Unlocking the Digital Buzz

Defining the latest Digital BUZZ around Big Data and Marketing Efficiency

The latest buzz words can leave even the most seasoned marketer confused and turning to Wikapedia for help. Some of the most trendy digital and social media buzz words are outlined below - and more importantly, the reason you need to know them.

Programmatic Media:

Automatic ad buying is not new. Adertisers are always looking look for ways to leverage the buying networks and publishers to be positioned at the right time to their target audiences. The old school ad buying had advertisers buying distressed inventory at reduced CPM’s. The result? Low cost, but limited targeting options.

Why you need to know:

Today, “Programmatic Ad buying” has evolved. It has gone beyond the selling off of distressed ad inventory, to providing marketers efficient and cost-effective media placement – along with deep targeting to improve conversions. According to Marketingland:

“Programmatic advertising is projected to account for 50% of digital ad sales by 2018.

Some programmatic media platforms have taken this to the next level by delivering both a real-time bidding platform, along with deep behavioral targeting that serves ads only to consumers with intent-to-purchase. These platforms combine big data with personalization and deep targeting - and the ads are optimized to be delivered to the right customer, at the right time, with measureable intent to purchase - and a defined metric of conversion. That is powerful.

Companies such as * www.Sojern.com and www.Rocketfuel.com have done this well in the travel vertical.

Big Data and Actionable Analytics:

Large amounts of consumer data are only useful when they are used. Brands today must not only deliver on demand creative messaging, personalized content, and the right message at the right time – they must also measure and adjust based on the billions of data points that are now available to us.

Why you need to know:

According to Adage Digital advertising will surpass traditional media by 2017. We had better know how to use it!

The most important things to remember about Big Data include:

• Keep it clean. Data should be collected and scraped to be efficient.
• Data should be extracted and measured using standardized analytics to ensure reliability in the data output. Comparing apples to apples is important.
• Standardized key performance indicators (KPI's) against brand promise and campaign objectives.

Marketing Automation:

Customers are spending an increasing amount of time online, and across multiple devices. Marketers have been working hard to efficiently drive inbound leads, analyze and optimize their brand messages, and automate the task of content generation and media used to reach their target audiences.

Why you need to know:

Simply put, marketing automation tools and strategies provide marketers with the tools to determine the best converting content, messaging and creative, and the most efficient and effective channels to deliver them on.

Universal analytics tools such as Google Analytics provide ways to measure what happens when a customer visits a website. More advanced campaign analytics platforms such as www.optimizely.com offer deep conversion analytics to help advertisers plan and budget campaigns that are delivered across platforms. Clickz offers more in this article.

Targeting: How deep does it go?

Deep. Marketers now have the tools to target their advertising to a consumer’s behavior, likes, groups of friends, career, intent to purchase, and other deep behavioral information that allows us to personalize brand messaging, and to build a relationship with our customer far beyond what was ever possible.

In my next post, I will un-lock some of the other digital marketing BUZZ terms including; Personalization, Social Selling, the “Social Hub”, Native Content and Advertising, Omni-channel advertising and I will let you know why “Innovation is in”.

About: Alicia Whalen is a process innovator, social media influencer, digital media evangelist, and Co-founder of the successful digital marketing conference – Online Revealed Canada – now in its 10th year. A Blogger at ideahatching.com, speaker, trainer, lover of ah-ha moments, and *Strategic Advisor for www.sojern.com

Join me on Twitter @acoupleofchicks or at www.ideahatching.com