In today’s digital world, brands must cut through a great deal of clutter to reach the right customers. To achieve this, brands need to differentiate themselves from the crowd. This can be done by changing their communication approach. One differentiating factor that can help brands do this is crafting a personalized brand communication for their customers, which will help create a lasting brand recall in their minds. Brands understand that to achieve this, they need to take the customer-first approach.
Moreover, with technological advancements, this has become even more complex. Customer behaviour has evolved with the advent of the latest technological devices. They are no longer limited to consume content through one medium. They have numerous platforms to choose from. So, how, and where should the brands reach out to their customers? Well, brands must be omnipresent. They cannot afford to miss out on any channel, or else they may lose out their precious prospects to their competitors. Being omnipresent helps brands deliver a consistent and best-in-class customer experience. This can drive brand loyalty and improve sales. But the question is, how to achieve it? Programmatic advertising has the exact solution to offer. It is called Omnichannel Targeting. It is one of the ways for brands to effectively align themselves with the evolving market dynamics.
Omnichannel targeting allows brands to reach out to their customers across all channels and deliver best-in-class customer experience. This goes a long way in driving brand loyalty, which reflects in sales. It also enables marketers to deliver consistent brand communication to the customers, across all the channels, screens, and platforms. It blends the benefits of each individual channel and allows brands to employ them in a complementary manner.
With the help of Data Management Platform (DMPs), programmatic advertising provides the technology that enables brands to identify the devices used by the same person. Various other tools like device graphs are available, which can map all the different devices belonging to a user. DMPs help advertisers process deterministic data, extrapolate probabilistic data and so on, from various devices, and merge all of that data into one single view and help marketers deal with the “fragmented data” across multiple devices.
One of the most widespread approaches of implementing an omnichannel strategy is the multi-platform approach, which involves reaching out to consumers across multiple platforms. This may include online platforms like websites & apps, social and connected TVs. The customer may use the same device or a different device to consume content across some of these platforms. As per a study by GlobalWebIndex, a typical digital consumer owns an average of 3.64 connected devices. Thus, advertisers must reach out to their consumers across all these devices. For this, a multi-screen approach is necessary. It involves reaching out to the consumers on multiple screens like mobiles, tablets, laptops, desktops, connected TVs, and so on. To achieve this, advertisers must enrich their data with a key insight i.e. identifying the multiple touchpoints that actually represent the same individual. Through this approach, brands can get a much clearer picture of their marketing data, and their consumers. Brands can understand the consumers’ behaviour and their variations across multiple devices. This data comes in handy while creating targeting strategies.
Depending on the demographic data of the target audience, brands may also need to choose some specific devices for a specific audience. For instance, in order to target a younger group of audiences, marketers might opt for smartphones and tablets. However, an older group may be targeted on laptops or desktops. Also, depending upon the context, the choice of devices may differ for the same person. For instance, people may engage with desktop computers or laptops while at work, listen to satellite radio while travelling in the car, and use their smartphones while having dinner. This will help advertisers maximize the reach, market penetration, customer engagement and brand exposure.
Note that “data” is the key here. To integrate this data with the targeting strategy, one needs to take a data-driven approach. Techniques like programmatic advertising facilitate this integration quite smoothly. Programmatic advertising allows advertisers to segment their audiences using DMPs. Its precise targeting options like demographic targeting, behavioural targeting, device targeting and geo-targeting, complement the omnichannel approach. Combining the understanding gained through these platforms with the insights on device usage, brands can avoid showing incessant, inconsistent, and irrelevant ads and instead deliver a consistent experience across all channels.
