Now is the time for brands to own their customers and make data-driven marketing a reality

With all that has happened over the last few years in terms of Data Privacy and consent needs, Crumbling of 3rd party cookies, Restrictions and attempts of monopolization by big tech walled gardens and the pandemic – one thing that has become absolutely apparent is that all this is leading to a rationalized approach towards data-driven marketing. The need for creating personalized experiences at scale , measuring marketing to the highest levels of accuracy and tapping the opportunities in the digital & mobile first-world – all these demand that brands reflect on their strategies and the much hyped ‘data-driven everything’.

The changes that a brand needs to embrace are in multitude, but it is all worthwhile. The market forces and a desperate attempt to hoard customers within confined ecosystems has led to the disruption,  giving the power back to the brands, the power to own and influence customers.

Let’s talk about some of the changes and their impact towards the customer ownership and the opportunity brands have at hand.

Disruptions and future of Data Management:

Over the last decade, we have talked much about data management and getting a holistic data centric view of customers , coining a plethora of terms – Data Lake, DMP, Customer data Hub and CDP. There have been two glaring issues around these efforts and 1000s of failed efforts – 1. Lack of Data ownership 2. Inability to operationalize data

1. Lack of Data ownership – Brands have struggled hard to collect , scale , clean and use the data they own. Desperate attempts to know more about their own customers – Brands have relied upon buying data from 3rd parties , collecting data based on less durable identifiers such as cookies and probabilistic modelling of data. There hasn’t been enough push and honest efforts on building a robust scale of first party data that is durable. With 3rd party cookies going away and 3rd party data almost getting out of scene, it will become mandatory for the brands to push for building 1st party data assets.

2. Inability to operationalise data : With the earlier mentioned approach , it has been almost impossible to stitch customer journey with data collected and purposed by different parties. This has kept operational and analytics/activations systems separate, hence making it difficult to operationalise data in real-time and in an orchestrated manner, for the omni-channel and omni-present customer we wish to fulfil.

There is a clear opportunity for brands to build a sustainable strategy, adopt the right technology such as CDP, and align their organization/skills for building the 1st party data assets. This is going to be the base for all the possible use cases you can think of talking about data driven marketing in future- data driven marketing with Brands owning a lot of it.

A new rationale for Advertising

Digital Advertising has been misleading, and everything was projected to be on steroids with brands convoluted around trying to find the exact ROI, or meaning of investing in a specific channel. The whole media planning exercise has been driven by fairy tale of customer clicking on Ads , and finding a way straight to your heart. The apprehensions and fear with  Google announcing demise of 3rd party cookies, Apple’s Opt-in and IDFA announcements etc. are real but present an opportunity. An opportunity not just for brand but for the entire ecosystem to trade on something real. While the addressability and scale are going to be an issues in shorter term , with 1st party and authenticated data based advertising, the targeting accuracy and be able to get closer to knowing a customer will change the entire game towards advertising effectiveness. Brand and publishers have a pivotal role to play here with building 1st party data-based assets and being creative on collecting data for “good use” from customer. Just Impressions are not going to be impressive anymore ( Dear Media planners). This is also a great opportunity for brands to snatch back the share of customer identity from the walled gardens.

 Hyper -Personalisation and journey ownership

The push for 1st part data assets and a more reliable customer identity will enable the brands to understand the entire customer journey and orchestrate the real time interactions across the touch points , in a hyper personalised way. The push for pull marketing has never been higher that what it is now, and the journey orchestration with a unified view of customer plays an important role. The increase in data ownership would lead to maximize on ‘channels of choice of customer’  vs. “channels with higher ROI for brands”. The customer lifecycle marketing also demands for a higher share of known customer data.

 Brand Collaborations based on data

 It’s been a while Brands have been talking about data sharing and it has so far reduced to a “Data monetisation” exercise. Data sharing is much more than data monetization and it is about a mutual effort to know more about customers. With categories and industries overlapping in terms of offerings and channels of choice, there is much greater opportunity for brands to be transparent and trusting about sharing data with each other (of course in a safe environment with right technology). The reduced scale of cookie and device-based 3rd party data also makes it urgent for the brands to act of 1st party data partnerships, to get the addressable scale.

Value Exchange for Digital-first Customers

With all the changes I discussed about in the earlier points, it is imperative that customers demand for a better and equal participation in the value exchange that brands propose to create with data sharing. The awareness about privacy and consent needs, has enabled customers to expect a fair value exchange for every bit of data they share. The onus is on brands to build the trust and drive the participation from customers toward embracing the latest and the best of experiences the brands promise

 Now, is the time for brands to reflect on what they stand for , why customers come to them and why the customers would stick with them. Data is not the answer to all of this , but it does solve for many questions. It’s time for the brands to embrace data – in a real sense.  

 Note: Views are my own and do not necessarily present that of my employer.