Inertia is a powerful force. As a reminder, inertia is the natural tendency of objects to resist changes in their state of motion. Marketing suffers greatly from this, as the techniques, vehicles and messages that worked last year are deployed over and over again.
We are in a data-rich and tech-supported era of marketing, yet many continue to follow formulas concocted 5-10 years ago. Many target geographically but ignore the capabilities of targeting by type of audience member or recent behavior. Many applaud the ability to deliver 100,000 impressions but don’t cap the number of impressions per unique, thus risking negative brand lift or over-spending on a handful of targets. Many hold tight to valuable first-party sales data but don’t employ it to communicate with long-time customers differently than prospects.
Personalization is a term that has permeated digital for years, but mostly it was an unrealized pipe dream … or half of a dream devoted only to marketing but not to the site content itself. Relevance in messaging lifts performance.
Our current capabilities allow for data to lay the foundation for everything we do, at least digitally. It controls our targets. It should control our design. It should control our distribution. And it will, if deployed wisely, improve both our marketing performance and our cost efficiencies. Don’t settle.
PLANTING: Throughout May, there has been more and more talk about planting in news and in social. This chart, from Rooster's media intelligence tool, shows a trend up on news but a more steady trend line for social. Also, check out
#noplant19 on Twitter to follow the plight of the drenched Midwest growers.
