for firms—known and pseudonymous, data from varying devices. Without this, it’s impossible to have an accurate, complete view of customers.

    So, the advertisers and marketers must responsibly manage all of this data; coordinate well by applying various rules governing it. Another byproduct of fragmented data lies in the disjointed messaging going to the market across different channels.

    This problem gets further aggravated by the fact that there exist new channels adding another identity to the customer profiles that have been already resolved. Both marketers and advertisers need to coordinate to develop an intelligent and scalable system to have real-time unified customer profiles to be activated across channels.

    With a unified customer profile, advertisers can easily connect the data dots to customer identities. Reconciling identity this way assists advertisers and their marketing counterparts in taking action for refining experiences by ensuring consistency in messaging, as that customer shifts from platform to device.

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    Advertisers and marketers need to work together to orchestrate the cross-channel campaigns truly. They need to see the exact journey of a customer to analyze the best time to introduce a new touchpoint to the mix to promote or advertise. This adds a layer of relevance that can instantly deepen a customer-brand relationship while driving immediate, measurable results.

    Unified profiles and well-designed overall data management will enable advertisers to connect more to the customer experience development process. Through that lens, gaining a competitive advantage is about getting advertising and every other experience “right” by using customer data to the fullest. Delivering the best possible customer experiences–at scale, in an open and intelligent system, real-time –is the ultimate unifier for marketing, sales, and customers.