Apr 10 2025
To Navigate AI Turbulence, CMOs Can Apply The Flywheel Model via @sejournal, @gregjarboe

Right now, as technology changes daily, chief marketing officers face exceptional levels of change and uncertainty. But it’s not for the first time (or the last).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly two-thirds of CMOs in Fortune 500 companies overcame the extraordinary challenge of navigating change and uncertainty.

This resulted in 65% of CMOs who exited their roles after an average tenure of 4.3 years  “being promoted to more senior roles” or “making lateral moves to other attractive CMO positions.”

However, what was a pandemic obstacle course has been followed by an AI Olympic steeplechase.

To navigate these turbulent times, CMOs should consider analyzing marketing research and applying digital trends to:

  • Discover consumer insights for effective marketing in a dynamic market.
  • Unlock exceptional marketing results and increase return on investment (ROI) with the power of AI.
  • Reach customers across search, video, social, and shopping platforms.
  • Drive progress in marketing by championing the latest innovations and ideas.
  • Transform their data into a tool for building a lasting business advantage.

To lead their teams, CMOs could also apply the flywheel model, a customer-centric approach to business growth.

Adding AI To The Traditional Flywheel

Recently, based on a survey of 2,000 global marketers, Think With Google wrote:

“The traditional flywheel has always existed in marketing. Now, leaders are adding AI to multiply its momentum.”

Screenshot from Think With Google, April 2025

The article provides CMOs with a framework, built on four interconnected pillars:

  1. Measurement and insights.
  2. Media and personalization.
  3. Creativity and content.
  4. People and process.

This framework outlines how AI is amplifying the traditional marketing flywheel.

Measurement And Insights

The first pillar, stresses the importance of aligning key performance indicators (KPIs) with business performance metrics like profit and ROI.

Implementing modern, AI-powered measurement tools is crucial for accurate data and insights while respecting privacy.

A foundation of well-defined KPIs, historical data, and first-party data enables outcome-based planning, where AI predicts and improves campaign performance, optimizing budget allocation.

The future involves an AI-powered Marketing Engine for continuous, real-time optimization.

Media And Personalization

The second pillar, focuses on AI’s role in delivering the right ad to the right person at the right time.

Leading marketers scale successful AI-powered campaigns, shifting budgets for maximum ROI and flexibility.

AI identifies engaged, high-value audiences across channels, revealing valuable consumer behavior insights.

The ultimate stage is AI-powered media transformation, where an AI engine autonomously creates and refines media plans in real time based on continuous measurement.

Creativity And Content

The third pillar, explores how generative AI aids in brainstorming impactful ideas to help develop innovative content.

AI identifies and amplifies top-performing assets, and AI-powered “creative studios” accelerate time-to-market.

AI also enables pre-launch testing and optimization, bringing the goal of real-time, personalized creative delivery closer to reality.

People And Process

The fourth pillar, emphasizes collaboration, extending to the C-suite.

Sharing prioritized AI opportunities early is vital. Transformative leaders restructure organizations to fully leverage the AI engine.

Scaling AI success requires investing in AI talent to develop new operational methods, which are then formalized and disseminated.

Leading marketers design improved workflows and assess AI impact, recognizing that holistic organizational transformation is needed.

The article concludes that these four interdependent pathways merge to create the AI-powered Marketing Engine, amplifying the traditional marketing flywheel.

Analyzing Market Research And Applying Audience Research

CMOs will quickly notice that “The AI-powered Marketing Engine” framework can help to overcome four of the five obstacles that I mentioned above:

  • Measurement and insights can help transform their data into a tool for building a lasting business advantage.
  • Media and personalization can help to reach customers across search, video, social, and shopping platforms.
  • Creativity and content can help unlock exceptional marketing results and increase ROI.
  • People and process can help to drive progress in marketing by championing the latest innovations and ideas.

And CMOs will immediately wonder: Why can’t the AI-powered Marketing Engine help our analysts discover consumer insights for effective marketing in a dynamic market?

That’s the right question to ask, and there are two probable answers.

The first was provided by Avinash Kaushik in 2014, when he asked, “Is your company creating reporting squirrels or analysis ninjas?”

In any organization, investments in data generate two distinct types of work: Reporting Squirrel work and Analysis Ninja work. While both are important, only one directly contributes to improving the company’s financial performance.

Reporting Squirrels primarily focus on data production, spending most of their time creating reports for various stakeholders.

Their responsibilities include data extraction, query writing, fulfilling ad-hoc requests, scheduling data outputs, and coordinating with IT teams for data acquisition.

Conversely, Analysis Ninjas dedicate their time to analyzing data and generating actionable insights, which are typically communicated in clear, plain language.

Their work involves tasks such as data retrieval, segmentation, in-depth exploration, modeling, creating unique datasets, answering business questions, and defining data requirements for Reporting Squirrels and IT teams.

It’s important to note that Fortune 500 companies don’t typically hire individuals with the titles “Reporting Squirrel” and “Analysis Ninja.” Instead, they employ analysts or data scientists.

However, CMOs need to ask if these professionals are primarily focused on data output rather than providing actionable recommendations.

The second probable answer was in my recent article, where I mentioned, “GA4 gives us less than a third of the data we need to know about user acquisition: The initial stage of building business awareness and acquiring user interest.”

I added, “Somehow, we’ve missed what GA4 can’t – or doesn’t – tell us about the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT): the moment in the purchase process when the consumer or business buyer researches a product or service prior to visiting your website.”

So, if CMOs realize that they don’t have a clue about where the lion’s share of their customers discovered their brands or products before visiting their website, then what should they do?

They have two options: Get audience research and conduct market research.

Audience research and market research are distinct but complementary approaches to understanding a business environment.

Audience Research

Audience research focuses on the individual, delving into the needs, preferences, behaviors, and language of the target audience.

This micro-level perspective is achieved through direct engagement with the audience via interviews, surveys, focus groups, social media analysis, and by leveraging existing customer data like customer relationship management (CRM) and support logs.

Market Research

In contrast, market research takes a broader, macroeconomic view, examining the overall landscape.

It involves analyzing industry trends, competitor activities, economic data, and trade publications to assess the viability of products or services.

Think of market research as providing the map, indicating where to go, and audience research as the compass, guiding you on the best path to get there. Therefore, both types of research play crucial roles.

AI Won’t Take Your Job. Somebody Using AI Will

CMOs remember what economist Richard Baldwin said at the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Growth Summit: “AI won’t take your job. It’s somebody using AI that will.”

They understand that their Fortune 500 company expects them to successfully navigate the complexities of the AI era and achieve sustainable growth.

To do that, they must embrace AI-powered tools and frameworks while prioritizing a deep understanding of their audience through dedicated research efforts.

By integrating these approaches, CMOs can transform data into actionable insights, optimize marketing strategies, and ultimately, build a lasting competitive advantage in an increasingly dynamic market.

More Resources:

Featured Image: R.bussarin/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Apr 9 2025
Why Search Marketing & Branding Need Each Other via @sejournal, @coreydmorris

I own a digital agency that has existed for 20 years and did branding until just two years ago.

It wasn’t until we stopped doing branding that I came across a number of meaningful connections and “needs” search and branding teams have that enhance the efforts of both.

Search marketers are often at the other end and far away from brand strategy.

When branding is pressed for return on investment (ROI), it often comes downstream through marketing channels, platforms, and the implemented strategy.

Search often struggles without a differentiated brand or strategy to stand  out from competitors in search results for ads or content.

I believe there are great benefits to connecting branding and search, partnering together, and working closely within broader business and marketing teams and environments.

Digging into conversations, my experience, and perspectives shared with me, I’m sharing the benefits categorized for search marketers and brand creatives/strategists alike that can create more consistent and impactful opportunities to elevate brands and performance overall.

For Search Marketers

Content & Creative Standards

In the absence of robust brand strategy development and documentation, search marketers (among other channels) are often left in a vacuum when it comes to creating content and assets needed for SEO and paid search success.

In a vacuum, there are best practices and channel strategies that can guide what gets created and what words, messaging, and creative are utilized.

However, it can be fragmented, inconsistent, and unrelated to broader themes and objectives.

When we have standards and strategies to leverage, we can be a further extension of the key unique messages to bring the brand alive.

I can’t count the number of times there have been conversations between search marketers and sales teams about specific ad copy and imagery that have no grounding or truth from brand strategy to fall back on.

I’ll say this as someone who has done SEO for a long time: You don’t want an SEO to write your copy or design your creative. There are exceptions and unicorns, but you want your SEO experts and SEM specialists doing their craft.

Unique Value Propositions

One of the key measures of search campaigns and strategies is how effective they are in driving conversions – and even deeper, what happens with those conversions and whether they become actual sales, revenue, and profit.

When leads are qualifying, too expensive, beat salespeople up over price, or don’t buy from an online store and go back to Google, we haven’t done our job in telling the story and sharing our value proposition.

There will always be someone looking for the cheapest, and unless we’re the low-price leader, we’ll lose those sales.

But, when someone is seeking our unique offering and factors that can include price but much more are in play, we want to do a great job presenting those at every touch point, including those important to SEO and PPC.

Without having these, we’re either making up our own, leaning on more shallow features and benefits, or inadvertently making our products and services seem similar to everyone else’s.

Support For Off-Page Factors

Unique content, value, and benefits offered through a strong brand identity and strategy can lead to more defined and actionable results.

This is especially true when it comes to attracting links to content (backlinks), and unlinked brand mentions that matter for SEO.

With both legacy focuses on PR and the ability to leverage the brand and newer focuses on digital PR strategies to enhance being found through AI search functions, having a solid branding foundation is important for SEO and PR efforts connected to optimization around external factors and backlinks specifically.

Support For Other Resources

At points in my career managing SEO and paid search, when talking to a writer, UX designer, and other resources, I’ve been faced with questions outside of SEO about voice, tone, style, and other brand aspects.

In many cases, I haven’t had a person, team, or documentation to point to.

SEO especially needs other resources like IT, UX, writers, and others to be successful.

When branding and brand strategy are integrated and accessible, we can again reduce a gap or vacuum created when other resources get pulled in.

The more integrated our messaging is, the better we know our brand and the rules of the road and the more we can do together to be efficient in our resources and not have to do disjointed, unique research in different functions and departments.

For Brand Creatives & Strategists

Connection To More KPIs And ROI

Brand strategy and development have always been critical to any company’s presence, impacting product development, sales, marketing, and customer service.

In so many cases, though, branding has been hard to connect to specific direct key performance indicators (KPIs).

Stakeholder reactions, adoption, and validation of the intended messaging happen.

But most measurement downstream happens in marketing, sales, and other areas well beyond first impressions, and it isn’t explicitly intended to measure brand impact when it gets into marketing tactics and sales pipelines.

With integration and closer relationships between digital marketing (and search) and branding counterparts, more customer journey mapping can be done, bringing KPIs into alignment from the branding process all the way through conversions and sales.

Research And Data Gained

Branding processes leverage market research to guide their work.

Search marketing lives on research data (keywords, audiences, competitors) and analytics to get as real-time as possible in terms of measuring impact.

Search-specific research and analytics are not typically top sources for branding projects. Yet, the data can be a great supplement (and even potentially unique in some cases) to help add another dimension to the market research used in branding strategy decisions and development.

By partnering with search colleagues, a new wealth of information can be gained.

Ongoing Refinement And Optimization

Often, branding, rebranding, and brand strategy are thought of as projects or undertakings that are done once and then done again years down the road – that they aren’t ongoing or continuous processes.

My friend, who owns a highly-regarded branding agency, noted that it is often about once a decade that a lot of companies in the niche industries he serves do a rebrand.

They view it as a one-time event rather than an ongoing strategy or thing to measure, refine, and optimize. That’s a very different approach from search marketing.

By leveraging the insights, partnerships, and opportunities that search marketing and other digital marketing channels offer, branding can become more ongoing and more effective.

Not in the sense of rebranding a company every year, month, or week, but in the sense of being able to make refinements and updates to make it as goal-oriented and effective as possible over time.

Ability To See Implementation All The Way Through

This one is something I was a stickler about in the days that my agency was still doing branding.

It can be deflating, if not frustrating, to invest so much into a complete brand strategy over months and, ultimately, see it not be fully implemented or activated as intended.

In so many cases, the project ended, and even when my team was in charge of implementing the look and feel or messaging in certain places, it was handed off to others to carry forward.

We could find implementations that didn’t follow standards, missed assets, or content that broke the rules.

When search and brand work together, there’s an opportunity to ensure that, down to the keyword and display ad level, there’s a two-way street between search best practices and the brand strategy.

This is to make sure the implementation and activation of the unique aspects of how search is delivered to prospects and customers.

Bringing It All Together

While branding processes and teams might be far away from search tacticians, who are often at the bottom of the funnel driving conversions, and might not seem to have much in common, I contend there’s a big benefit to partnership.

Whether it is a connection to KPIs all the way through, access to data and research, ensuring full and proper implementation, or other factors I unpacked (and even more that I didn’t), in short, brands benefit overall.

We don’t get stuck in as many situations being considered a commodity. Sales teams can be teed up for success without competing on price. Brand affinity can start much sooner, enhancing lifetime value and customer loyalty, which impacts profitability and growth.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jan 27 2025
Smart Bidding In Google Ads: In-Depth Guide via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

Imagine running campaigns that adjust bids perfectly for every auction, targeting the right user at the right moment.

That’s the promise of Smart Bidding in Google Ads.

For PPC marketers, especially for beginners, Smart Bidding can feel like an enticing but sometimes overwhelming tool.

Between algorithm updates, new automation options, and ever-changing PPC best practices, it’s easy to lose sight of how to maximize its potential.

In this guide, we’ll explore what Smart Bidding is, how it works today, and the actionable strategies you can use to get the best results. Whether you’re new to automation or looking to fine-tune your approach, this article is here to help.

What Is Smart Bidding?

Per Google’s definition:

“Smart Bidding refers to bid strategies that use Google AI to optimize for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction.”

Unlike manual or rules-based bidding, Smart Bidding uses data signals – like device type, time of day, location, and even user intent – to determine the optimal bid for each auction.

Some of the key Smart Bidding strategies include:

  • Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Sets bids to help you get as many conversions as possible at your target cost per acquisition.
  • Target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Focuses on maximizing conversion value at your desired return.
  • Maximize Conversions: Aims to get the highest number of conversions within your budget.
  • Maximize Conversion Value: Optimizes for the highest total conversion value, perfect for campaigns with varied transaction amounts.

These strategies are invaluable for streamlining campaign management, saving time, and improving results.

However, they work best when paired with a clear strategy and enough data points to make sound decisions.

When Should You Use Smart Bidding?

Smart Bidding isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Choosing the right strategy depends on your campaign goals, audience, and available data.

Here’s when each strategy shines, along with real-world examples to help you decide:

Target CPA

Target CPA is perfect for campaigns where controlling the cost per lead or conversion is crucial, such as lead generation.

For example, a SaaS company running a campaign to drive free trial signups wants to maintain a $50 CPA.

By setting this target, Smart Bidding adjusts bids to focus on leads that are more likely to convert within that range, while ignoring auctions where conversion costs might exceed that goal.

Target ROAS

This Smart Bidding strategy is ideal for campaigns where profitability matters more than the number of conversions. Typically, most ecommerce businesses would opt for a ROAS strategy.

For example, say an online retailer selling high-end electronics has a goal to maintain a 400% ROAS (four times return on every dollar spent).

Using Target ROAS, the algorithm prioritizes auctions for users likely to generate higher-value purchases, such as customers buying laptops, while de-emphasizing bids for lower-margin items like accessories.

Maximize Conversions

Try using this Smart Bidding strategy when you have a set budget and want to maximize the total number of conversions, regardless of cost per conversion.

It’s especially effective for brand awareness or expanding into new markets.

For example, say, a non-profit organization aims to maximize email signups for a new awareness campaign.

Since the focus is on volume rather than cost efficiency, Maximize Conversions helps them get the most signups possible within their budget.

Maximize Conversion Value

This strategy is best for campaigns with varied transaction values, where the goal is to optimize for total revenue or high-value actions.

For example, a luxury travel agency advertises vacation packages ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.

By using Maximize Conversion Value, the campaign prioritizes auctions for customers likely to book premium packages, even if they cost more to acquire, rather than focusing on smaller bookings.

Common Pitfalls Of Smart Bidding

Smart Bidding is a powerful tool, but it’s not immune to challenges. Understanding potential pitfalls can help you avoid costly mistakes.

1. Insufficient Or Incorrect Data

Smart Bidding relies heavily on historical data to optimize bids. Campaigns with low conversion volume or incomplete tracking often confuse the algorithm, leading to poor performance.

For example, if you have a campaign that only gets 10 conversions in the past 30 days, it may not be best to go all in on Target ROAS or Target CPA strategies until it gathers more data.

With only a handful of conversions every month, the algorithm lacks enough data to predict future outcomes, resulting in missed opportunities or over-aggressive bidding.

For new campaigns, consider using Maximize Clicks first to gather enough traffic to your website, allowing the algorithm to learn faster and gain more historical data.

2. Misaligned Goals

Using the wrong bidding strategy for your campaign objectives is the easiest way to derail your campaign.

For instance, Target CPA may not be suitable if profitability (ROAS) is your primary goal.

In this hypothetical example, say a retailer mistakenly applies Target CPA to a holiday campaign, aiming for a $20 CPA, even though their products have a $200 average transaction value.

That strategy drives volume, but at the expense of profitability.

Make sure to clearly define your campaign’s primary objective (lead generation, revenue maximization, etc.) and choose a Smart Bidding strategy that aligns with it.

3. Overlooking The Learning Phase

Every Smart Bidding strategy has a learning phase where performance may fluctuate as the algorithm adjusts.

Making changes too soon can reset the process and waste budget.

Say you just launched a campaign with a Target CPA strategy, only to switch it to Maximize Conversions just one week later due to inconsistent results.

This prevents the algorithm from stabilizing and optimizing for long-term success.

Allow one to two weeks (or longer for low-volume campaigns) for the learning phase to complete. Monitor performance, but avoid major changes during this period.

4. Ignoring External Factors

While Smart Bidding is highly adaptive, it can’t predict seasonal trends, promotions, or external market shifts without proper input.

Make sure to use Google’s seasonality adjustment tool to account for temporary shifts in user behavior during sales or promotions, or even national events that could change a user’s online behavior.

5. Underutilizing Advanced Features

Many advertisers set up Smart Bidding, but fail to use advanced options like bid simulators, audience layering, or custom conversion values.

This limits their ability to optimize performance.

Try testing out some of these additional campaign or ad group layers to understand the potential outcomes, and use audience insights to refine targeting.

Best Practices For Smart Bidding Success

Smart Bidding can be a game-changer in the results of your campaigns, but it’s not a magic wand.

To get the most out of this powerful tool, you need to pair automation with thoughtful planning and regular oversight.

By following these tried-and-true best practices, you’ll not only improve campaign performance but also avoid the common pitfalls that trip up many advertisers.

1. Feed The Algorithm With Clean, Accurate Data

Conversion tracking is the backbone of Smart Bidding. Errors in tracking or unverified conversions can lead to misguided optimizations.

When fed with clean and accurate data, the algorithm has the best chance to produce fruitful results.

But when fed with inaccurate data points, your Smart Bidding strategy will wreak havoc on your performance.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Be sure to regularly audit your conversion tracking setup. Ensure every key action (purchases, form submissions, calls, etc.) is tracked accurately and attributed correctly.

For ecommerce campaigns, make sure to include transaction values to correctly use Maximize Conversion Value or Target ROAS strategies.

2. Set Realistic Goals

Unrealistic CPA or ROAS targets can choke the algorithm, resulting in limited impressions or poor bid adjustments.

If you’re not sure what to set your campaign targets at, review historical campaign datasets to set achievable targets.

For example, if your average CPA is $50, don’t set a Target CPA of $20 right away. Start closer to your historical average and adjust gradually.

This also pertains to your daily budget. If your daily budget is only $50 but your average CPA target is $50, this will severely limit ad serving because it’s holding back finding the user most likely to convert.

3. Layer Audiences And Signals

While Smart Bidding works on its own, adding audience segments or demographic layers can give the algorithm more context.

Try using remarketing lists, in-market audiences, and customer match data to guide Smart Bidding towards higher-value users.

You can add audience segments as “Observation Only” to start with if you don’t want to narrow on those users specifically yet.

Depending on their performance, you can always adjust your bids up or down, or even exclude them altogether.

4. Leverage Seasonality Adjustments

Google’s seasonality adjustment feature lets you signal to the algorithm about anticipated spikes or dips in demand.

Before a major sale or holiday, input a seasonality adjustment to help the algorithm prepare for the surge in conversions.

Additionally, make sure to increase your daily budgets to account for those holiday surges.

5. Monitor Performance With The Right Metrics

Don’t rely solely on Google Ads’ automated suggestions and insights.

Do your due diligence and analyze auction insights, search impression share, and audience performance to identify trends and areas for improvement.

6. Run Experiments To Validate Strategies

Testing is critical to understanding what works.

Google Ads Experiments allows you to split test Smart Bidding strategies without risking your entire budget.

For example, say you’ve been running a campaign on Maximize Conversions, but are looking to narrow in on a specific CPA target.

You can set up an experiment to test a Target CPA strategy against the Maximize Conversions to see what performs better for your goals.

That way, you’re not dramatically shifting the behavior of the account overnight and introducing a lot of volatility into performance.

The Bottom Line On Smart Bidding

Smart Bidding in Google Ads has evolved to become an indispensable tool for PPC marketers.

Its ability to leverage machine learning and real-time data is unmatched, but like any tool, its success depends on how you use it.

By aligning your strategy with your goals, feeding the algorithm accurate data, and monitoring performance regularly, you can unlock its full potential.

Remember, automation doesn’t mean you’re off the hook – it means you have more time to focus on strategy, creativity, and scaling your campaigns.

With the right approach, Smart Bidding isn’t just smart – it’s transformational.

More Resources:

Featured Image: dee karen/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 28 2024
5 B2B Customer Retention Strategies To Drive Repeat Business [Webinar] via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

For many B2B businesses, balancing customer retention with new client acquisition can feel overwhelming—especially when the competition is growing faster than ever. 

Retaining clients is not only critical, but often easier than securing new ones, yet it comes with its own set of challenges. In an environment where customer expectations continue to rise, maintaining long-term relationships requires a strategic approach.

Join us for expert, actionable insights from Moxo, as we address the challenge of building long-term relationships and keeping your clients coming back in our upcoming webinar: “How To Elevate Your Client Retention Strategy: Proven Techniques for B2B Success.”

We’ll dive into how top B2B leaders utilize automation and personalized customer experiences to build lasting relationships, ensuring clients keep coming back—without relying on guesswork.

Why This Webinar Is a Must-Attend Event
Customer retention is no longer about just meeting expectations. In this session, you’ll learn how to use cutting-edge strategies and tools to exceed those expectations and create client loyalty that drives repeat business.

In this webinar, we’ll cover:

  • Why traditional retention strategies may be falling short: How innovative tools and approaches can help you focus on what matters most to your clients.
  • How top B2B companies are using automation to personalize client interactions: Learn how to streamline workflows while maintaining a high-touch experience.
  • Proven methods for deepening collaboration with clients: Gain insights into offering real-time updates and support that keeps clients engaged and satisfied.

Expert Insights From Nikhita Iyar
This session will be led by Nikhita Iyar, Head of Product Marketing at Moxo, who will walk you through actionable strategies to boost client retention and long-term growth. With extensive experience in developing customer-centric solutions, Nikhita is ready to share her insights to help you unlock the full potential of your B2B client relationships.

Who Should Attend?
This webinar is ideal for:

  • Business owners aiming to strengthen client loyalty and retention.
  • Sales leaders seeking to leverage tools that enhance customer experience.
  • Customer success professionals looking to deliver personalized support that sets their business apart.

Live Q&A: Get Your Questions Answered
After the presentation, join Nikhita for a live Q&A session, where you’ll have the opportunity to ask specific questions about the strategies shared and how they can be tailored to your business needs.

Can’t Make It?
No worries! Register anyway, and we’ll ensure you receive a recording of the event after, so you don’t miss out on a single insight.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 10 2024
3 Steps To Futureproof Demand Generation And Achieve First-Party Data Maturity via @sejournal, @alexanderkesler

When Google launched its Privacy Sandbox, the news rang alarm bells for B2B marketers and advertisers. This signaled an end to third-party cookies on Google Chrome, which has over 65% of the browser market share.

The Privacy Sandbox, however, was only the final nail in the coffin for evolving legislation across the world to improve privacy compliance – particularly the GDPR in the European Union and the CCPA in the U.S. (and various other state regulations since following).

Despite setbacks announced by Google to eliminate third-party cookies (three times now in June 2024, with the last delay announced in April of the same year), preemptively building your first-party database is paramount for being prepared when these cookies are truly phased out.

Investing in this now presents a competitive advantage as many organizations have deprioritized their strategies to navigate the phase-out, which will likely lead to significant disruption when the Privacy Sandbox comes into effect.

Indeed, 75% of marketing and client experience users relied heavily on third-party cookies in 2023, and 45% of leaders are spending over half of their marketing budgets on cookie-based activations.

In this guide, I present a simple, three-step process to futureproof your data strategy.

The idea is to start with a demand generation program to collect your initial batch of first-party data and continue to enhance it in future iterations while phasing out third-party sources.

1. Survey Clients To Build Up Your First-Party Data

Surveying clients is the first step to building up your first-party database because they can comment on your buyer experience, as well as the quality of service.

The focus of this survey is to gain rich first-party data to inform updates to your buyer personas and Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) in line with your loyal clients to guide your demand generation strategy.

Therefore, determining precise questions that enable you to field actionable insights is key for this survey.

Below are four examples of questions to encourage clients to share valuable, first-party data:

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): From 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would refer [Organization X] to your colleagues?
  • Pain points: What challenges made you consider purchasing a solution from [Organization X]?
  • Unique Value Proposition (UVP): What 3 unique features of [Organization X] do you like the most?
  • Market positioning: On a scale from 0 to 10, how much do you prefer [Organization X] over [Competitor Y]?

These are just a few of the many questions we ask loyal clients at INFUSE. Since buyer personas and ICPs are fictional representations, it is key to continuously inform them with rich first-party data to maintain their accuracy and relevance.

Recommendations

2. Conduct A Demand Program To Gain Audience First-Party Data

Once you have first-party data from surveys, you should develop and launch a trial demand generation program to refine your data.

The idea is to gain insights from key buyers to enrich your buyer personas and bolster overall go-to-market (GTM) and demand strategies.

Below is a process to launch your first trial demand generation program and refine your first-party database:

Start With Owned Media And Social Selling

Kickstarting your trial demand program by activating your owned media with your sales teams is a great first step that allows you to fully control your approach to engaging your audience and fielding first-party data.

Leveraging a content marketing strategy is an effective way to collect first-party data. Start small, but think of a high-value gated asset for this trial that will generate demand and encourage contact form fills (lead generation), such as a whitepaper, report, or learning course.

Then, you must build a demand strategy around this high-value asset to establish rapport with your audience and encourage continued engagement.

For example, if you opt for a whitepaper, support this with initiatives across your other channels, such as publishing curated insights on social media and crafting slides for your sales team to share with prospects.

The idea is to build a content marketing suite to support your demand program across the channels your audience frequents, creating a stronger basis of brand-to-demand and richer data insights as a result.

Recommendations

  • Nurture prospects with personalized email cadences to keep your brand top of mind and collect further first-party data (such as engagement with certain topics).
  • Develop materials to enable your sales team to share high-value assets and build interest.
  • Create snackable content, such as 30-second social media videos, that highlight the value of your content and encourage conversions.

Find A Content Distribution Partner

The right content distribution partner can greatly increase the reach of your demand program and engage audiences beyond your owned channels.

However, data quality is key when seeking partners. Since the goal is to obtain first-party data and select partners based on their ability to provide this data, as well as its quality – it should complement your existing dataset rather than offer redundant insights.

Focus on content distribution partners with an opt-in audience and managed ecosystems that certify that prospects have engaged with the right content.

This allows prospects to be identified and matched with your buyer personas and then routed to your organization for further engagement.

Content distribution partners commonly have databases with prospects and their market segmentation criteria. This ensures high-value assets are distributed to prospective buyers who are a good fit for your organization and its offerings.

Recommendations

  • Audit the content distribution partner and ask questions about how they segment their audience and ensure data privacy compliance.
  • Create a follow-up structure at your organization for receiving prospects from the partner, such as an email cadence that provides more context to the high-value asset.
  • Refine your outreach targeting with market segmentation information collected by the partner.

Combining first-party data from your owned media and content distribution partner, you are ready to conduct the demand program until its completion. This should ideally take at least a quarter to glean substantial insights and a broader overview of prospect interactions (and may need to be longer, depending on your sales cycle).

3. Analyze And Optimize First-Party Data Acquired From Your Demand Program

Once the demand program has been finalized, it is now time to analyze and optimize your first-party database.

This is the start of a continuous cycle of improvement and data enrichment, which will be enabled by actioning optimizations to your owned media and partner content distribution.

Below are four questions to guide your analysis when reviewing program results and the quality of your first-party database.

Are The Datasets Relevant And Actionable?

Since the principal goal of first-party data is to inform future strategies and target prospects with precision, its accuracy and role in achieving this should be the primary assessment criteria.

Recommendations

  • A/B test different contact form fields to glean relevant information (such as technographic data).
  • Train sales teams to qualify prospects by leveraging your high-value content assets.
  • Utilize lead nurturing cadences to clarify specific information, such as key buyer challenges, available budgets, and members of the prospect’s buying committee.
  • Interactive touchpoints, such as quizzes, can glean this information in a user-friendly manner.

Are Your Buyer Personas And ICPs Still Relevant?

It is quite common for trial programs to highlight misalignments between the audience that engaged with your assets and your buyer personas and ICPs.

Trials can also identify how the key pain points of your personas have evolved or become outdated, indicating necessary updates needed to ensure the relevancy of your messaging across all channels.

Independent of the findings you acquired, regularly examining and updating these profiles is beneficial.

Recommendations

  • Analyze the prospects from the trial with an “open mind,” ensuring that your new profiles truly reflect their pain points and aspirations – rather than fit them into an existing model.
  • Discuss your findings with client-facing teams, particularly sales, to determine their relevance and enrich them with further personal insights.

Is Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) Still Relevant?

Similarly to your ICPs and personas, your UVP might require a refresh to ensure its relevance.

Due to its strategic nature, ensuring that your UVP is relevant informs all your organizational processes and communications, as well as steering how your brand is perceived by your audience.

The importance of your UVP also means that trialing new versions is key to ensuring its effectiveness before cementing it in the market.

Recommendations

  • A/B test your new UVP and complement this test with other methods (if available), such as focus groups, email nurturing, and surveys.
  • Identify common keywords and expressions used by prospects when discussing their pain points.
  • Analyze the benefits of your products and how well they align with the objectives of the prospects that were identified during your demand program.

Are Your Client-Facing Teams Following Outdated Playbooks?

Client-facing teams often have style guides, GTM playbooks, cheat sheets, and other materials to inform their daily activities. These assets can become rapidly outdated if they are not routinely audited.

Therefore, it is essential to revisit these assets, leveraging findings from your first-party database to ensure their relevance, considering the changes to your buyer personas, ICPs, and UVP.

Recommendations

  • Prioritize strategic assets used daily by teams, such as process documents and style guides.
  • Analyze marketing and sales outreach to assess if their approach regarding pain points is still relevant.
  • Book a session sharing tactics and key takeaways from the new first-party database to inform playbook optimizations.

These are only a few of the many optimizations you can perform after analyzing first-party data from your demand program.

When determining where to start your optimizations, look for low-effort, high-reward projects, specifically client-facing activities. The key is prioritizing the highest value for your organization and ensuring your first-party database empowers you to achieve your goals.

The demand program showcased in this article can serve as a foundation for future iterations to continuously enrich your first-party database.

Key Takeaways

When launching your demand programs and building your first-party database, keep these considerations top of mind to ensure the longevity of your strategies:

  • Begin with owned media: It is essential to optimize and enrich your owned media channels to start collecting first-party data. Kick-off this strategy with one gated asset in a trial demand program to gain insights.
  • Find a content distribution partner: Broaden your scope and engage pre-qualified prospects via a trustworthy partner that can enrich your first-party database with insights from new or expanded audiences.
  • Analyze results and optimize: Scrutinize the findings, summarize them, and determine priority updates to strategic areas and assets, such as your UVP, personas, and playbooks.

More resources:

Featured Image: ArtemisDiana/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments