Data-driven marketing is falling out of fashion.

It’s now about holistic people-based strategies, that put consumers at the centre of the marketing experience.

LiveRamp AUNZ sales director Natalya Pollard predicts the shift from data-driven to people-based strategies to continue in 2019 and beyond.

“This data-driven approach, whilst valuable, is often very siloed in nature and limits our ability to truly understand and deliver the right message to the consumer behind that interaction,” she told B&T Magazine.

“People based-marketing goes beyond a cookie or device, it aims to holistically stitch all data points together to provide marketers with the ability to target a person.”

She explained that with consumers now dividing their platform and device use across mobile, TV, display and social, means marketers need to ensure their messaging is consistent.

“A people-based marketing strategy aims to provide marketers with the right foundations to equip them with the ability to deliver a unanimous cross channel message to their consumers,” she said.

“It helps brands bring both identifiers (emails, cookies, devices etc.) and what they know about their consumers (demographics, intent, interests, transaction history etc.) together to deliver better customer experiences through tailored marketing across multiple channels.”

Getting the right data is also critical, Pollard said, as “there is nothing more frustrating than being targeted for something that you have already bought or don’t necessarily want”.

“It is the role of marketing to marry up the right type of data with the most relevant point of the customer journey.”

The great equaliser 

With half the global population now online, the power of data now creates opportunities for companies big and small.

“Individuals are increasingly expanding and deepening their digital footprint and gravitating towards the Internet and mobile technology to search for information,” Pollard said.

“What this means for businesses is an opportunity to analyse a customer’s purchasing behaviour online and map them back to the offline world.”

“This means any business is on level playing field to use data to drive its business strategy.”

What differentiates the companies is their ability to access the future developments of data, said Pollard.

Navigating the GDPR

When the EU introduced its General Data Protection Regulation last year, there were concerns over marketers would be impacted.

But Pollard thinks it too will help level out the market.

“The introduction of regulations such as GDPR will help level the playing field within the industry and encourage more marketers to not leave data privacy as an afterthought,” she said.

“Global regulations like GDPR will grow to become an even greater catalyst for helping organisations look at ways to advance their data governance practices and in turn drive data-driven marketing.