---

MarketingSherpa: How should marketers approach the challenge of where to invest their media spend?

Ryan Phelan, Adestra: It starts with strategy. We as marketers are too focused on tactics — where to advertise, what to advertise, what logistics we should use. We need to step back and think about what we want to accomplish, what the KPIs would be, and what it would do for our customers. What's the message we want to deliver?

Focus on the data. Look at your customer cohorts in your database and determine their media propensities. In other words, meet your customers where they are!

Once you figure out media propensity, learn where your customers are more apt to respond. Customers are everywhere today — social media, on the web, in their email, on mobile apps — but that doesn't mean that's where they'll respond. 

Your goal is to come up with your top three media propensities and different messages across those media that will direct your media spend. You also study your customer cohort groups in your database. 

The data that's available to you through your email database and the customer cohort groups you create in it makes you smarter about where to advertise. Instead of looking at the propensities of your customer base as a single unit, study the media propensities for each cohort group. 

This way, you can say, "These media propensities representing this cohort group will increase my response rate."

---

MarketingSherpa: With traditional channels still popular among consumers, how do marketers balance that with digital efforts? 

Ryan Phelan, Adestra: Traditional channels (direct mail, broadcast, print) are just that — traditional. They aren't new. If you know that every customer cohort responds to traditional channels, that knowledge becomes a testing device to see if and how they also respond in new channels. I have a hard time believing that every customer group depends only on traditional channels, not digital channels.  

Marketers who say, "We focus on traditional channels because that's where our customers are" aren't informed enough about where their customers really are. They're ignoring the fact that most of today's population is digital in nature.

---

MarketingSherpa: It’s easy for marketers to get stuck in their own silos – what are some tactics they can use to actively engage in other areas?

Ryan Phelan, Adestra: Email marketing is truly the center of the digital universe because we have the email addresses of our end users. That gives us the ability to identify our customers across channels, with third-party data matching. 

Marketers can share that benefit across silos in their organizations and, in return, receive actionable and response data from marketers in social media, web, mobile and offline.

If you insist on staying siloed, you're telling everyone you want to be ignorant, that you aren't interesting in learning what other channels can tell you about your customers' behavior. Reach out to seek and share data and information. 

Don't assume that your common CRM system is pulling in all your response data and that you're seeing all of the data generated elsewhere in your organization. 

You need all the information you can get to understand as much as you can about your customer base. Operating in a silo makes your targeting and marketing far less effective.

---

MarketingSherpa: How can marketers think beyond best practices and focus on what is best for the customer? 

Ryan Phelan, Adestra: Easy — ask them! Any company with customers should have customer focus groups — your key set of customers who represent all aspects of your customer base. This source of direct feedback in context, at scale is incredibly helpful.

Have a focus group for each channel too — email, web, SMS, social media, mobile app, print, broadcast, direct.

Also, ask your data. All the data you have on customer behavior with your brand will tell you what's best for your customers. But again, it's misleading to look at your customer group as an undifferentiated whole. 

Look at each customer group within it — what they prefer and how its members behave so you can identify differences from other groups. That helps you develop a different and appropriate message for each group.

Instead of saying, "Here's what's best for our customers," you can say, "Here's what's best for each customer group based on their priorities, attention and interaction with our brand."

---

MarketingSherpa: How can companies actively identify satisfied customers from unsatisfied customers? From there, how can that information be impactful? 

Ryan Phelan, Adestra: Four things:

1. Ask them (See No. 4 above.)

Having focus groups is key to understanding how your customers think and act.

2. Look at the data. 

Look at your unengaged customers (inactive) and those who did buy at one time but don't buy now (attrited). Look at behavior in your different customer groups over time. Map out what the customer lifecycle is at different touchpoints within your various cohort groups. 

Create models for your attrited customers so you can see where your active customers are heading. Pull out the paths for your unengaged and attrited customers to see how you can meet needs for your actives.

Some marketers treat their attrited customer group like a dead file. But, it's really a treasure chest, waiting for you to unlock it and discover its wealth of information about how, when and why your customers disengaged.   

3. Use data to create a single view of each customer.

Pull in data across all channels. You want to see what their experiences were outside of one channel. Did you send too many text messages or emails?

Do they buy online but return purchases to the store? 

When you build detailed views of each customer within a cohort, you'll discover reasons for attrition and why other customers are satisfied. A robust data set gives you the ability to predict who'll be satisfied customers and which ones are on the brink of disappearing.

4. Incorporate and analyze customer reviews.

How are you capturing feedback and customer reviews? If you aren't, you should make it a priority because it's a way to see what your customers think. Link data — from orders to service calls — and treat customers who take the time to call or post reviews differently — different messages, offers, cohort/customer groups, etc.

Try to learn all you can about your customers based on the data you have. You will be amazed at the picture that appears.

---

Adestra is a Bronze Sponsor of MarketingSherpa Summit 2017. To learn more about their solution, visit their website.

 

Mike Biwerr Chief Executive Officer, Mapp Digital Read full interview >>

Blake Miller Director, Product Marketing, Salesforce Read full interview >>

Zach Klinger Vice President, Sales & Client Success, HiP B2B Read full interview >>

Jamey Bainer Strategy & Planning Director, PACIFIC Read full interview >>