Today in Digital Marketing - “No Better Than Chance”

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, why spring might be the best time to poach your competitors' customers. Nearly half of brands planning to hire marketers plan to do so remotely. TikTok unveils a new marketing insights tool to help you target your audience. The social media campaign that gets advertisers to use their LinkedIn real estate to promote someone else. And why Facebook and Instagram are disabling augmented reality features. It's Friday, May 13th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. At some point in your marketing career, you may end up buying data from one of the big data brokers like Experian, Axiom, or LiveRamp.

Starting point is 00:00:39 These firms collect masses of consumer data from thousands of sources, then try to match all the data to individual people, providing as complete a record of a person's age, interests, socioeconomic status, and so on. Often marketers buy these lists as a way to fill in that missing data on their own. For instance, you might have an email list but forgot to ask people for their gender when they signed up, so you buy one of these databases and match the email addresses you have with that person's gender. Problem is, in more cases than you might think, that data is only an educated guess, and much of it could be wrong. Recently, I spoke with Arnaud Debrun. He and his colleagues recently published an article in the Journal of Marketing Science called

Starting point is 00:01:21 How to Estimate Consumer Characteristics from Aggregate Data. And he told me, despite what we might hear in sales calls from these huge data brokerages, much of their data is just incorrect. When you go talk to Merkle or Experian or, you know, data brokers like that, Axiom, LiveRamp, they claim that they have a lot of information about everybody. But actually, it's like Swiss cheese. There is a lot of holes in their database, right? And so the way they infer the information they don't have about you is that they take you, they take whatever information they have about you, and then based on that information, they assign you to a group of customers about, you know, like you in terms of socio-demographics or customer habits or whatever.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Oh, I see. So this would be like if they have a gap for the age, for instance, they might look at the first name Todd and say, well, Todd was more popular in the 70s than it was in the 2000s. And it would assign me as male. Exactly. And so they're going to say, OK, we don't know Todd's age, but we're going to infer it based on his first name. Or we don't know Todd's income, but we're going to infer it based on his zip code. In a study with colleagues, they did a test. And so they basically took customers about whom they knew everything, and they asked for their profiles from 19 data brokers. And actually, some profiles were completely wrong, right? For instance, in one case, when they tried to guess the gender of those customers,

Starting point is 00:03:12 they were no better than chance. Wow. Meaning that, yeah, so customers go to some companies to say, I'd like to know the gender of the people visiting my website or on my mailing list. My full interview with Dr. De Bruyn is up on our website right now at todayindigital.com slash datagaps. Incidentally, we reached out to all three of the brokers mentioned for their comment.

Starting point is 00:03:36 LiveRamp asked for more information, then told us they wouldn't comment. Axiom 2 asked for more information, then they never emailed back. Experian never responded to our initial inquiry. Consumers may be doing some spring cleaning of their favorite brands this season. There's a great think piece up today on adweek.com exploring why customers are more likely to ditch brands in the spring and how you can use that to your advantage. The piece indicates that for some people, spring is a time of renewed energy, but for many consumers, the opposite is true and their malaise may worsen. It is a season of change for both groups, which has implications for marketing messages.

Starting point is 00:04:17 So how can you target consumers with discordant moods? The article suggests there are three major implications. First, branding and conquest. Marketers can lean into the season with a change message. Target new consumers, focus more on brand differentiation than at other times of the year. Second, spring is the season for major decisions, especially large purchases like houses, cars, clothes, and more. Often these purchases coincide with major life events like proms and graduations and weddings,

Starting point is 00:04:47 setting the stage for a period of change. Marketers should be aware of these triggers, acknowledge them, and if appropriate, target them. Finally, this is the season to push positive mood creative. Spring is not the time for shock value creative or negative emotional leverage. According to the article, marketers should instead provide emotional validation through familiarity and nostalgia and in general emphasize positive emotions in their content. Will marketing become a work-from-home industry? New research has found that close to half of brands looking to recruit marketers plan to hire remotely.

Starting point is 00:05:30 What are marketers' feelings toward a hybrid work model? Nearly 9 out of 10 say their work-life balance has improved due to hybrid working, while 6 out of 10 say they prefer hybrid work, and only 5% opted to return to the office full-time. The overwhelming majority of employees choosing home over a cubicle likely contributed to why nearly three-quarters of companies say they are rethinking the way the workplace is used, if at all. In fact, over two-thirds of those looking to hire marketers believe being closely located to an office is no longer as important as it was pre-pandemic. According to the report, two-thirds of those planning to hire marketers indicate that proximity to the office

Starting point is 00:06:09 is no longer a priority. The data has been provided by Hayes Quarterly Insights Survey. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back

Starting point is 00:06:46 sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N.C-A. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance,

Starting point is 00:07:11 your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. TikTok launched a new marketing insights tool that can help you target Gen Zeds from all over the world. That's Gen Z, my American friends. Yesterday, the platform unveiled its interactive insights platform called TikTok Insights, which provides a range of data points, which you can filter down to specific market segments. Data filters include location, demographic, industry, vertical, holidays, events, date, and more. If, for example, you wanted to know what the key trends among users in the US over Christmas was, you could use the data filters and receive information like holiday purchase categories where TikTok played a role,

Starting point is 00:07:53 the top three categories for Christmas shopping on TikTok, and a whole bunch more. The tool is very similar to Meta's Interactive Insights tool, which is designed to provide you with a more customized view of key data points for your brand. If you're looking to end your work week with a good deed, here is how you can pay it forward to help a marketing professional. An organic social media campaign is using LinkedIn banners to promote an ad for someone else. The initiative called

Starting point is 00:08:25 Backing Banners encourages established ad professionals to use their LinkedIn real estate to back new creatives. And by that, I mean creative people. Banners to promote each individual or agency have been pre-designed and are available to download, which can then be added to your profile. Anyone who clicks on the ads will be directed to the creative's profile of work along with their LinkedIn pages where they can be contacted about potential work. So if you want to participate, head to backingbanners.com, choose a creative, download their assets, update your LinkedIn banner, and you have started backing new talent. Select social media filters have been banned in a couple of states in the US. Meta has halted the use of its augmented reality filters and avatars across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Messenger Kids, and Portal in two states, Illinois and Texas. This as a result

Starting point is 00:09:22 of facial recognition and privacy laws. Meta noted that it would develop a new opt-in experience to allow Illinois and Texas residents to access those features again. The company also stated that, quote, the technology we use to power AR effects like avatars and filters is not facial recognition or any technology covered by the Texas and Illinois law and is not used to identify anyone. And finally, in today's episode of Is Elon Musk Just Trolling All of Us? Musk tweeted early this morning that the Twitter deal is, quote, temporarily on hold, sending details of supporting calculation that spam and fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users, unquote.

Starting point is 00:10:08 Look, I don't even know what to make of this. You know, he is notorious for trolling, so it's impossible to tell whether this is real or serious or a tactic to get a better deal or he's getting cold feet or if he really ever intended to buy Twitter in the first place. But in another tweet just a couple of hours later this afternoon, he stated, or at least claimed, he is still, quote, committed to the acquisition. So this will be the last hot tub update.

Starting point is 00:10:39 I'm sure you're all getting sick of it. Finally, yesterday I went in, gave it a whirl. Went in three times, actually, over the course of the evening. Love it. My wife is currently out of town on business, but she comes back tonight. So hopefully I will earn some husband points by having this ready to go. Tomorrow, a special paid partnership episode with WPX.net talking about WordPress and an apology up front though, owing to a glitch. A couple of hundred of you actually received this episode last weekend by accident.

Starting point is 00:11:10 There is no way for me to unfortunately only send it out to the people who did not receive it. So those couple hundred of you, my apologies, you're going to get it in your feed again in the month ahead. Premium podcast members will be getting a couple of deep dive extras. One all about Twitter, where I talk with a Twitter ad rep and we go through each and every ad product available one by one, including the costs for those big impact ad products. Normally, the platforms don't like to talk publicly about the price for those, but I coast all of it out of him.

Starting point is 00:11:45 Also, if you have any kind of automated customer service like chatbots, I'll be speaking with a marketing scientist about a paper they recently did on the effect of chatbots on overall brand perception. It's a surprising study and I think a fascinating conversation. Those two will be coming exclusively to the premium feed. You can sign up now by tapping the link in the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash premium feed. Today in digital marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the synonymic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn. Production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio.

Starting point is 00:12:27 Ad coordination by Red Circle. And our theme composer, Mark Glevis, is just amazing to watch sometimes. He moves in space with minimum waste and maximum joy. City lights and business nights. I'm Todd Maffin. Have yourself a restful weekend, friends. I'm off to the hot tub. I will talk to you again on Monday. Keep me awake. Keep me awake.

Starting point is 00:13:10 Keep me awake. Keep me awake.

Today in Digital Marketing - “No Better Than Chance”

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