The history of marketing can be seen as an ever-increasing sophistication when it comes to segmentation and targeting.

Christian denominations have been fighting the trend of declining attendance by reaching out to the Hispanic faithful hungry for what they can't find in their current churches. One area of outreach includes the willingness of Protestant churches to offer leadership positions - including the priesthood - to Latinas.

I grew up loving the Patriots, and like most sports fans, my fandom has always extended beyond the games themselves. As a teenager I was a devout SportsCenter viewer, hungry for anything I could consume on the Pats' strategy and performance. I even watched the draft, years before it evolved into today's media spectacle.

What you heard is true: Advertisers and brands love influencer marketing. According to the Association of National Advertisers, 75% of [national advertisers] currently employ the discipline and almost half (43%) are planning to increase their spending on it in the next 12 months.

If you work in food marketing, you've targeted "mom" more times than you can count. For a long time, this exclusive, sometimes tiresome, focus on mom made sense-moms were doing much more of the cooking and grocery shopping than dads.

In the Age of Engagement, people are tethered to information and entertainment at their fingertips and barraged with messages from all vantage points throughout most of their waking hours. In this environment, shoppers want and need more than mass-produced, impersonal, uninspired buying experiences that don't deliver any value.

Yes, the 72-million strong Millennial generation is coming into their own and starting to buy stuff. Enamored marketers are salivating (or running scared) at the prospect of serving them. Older marketers and students of consumerism remember the defining impact of the last mega-generational cohort, the Baby Boomers; how they shaped consumer trends, created categories of products and services, and generally made or broke one's business success.

As Millennials - now the largest generation in U.S. history - move up the corporate ladder, they're increasingly making meaningful decisions that impact business spend. But to sell to this generation effectively, marketers need to understand their unique preferences and purchase drivers.

The battle for consumer hearts and minds is fought in the trenches. Mass marketing can provide aerial coverage - informing, entertaining and persuading - but it's the smaller interactions with a brand that can sometimes turn the tide. Smart, attentive engagements can breakthrough when little else seems to have impact. By digging into the customer journey, brands can seek out and respond to everyday pain-points, functional interactions, even product delivery. Any of which can be the difference between a loyal, advocating fan and a one-and-done transaction.

The recent revelation that Facebook collects user-behavior online is a fact many of us have taken for granted. The industry's justification is that when they know who you are, they can customize your advertising. A brand's ability to speak to individuals through cookies or anonymous ID's has enabled marketers to conduct more relevant and meaningful conversations that lead to sales.