Engaging the New Consumer: Database and Variable Marketing

By Ethan Lyon, Senior Writer

Gone are the days of a media landscape dominated by mass-market advertising and the cookie-cutter consumer. No longer are effective marketing campaigns targeted to mom, dad, son, daughter and grandpa. Today, effective advertising engages the affluent mother who’d rather go to a spa than pull weeds or the introspective father who cares deeply about the hem on his pants. Personalization and customization are essential as businesses seek to establish meaningful relationships with prospective and current customers.

Segmentation is a marketing tool used to identify and develop communications for key consumer groups. Through a variety of business intelligence tools and comprehensive market databases, companies can synthesize a large amount of consumer data into key target segments.

Variable Browsing

After visiting Amazon.com, doesn’t the homepage start to recommend books you’d actually buy? The same goes for a YouTube user. As your browsing history accumulates, Amazon and YouTube sifts through their mountains of data to recommend customized product / video pages just for you.

Beyond YouTube and Amazon, there are many repositories filled with billions of data points. Sweepstakes, contests, online registrations, even browsing history generates mounds of data about each and every person. In essence, as we browse and engage with the web, we are creating a trail of digital crumbs. Those mountains of data are valuable for companies seeking to quantify, qualify and synthesize their target segments. A tremendous amount of money is spent purchasing this data–whether it’s by a senators re-election campaign or a Fortune 500 company.

Variable Marketing

To further engage consumers, there are many tools at your disposal. One of those tools is variable marketing. Variable marketing uses an overlying theme coupled with a personalized message to every consumer or segment. Imagine a piece of direct mail for a shoe company. On the front is a muddy shoe print. Stamped in that muddy shoe print is your name and possibly some copy that speaks to one of your passion points (e.g. importance of eco-friendly shoes). That piece of variable marketing direct mail is much more appealing than your typical “junk mail” because it says something about you.

Better Data, Better Opportunity

In today’s market economy, competitiveness can be measured by the quality of data. The better the data, the better opportunity your business has to customize a message to your target demographic. Quality data plus quality business intelligence tools equals a quality message. Furthermore, premium information repositories can be a resource for innovation and product development as businesses analyze the needs and desires of their audiences.

Online social networks are rich with customer market data. With such a wealth of profile data, online sweepstakes, contests and banner ads should be tailored to the interests of each user. After all, each user discloses something about themselves (some more than others). Thus, social networks should have advertising similar to Google AdWords. Surprisingly, this is not true. On their Facebook or MySpace page, a young professional could have a banner advertisement for Rogaine. Blanket banner ads are reminiscent of a bygone era–where advertisers were speaking to the entire family, not just the 14-year-old girl, with a fanatic obsession with Miley Cyrus. It is the personalization and customization opportunities found in database and variable marketing that increase profitability and consumer engagement for future companies.

Illustration by clix from Stock.Xchng

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