{"id":17236,"date":"2019-07-02T09:25:34","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T15:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fullcontact.com\/?p=17236"},"modified":"2022-04-21T01:27:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T07:27:45","slug":"authentically-connect-with-your-audience-for-a-better-return-on-ad-spend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fullcontact.com\/blog\/customer-experience\/authentically-connect-with-your-audience-for-a-better-return-on-ad-spend\/","title":{"rendered":"Authentically Connect With Your Audience for a Better Return On Ad Spend"},"content":{"rendered":"

As technology changes, marketers continue their pursuit of data-driven strategies that reach the right customers, at the right time and in the right place. This vision hasn\u2019t changed much over time, yet most marketers have not achieved this goal in a practical way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As they continue to use third-party channels \u2014 inside walled gardens and social media platforms \u2014 marketers aren\u2019t able to capture the data and insights they need. These platforms obfuscate a complete view of customers, preventing any attribution that might help marketers improve their strategies and messaging.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is quickly changing. Identity resolution is the <\/span>process of integrating identifiers across available touchpoints and devices into a common, always-on profile, provided to assist with marketing decisions in the crafting of awesome customer experiences<\/span>. This process is now at the epicenter of people-based marketing and informing return on ad spend (ROAS).<\/span><\/p>\n

With successful identity resolution technology, marketers can identify and engage key segments quickly, in a way that resonates with customers in any context.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Overcoming Fragmentation Across Marketing Touchpoints<\/h2>\n

Consumers are everywhere \u2014 they have both online and offline \u2018identities\u2019\u2019 that stem from mobile activity, in-store purchasing habits, social media usage, and other cross-channel behaviors. <\/span>Companies who deal with consumers in multiple channels often cannot recognize, target, and engage with the same consumer consistently; each consumer has multiple contact records that don’t match up across departments and data silos.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Forrester Research:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s sophisticated [ad] buyers find themselves chasing down inventory in a lot of disparate places in pursuit of well-rounded cross-channel media programs. This is operationally onerous, to say the least, but can also have an inverse effect on performance: All those disconnected inventory sources are being optimized in siloes, and the smart buyers know this is suboptimal\u2026 Fragmented buying means a fragmented consumer experience.\u201d<\/span>[1]<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marketers must bridge the gaps between these touchpoints to <\/span>achieve a complete profile of their customers; only then can<\/span> they engage them properly and effectively. Identity resolution is foundational for creating the holistic customer profiles that marketers need for effective engagement and attribution.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consumers expect brands to engage them with highly relevant, personalized content. Content strategies based on resolved customer contact records \u2014 which allow marketers to identify customers as they move fluidly across devices and platforms \u2014 are more likely to meet those expectations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, 90% of marketers struggle to seamlessly connect more than three channels on the buyer journey, according to Gartner.<\/span>[2]<\/span><\/a> For most marketers, missing data and poor data quality give them an incomplete picture of their customer and prevent them from optimizing customer experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marketers must be able to continually enrich, update, and share consumer insights across their organizations to achieve greater control of segmentation and consistent personalization. That is essential to creating the connections that build brand loyalty and capture the attention of new customers. Specifically, marketers must be able to:<\/span><\/p>\n