No matter what industry you’re in, you must collect the right data to drive your marketing strategy.
With over 10 years in marketing, I’ve often been asked to “justify the spend” on customer engagement, social media marketing, brand exposure, and questioned about “how does social/web/in-person engagement drive revenue?”
Well, to help equip me in the future, I attended the American Marketing Association webinar Intent to Impact: Practical Ways to Apply AI in Modern ABM, led by Michelle Corrao, Strategy Manager of Marketing at ZoomInfo. The session focused on how to fuse AI into ABM strategies by identifying high-value accounts showing buying signals, creating hyper-targeted campaigns, and proving marketing’s impact on pipeline and revenue. But, more importantly, it reframed how to think about customer data.
Customer expectations have changed
Customer expectations have drastically shifted in the last decade, with 88% of US adults expecting:
- Brands to remember them
- Engagement based on shared history
- Consistency across touchpoints
Customers experience a journey, a relationship with your brand, not individual campaigns and social media channels in silos. That seems simple, but if you think about the overall sentiment of an audience-brand relationship, it reframes how marketers might be measuring campaign-based and channel-based approaches rather than focusing on customer expectations based on personalization and their overall journey.
So, how do we reframe our approaches? Collect data.
The problem is how we “measuring marketing”
As a marketing communications manager, I’m doing work across every touchpoint (including social, digital and print content, email, podcasts, interviews, and web), but how can I use data to actively engage audiences and connect my work to tangible business outcomes?
Too often, companies can:
- Focus on reach instead of impact
- Evaluate success in isolation from customer journeys
- Talk about engagement without connecting it to outcomes
So, what should we be focusing on, and how can data help? Engagement matters. But only if we can connect it to what actually moves the needle forward for our organization. So, start with customers, not campaigns.
What is a customer-first marketing strategy?
Try, momentarily, to stop thinking in terms of campaigns altogether.
Instead: Identify key customers and determine:
- Where do they spend the most time?
- How do we create more conversation there?
- What do they need to make a purchasing decision?
Because when we focus on campaigns first, we lose sight of the people we’re actually trying to reach and how. If, for example, one social media channel is more followed than another, don’t focus on just output in creating campaigns across all channels. It may be better to identify WHY that channel has more engagement and what’s driving it? Is more of your audience on that platform, and if so, what are they doing there? What can you do to turn those people into purchasing customers?
Close the gap between data and results
So, how do we connect the dots between data about your audience and your actual results? Do a specific deep dive on understanding what content and contexts can help drive purchasing decisions.
Create more targeted and more tailored messaging where customers can be most engaged. Right now, many of us aren’t measuring enough, or the right data, to truly connect those dots. And that’s the gap.
While omnipresence is good, and data collection is even better, it’s most important to be relevant to customers where it matters most.
Content and context drive connection
Content and context are the key strategies to drive connection.
While connection builds loyalty, loyalty builds brand affinity and brand preference.
That’s the KPI here… marketing shifts from transactional to relational to stand out amongst competitors or to convince that audience member why they need you, your product or service.
Why does the purchase make sense, right here, right now, with you?
AI creates the opportunity, not the strategy
AI can help you process more data, identify patterns faster, and automate personalization across touchpoints. It can surface buying signals, recommend next-best actions, and tailor messaging in real time.
AI now allows for personalization at scale. That’s a huge opportunity to set more data-driven strategies today. But it’s worth being clear about what AI actually does and doesn’t do.
That’s a huge opportunity to set more data-driven strategies today.
The goal isn’t to outdo Amazon. It’s to out-human them.
Create moments that feel intentional, not automated. Make your content feel closer to 1:1 in ways large corporations may not be able to. But, that’s also where things can go wrong. A misaligned first name in an email, the wrong company referenced in a message, or an autofilled section that doesn’t match the recipient’s reality can create distrust.
While AI increases speed and scale, it also raises the stakes. Without clean data, clear segmentation, and a strong understanding of your audience, AI actually doesn’t help your marketing but it amplifies its flaws.
Without the right data, AI just accelerates noise.
The real opportunity is using AI to enhance what already works:
- Stronger insights
- More relevant messaging
- Better timing across the customer journey
Because when AI is grounded in the right data and a clear customer-first strategy, it doesn’t just automate marketing; it actually makes it more human.
Measure what actually matters
Not measuring enough, or measuring the wrong things, makes it difficult for you to connect engagement to purchase. So, identify what data you need to tell the right story.
Is your goal: More people, broader audience? Or impact on customer lifetime value?
If you’ve found these tips useful, visit www.DrAmaraPope.ca to learn more.
