Marketing Resolutions for a New Year

February 12, 2019

New year, new you. Each year, our resolutions hit us in the face as we join the masses to be better versions of ourselves. However, many marketers find themselves trapped on the execution treadmill. They are churning out messaging incredibly fast without taking into account the impact it has on the consumer journey.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to blow the whistle on some tired marketing practices. Here are a few “STOPS” that you should consider for the current year:

STOP paying for consumers who are already going to convert

Pardon the political analogy, but why would Donald Trump pay 5x more to talk to a registered republican voter wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat on right as they were entering the voting booth? Acuity’s propensity scoring organizes consumers based on their conversion likelihood (or “propensity”) and ranks them on a time decay. This includes metrics around likelihood to convert in 24hrs, 48 hrs, 72hrs, 1 week, etc. and the appropriate bid price or (value to the brand) of each user. While brands may want to use a small share of marketing dollars to target consumers with a likelihood to convert, the extra money should be used to find prospects with similar propensity scores that have yet to engage with the brand. The key takeaway for marketers this year is that not all audiences are created equal.

STOP resisting the vast benefits of AI-powered campaigns

Forecasts predict AI marketing spending will increase 50-150% year-over-year, ultimately reaching $29B by 2021. Marketers have limited ability to filter through the noise and turn consumer data into actionable intelligence. As humans, we have biases, beliefs, education, experiences, knowledge and brainpower that inform every decision we make. There is a finite ability to process information, build strategies, and achieve performance potential.

AI can accomplish years of “human” work in mere moments. It has the brain power to make sense of a large amount of user-level data. Additionally, artificial intelligence can be used to understand user preferences and contexts with incredible accuracy. AI evaluates billions of variables in real-time, and makes simultaneous decisions to analyze millions of marketing opportunities per second. It’s a no-brainer for the new year.

STOP working with vendors who are finding way to steal attribution

It’s time for marketers to stop paying for what already belongs to them. Unethical players in the advertising sphere are having a negative impact on everything from customer targeting to campaign ROI. With attribution fraud, advertising platforms can thwart last-touch attribution by allocating the majority of the advertiser’s budget to retargeting consumers who are already about to convert. This increases the likelihood that the platform will get credit for the last touch on any subsequent conversion (but at the expense of delivering a lot of unnecessary retargeted ads) which come out of the advertiser’s budget. Marketers need to identify bad players in the space and clean house for the new year.

STOP viewing the consumer journey as linear

The consumer path-to-purchase today is anything but linear. It is more like a circle and takes into consideration opportunities for post-conversion brand exposure. This makes room for new brands to enter the consideration phase. With this new view of the consumer journey, the competition heats up. Marketers must align messaging with non-linear paths to purchase and be ready for new brand consideration. With consumer attention becoming increasingly fragmented, it’s the only way to stay ahead of the competition in the new year.