How can agencies deliver the same (if not more) for less?

Budget conscious shoppers navigating the high cost-of-living is increasing competition and putting greater pressure on stagnant and decreasing marketing and media budget. A key challenge for communications professionals is that expectations are not adjusting to match. The question I am being asked most is how to deliver the same (if not more) for less and connect with the right shoppers? The secret is in the data. And not just any data – high-quality, targeted, purchase-based data.

Driving a higher return of ad spend is essential to win

Fast, granular and easy-to-access audience insights enables marketers and agencies to segment and target with greater accuracy, ensuring ads are seen by the people with the highest propensity to purchase. This level of insight is critical for increasing conversions and delivering successful campaigns.

With past purchase the best predictor of a future sale, purchase-based shopper targeting can deliver up to four times ROI than any other audience type. Combining purchase data with rich demographic data can target audiences most likely to buy, identify the highest sales opportunities, increase brand penetration and reduce wasted ad spend. This is the power of precision media activation at scale across households with the highest propensity to purchase.

Media audience activation best predicts where your customers will engage

Purchase-based targeting helps increase conversions, improves engagement and unlocks valuable customer insights. It also informs the creation of targeted campaigns and look-a-like audiences more likely to result in conversions and a positive ROI.

Technology advancements exposes the average consumer to up to 10,000 ad impressions every day; a sole focus on high-traffic platforms will not cut it anymore – fragmentation is here to stay. To target consumers more effectively, manage reach and target at scale. Marketers and media agencies must be aligned in the type of data used for media strategies.

Effective use of data isn’t a cost, it’s intelligence

A deeper understanding of how media investments perform across channels, product verticals and audiences allows marketers and agencies to better allocate media spend to reach the right consumers with the right message in the right place at the right time to more efficiently drive sales. Propensity modelling provides unparalleled access to purchase-based behaviour. Pre-optimising campaigns based on past consumer purchase behaviour can lead to significant improvement in campaign performance.

Licensing the right data enables insights and outcomes – and cost savings in the long term

Purchase-based targeting allows advertisers to reach individual consumer preferences en masse – which is particularly important in an environment where data and segmentation capabilities are becoming more limited.

It’s all about accessing high quality, unfiltered data derived from sources based on real people and not bots.

Purchase-based data can be used to amplify budgets and pinpoint audiences with reliable insights that go well beyond traditional media targeting, ensuring the greatest return on investment.

Measurement matters too. It’s how you improve and optimise

Measurement will help you maximise ROI, make data-driven investment decisions, generate growth, reduce risk, and, ultimately, defend your marketing and advertising budgets. But it’s critical to build and embed a measurement culture and empower all stakeholders with data literacy so they can provide input and make decisions with confidence by leveraging, testing, optimising and measuring effective solutions with purchase-based targeting.

When layered over the traditional way of buying advertising – via demographics, contextual and geographic factors – purchase-based targeting allows for exceptional detail, precision not previously available, and the ability for marketers and agencies to do this across the full funnel of activations.

Reach the right audience to maximise conversion

Audiences by Circana is specifically designed for FMCG clients to capture purchases in real-time, providing marketers, and creative and media agencies the purchase-based data to layer over the traditional way of buying advertising.

Barry Collins is the media and analytics director at Circana.