Modern marketers realize they must work harder to attract consumers’ attention. It used to be simpler, but as media evolved from traditional to digital and then to automated, the number of opportunities where marketers could place ad messages exploded each time. In response, many marketers decided the right strategy was to chase potential customers under the auspices of personalization, which ended up saturating these new digital spaces with cheap ads.
Today, the average campaign runs on 44,000 sites. But this is not the right approach to winning heads, hearts and ultimately, wallets in a post-cookie world. Especially when ad spending’s efficacy sits at a paltry 36 cents on the dollar.
While most still maintain that personalization is the right answer to the modern marketer’s dilemma, the strategy has shown its limitations. For years, marketers have been focused on delivering the right offer, to the right person, at the right time as a key definition of personalization. But that is no longer right. Just because a message is personalized with, say, the recipient’s name, and delivered at the right time doesn’t mean it’s the best message to put in front of that particular consumer or that it will lead to the most valuable outcome.
A better strategy is to go beyond personalization and seek to deliver relevance. To engage and convert consumers today, especially with more commerce-driven transactions, marketers must reconsider what is required given the full context of each person’s current situation and ensure relevance rules. Just because the ad is right does not mean the ad is best.