Welcome to the Era of Predictive, Personalized Marketing & Advertising
April 3, 2018
A couple months ago, a friend traveled to Poland to meet her new baby niece. She took photos and put them on Instagram and Facebook, tagging her location and mentioning her family.
Today, casually appearing between her Instagram Stories, was an ad for discount flights to Poland.
Consider why she’s seeing an ad for Poland travel. Not just because she was there. Her Facebook and Instagram activity show she has family there (including a new baby). She’s highly likely to be interested in this ad.
Alleged political saboteurs put Facebook in hot water because of how they used data to influence voters in the 2016 election. People are realizing loss of privacy may have a higher cost than expected.
But the data used to influence voters is what’s used to deliver those highly targeted ads. And isn’t this what we wanted from inbound marketing, to avoid irrelevant, distracting ads? Sonny Bunch puts it nicely in his Washington Post op-ed on the Facebook scandal:
“I actually appreciate the fact that, when I go to Facebook or see a panel of Google Network advertisements, I generally see advertisements for things I might, conceivably, be interested in buying. The most annoying thing about advertising, to my mind, is that for most of my life I have been deluged with come-ons for products I had no interest in: perfumes and luxury cars and the latest pharmaceutical advance that will alleviate some minor annoyance with the possible side effect of immediate horrible death.”
So we have a conflict. The way Facebook and Google harvest data delves into our private lives and leaves us vulnerable to manipulation. But it also allows advertising to target more accurately. Let’s review inbound/outbound marketing to put this into context.
Traditional outbound marketing is ads being pushed at you, the “deluge” of ads you probably have no interest in. A guy with a thick head of hair sitting through a commercial for hair plugs.
Inbound marketing is – primarily – search marketing. People have a need, then search out a solution, discovering business solutions. A bald guy wants his hair back, so he goes to Google to find available products.
And now we have predictive, personalized outbound marketing. Advertisers are using data from your online life (including the searches that allow for inbound marketing) and predicting what you’ll be interested in. A bald guy with a history of online dating efforts is still single. An ad for how he can regrow his hair and renew his love life is placed into his social media feeds.
Part of the controversy is not just that this data can be misused, but the predictions are uncannily accurate – which still spooks people.
But it also delights us.
Consider how the surprise hit, I Can Only Imagine (budget $7 million dollars) beat out Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time (budget $100 million dollars) only a week after its release.
The movie did it with predictive outbound marketing. Richard Rushfield writes in his Hollywood business newsletter:
“There’s a natural potential audience for almost any movie, but you’ve got to go find it. On a success like ‘I Can Only Imagine,’ achieved with limited staff and budget, the process of connecting with that audience started six months ago, below the radar, in digital campaigns, going where people are, online, on their apps, whatever: not four weeks before the release by spraying the campaign out to everyone and assuming your demo will find out because everyone includes them.”
Spraying the campaign – as in traditional outbound marketing – in the hopes of finding your demographic is an anachronistic tactic that even defies the advantage of a massive budget.
We’re seeing the evolution of inbound marketing. Instead of waiting for the person to signal their need through an action like a search query, we can now predict what individuals will be interested in and target them with precision.
It is getting to the point where marketers know what their target demographic wants before they know they want it.
There are concerns and adjustments for consumers, but it’s clear that this is where technology is taking us.
This should be serious food for thought if you are still executing traditional, outbound marketing like cold calls or flyers through snail mail. Just how effective do you think this will be in the current advertising era?
A financial company sends a print mailer on their services to a broad, location-based audience. 99% of people throw it in the trash.
A financial company optimizes their website so people who search on Google for financial advisers find their services. They get a phone call.
A financial company targets people who are within 10 years of retirement, have an interest in investing, and have been researching where to buy retirement homes in Europe. They create a targeted ad that displays to this demographic, promising info on how they can retire rich. A lead clicks on the ad and visits their website before doing a search for services.
The first scenario is a lead-generation strategy that’s on its way to extinction. The second uses technology to connect with leads actively searching for a solution. The third seeks to expose the brand to a demographic that’s highly likely to have an interest.
Welcome to the era of predictive, personalized marketing and advertising.
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