People Base Marketing Is A Giant Farce
Over more than 20 years of marketing, I thought I had seen more than my share of concepts and acronyms. Online, offline, TV, International, there was nothing that would surprise me anymore.
Then I came across an article on “The Rise of People Based Marketing,” and my reaction was WHAT?!?!
So I looked up People Based Marketing. I was surprised at how many links I found about this subject. But, I found this one in Forbes, which says it all.
“How do you define “people-based marketing” and why do you think it will become the gold-standard?”
“People-based marketing represents an industry shift from targeting devices to connecting with the right people at the right time, with the right message. Rather than targeting ads to devices based on cookies, which is fraught with inadequacies, marketers can now reach people across the many devices they use, thanks to persistent identity.
The reason we’re so excited about it at Spotify, and the reason we think it will become the gold standard for marketing, is because it works. With people-based marketing, you have greater assurance that your message is reaching your known customer and driving measurable results.”
Forbes, March 13, 2017
I read this over and over again, and I thought to myself, if I were the CEO of a company of any size and my CMO walked in and told me we were shifting to people based marketing, I would fire them on the spot.
The Rise Of Technology
I get it. Technology and AI are allowing us to find ways to connect to people in better and more directed ways than we ever have before. It allows for personalized ads and product offers. We can send an offer to a person based upon their location.
Social media ads allow us to provide product feeds and ads based upon what consumers have shown an interest in.
As marketers, we have more first-person data than ever before and don’t need to rely on third-person data any longer.
Marketers have been guilty of focusing too much on data and not enough on humans.
But were you really building ads to target devices and cookies?
Marketing Is About Engaging With People
Since the cavemen carved a stone into a circle and sold it as a wheel, marketing has been about connecting with people. In my career, I have never built an ad or a campaign that was built to target a device. Never have I had a meeting where we said, “This ad is targeting users of ios.”
Never. And if any of my staff said it, I would send them back to marketing 101.
Certainly, we have looked at the data and realized that people were using their mobile devices. We have built ads that were more mobile friendly. But never have we focused on a device or a cookie or an IP.
We have always built campaigns around people.
Ineffective Marketing
I listen to the larger brands talk about how they are struggling with their digital marketing campaigns. They can’t seem to get a good Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
So they abandon the effort.
And now I understand why.
If these companies have been hiring agencies and people who have been marketing to devices and cookies, then they deserve to have poor results.
We always market to people.
Build A Brand Persona
One way to never forget that you are marketing to people is to build a brand persona for your company.
It’s not difficult. Especially with the amount of data you can get about your customer.
Take the demographic profile of your customer and learn all you can about them. Look at the social media profiles of that person. Find out what they love, what they don’t like. What problems they are trying to solve.
All of this information is out there. You just have to find it.
Once you have that information, give your customer a name and a picture. When I was in the beauty business, we had a person for our brand, and her name was Emily. So we were no longer marketing to numbers, we were always marketing to Emily. This is a powerful mindset adjustment that will make your marketing improve.
Now put your customer persona all around your office, so everyone knows that you are marketing to a real person. Not a device, not a number and not a thing.
We market to people.
