There’s no doubt we are in the midst of an exciting, dynamic era in marketing – an “always on” consumer culture and new technologies to apply to the customer experience are among the opportunities at our disposal.  Yet as the saying goes, “water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink” — Marketers are data rich in direct response with search and retargeting while data-deficient when it comes to relevant branding in the digital space.  Media monopolies like Google, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon are commanding the lion’s share of digital budgets while keeping major control of targeting and relevance hidden in their “walled gardens”.

So, marketers are limited by the lack of insights and knowledge at scale of their 1P audiences that their media partners are holding onto – instead relying on lookalike audiences for scale at the detriment of performance.  These media monopolies’ “walled gardens” are hampering the ability to attract new consumer audiences higher in the purchase funnel – and causing unnecessary waste in media spend.

What’s a Marketer to do?

The Marketer’s New Swiss Army Knife: Buyer-Driven Branding

Marketers have mastered buyer-driven direct response through search and retargeting which have proven very effective.  But what about applying such buyer-driven data tactics to branding earlier in the consumer journey as well?  Buyer-Driven Branding puts existing brand buyers to work to capture new levels of knowledge about their behaviors and interests in areas such as pop culture, entertainment and music for more effective branding outcomes.  Buyer-Driven Branding identifies new target consumers who are emotionally similar to current category buyers – higher up in the purchase funnel where brand consideration is occurring.  Even more, marketers experience new levels of efficiency in their media buys – applying what is gleaned about a category buyer on Facebook for buys on Google, Instagram, NBC, etc.

Buyer-Driven Branding Put to Work

Imagine you are the category lead for Color Treated Hair Care at Aveda®.  You know your existing brand buyers and their preferences and purchases – but how do you effectively find more category consumers who would be as passionate about the brand?  Or those you could conquer from another category competitor like Aveeno®?    Working with Affinity Answers who provides unique access to social consumers, you can identify entirely new audience segments that share emotional alignment with your brand’s category buyers in what we refer to as “Feel-Alike” audiences.  Then put those Feel-Alike audience segments to work through Buyer-Driven Branding process at scale across social, search, TV, etc.