• by Michael McLaren , Op-Ed Contributor, April 2, 2021

Last week, we explored how marketers are re-prioritizing their target audiences to keep pace with the changing consumer preferences and behaviors that defined 2020. Once again, intent data suggests that marketer and agencies interest in “web copy,” “web content,” “target audience” and “audience segmentation” continues to hold strong among both brands and agencies alike.   

Content consumption activity around “marketing reporting” also shot up in the last month, as measured by Bombora Company Surge. With the average person now spending roughly 42% of their waking lives online, measuring their brand’s progress online. Once you’ve established marketing goals that are measurable and attainable, it becomes critical to compare and contrast the differing success metrics to see what’s right for your company. By tracking marketing usage through systematic practices, business leaders can begin to correlate whether or not the use of marketing resources has had any real impact on the company’s sales process, and identify actionable steps to improve marketing performance to meet their goals.

“Creative optimization” and “dynamic creative” were among the most popular search terms this week. Most marketers understand how storytelling can become an essential element of connecting with the consumer. Nonetheless, too many fall into the trap of serving up generic ads to generic audiences, resulting in ad fatigue. Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) offers more personalization at scale, but with creativity and context. With data informing the creative process, as opposed to dominating it, brands stand the best chance to deliver desired outcomes.

“Multichannel marketing” rose dramatically mid-March. Whether you are in B2B, B2C, D2C or anywhere in between, your customers expect it to be easy to access the information they want. They expect brands to know who they are and where they are in the journey, for conversations to be seamlessly connected cross-channel, and for experiences to be anticipatory. Now more than ever, businesses need to stay laser-focused on staying relevant to their customers — or risk becoming obsolete. This can be accomplished by maximizing your first-party data assets to inform customer experiences in real time.