Shift Happens. Audience Data Is Changing Marketing.

Will you come out a winner or a loser?

Data is boring.

It’s extremely dry, so I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that way. Staring at reams of data is daunting and often uninspiring. But if you look at data as a “thing” then you’re looking at it wrong.

That would be like looking at oil and thinking “this black sludge is disgusting and gets everywhere,” rather than considering the vast number of applications and secondary products it unlocks.

Data is our new oil. You must envision how its wondrous applications, when properly processed and implemented, might change the world.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

From roughly 1784 onwards, Britain and western Europe began to see the revolution caused by mechanical production implemented from steam and water. The impact on the standard of living, population numbers and advancement was staggering.

A similar revolution happened again after the 1870s with the advent of electricity and mass production; and it happened a third time in the 1960s when computing and automation rocked up.

We now take for granted that the Fourth industrial revolution has already begun — the revolution powered by connected data. Academics call the driver of the current revolution “Cyber-Physical Systems”. In short, it’s the assumption that whatever physical tool or system we use is now, or will eventually be, connected to the digital realm. Think ‘internet of things’ or ‘global mobile communications’ as obvious examples.

Missed Opportunity

This revolution is still in its infancy, and all prior revolutions have produced winners that take advantage of the situation and losers who are rendered obsolete. Therefore, the cull of slower moving businesses has begun.

The key difference between winners and losers is not down to “who embraces digital” as a market reality- that reality was thrust upon you regardless of whether you embraced it or not.

The difference is that early winners thought beyond ‘embracing’ digital and focused on evolving into a digital business. Digital business powered by connected data. Intel proved that completely new evolutions of your core business are feasible if well planned and if your team is fully committed- so it is entirely possible.

Marketing is just one division affected like most others, and for Marketing this is playing out as a battle over data control. In the same way that the old imperialists once carved up the planet based on oil supplies, the large platforms and publishers are attempting to stake their claim to a share of the online world’s audience data. The obvious examples are Google ring-fencing “I know what they’re looking for” data and Facebook monopolising “I know what they’re talking about” data.

This data definitely performs when trying to sell stuff online, no doubt about it. So the blatant question every marketer should be asking is- where’s the next batch of this liquid gold coming from?

The Future

If history has taught us anything it’s that shift happens. It would be tempting to plan ahead as if Google and Facebook will remain dominant forever, but then again I’ve got t-shirts that are older than Snapchat, and look how fast they’re rising to power.

It’s data that powers every component of the value chain leading to online marketing performance, so we should all be looking at where the next key source is coming from. Both Google and Facebook’s data uncovers intent behaviours when you boil down their value proposition. When you look through Google you could be intending to buy the thing you’re looking for. When you engage on Facebook you could be discussing the thing you intend to buy, or have that thing shared with you.

So what other data could identify intent behaviours, upon which you could build a digital business? This is exactly the question we asked ourselves when we launched. The answer soon became clear — purchase behaviour.

A clear signal of intent is when I buy something. The signal is crystal clear as I finally converted. The next stage of intent for me as a buyer is therefore that I might buy AGAIN, or even buy something related. Purchase behaviour is a key source of intent that is yet to be exploited fully, and this is why we created a solution to do just that.

Marketers shouldn’t miss out on leveraging this key source of intent. The longer they do then the more sales slip by.

To read more, try: “You’re Doing One Thing Wrong When Targeting New Audiences”