“Most marketers still do not know the value of awareness advertising [and] engagement advertising to the bottom end of performance advertising where somebody actually makes a purchase. [There’s a] huge disconnect.”
Before customers click that “buy” button, they’ve been exposed to your brand time and time again. This is your company’s “customer journey” — and this journey is constantly changing. AcuityAds’ Chief Strategy Officer, Seraj Bharwani, shares what brands need to know to create a seamless journey for their customers, including how to track and innovate that journey.
Key Insights
What Marketers Need Most: Sandboxes for Innovation
Marketers need more discovery systems — more “sandboxes” they can play in and test in. Marketing has ripples across the entire organization and creating some predictability in these ripples is vital for success.
“These days we take big bets… but it is hard to know if those things are all going to go the way you think; the way you imagine… Some degree of predictability and some learning ahead of time would go a long way in marketing. And that’s really what I am most passionate about in bringing to the marketplace.”
Consumer Behavior Is Changing — And That’s a Good Thing
“CMOs and marketing teams really have an amazing opportunity [because]… consumer behavior has changed significantly. Everything is in a rethinking process… What consumers want is more empowerment. They want to be able to do things in their own way and be able to accomplish it quick and fast. We as companies and brands need to be able to deliver that in the most seamless, fastest way possible.”
The Entire Customer Journey Matters; Not Just Last Click
It’s vital that marketers understand the entire journey their customers take in order to correctly attribute their marketing efforts. It’s not about the last click to convert; it’s about all the marketing materials that a person saw in order to get to that last click.
“Right now, people are still measuring the last click and you give all the credit to Google. When, in fact, you have been advertising to this human being for the past three months, maybe six months, but all you think is that last ad actually produced them to really take action. Not at all. It doesn’t happen that way.”
About the Guest:
“Seraj is responsible for advancing the state of omnichannel journey marketing. He brings over 25 years of experience in the advertising technology industry with prior stints as co-founder of Strategy & Analytics at Digitas and CSO of Visible Measures where he led the development and adoption of third-party measurement for online video in partnership with Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Seraj is a graduate of MIT Media Lab.”
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