Marketers must understand how to better intersect and engage with the customer journey
Consumers have changed. At Come Together 2019, News Corp argued that a holistic, trusted approach is now necessary for brands to reach consumers during the moments that matter to them.
Understanding how to reach every moment in the customer journey was the central theme of Come Together 2019, a showcase of the multiple ways News Corp Australia is building the media and marketing services company of the future.
The two-week event highlighted how brands now need a holistic strategy to touch every point of the customer journey in order to succeed. To both win their backing and attention but to do so in the golden window when they want to buy a product and service. It’s what News Corp terms the moments that matter. Simply thinking of a one-off ad placement in isolation, in a so-called silo, is not enough because consumers are far smarter than they’ve ever been.
“We need to understand how we can engineer those moments that matter to understand better how to intersect them in ways that are relevant and engaging,” says Damian Eales, chief operating officer, publishing, as he explained that often, customers are on many different journeys at the same time.
“These journeys intertwine and intersect. Customers will consider what car they buy around the family table, while also thinking about their next holiday and home. We don’t start by searching for a product online – we end there. It’s that same serendipity that audiences enjoy forever.”
News today has evolved to not only a print and digital operation but to a media business that can own the whole customer journey as it engages more Australians and connects with more customers.
“In the face of massive disruption, we have become more diverse, agile and determined,” executive chairman Michael Miller told Come Together guests. “We are publishing on more channels, while rapidly creating new products and offering new solutions and consumer experiences.”
“Now, we’re listening more carefully. Thinking differently. And building a media and marketing services company of the future.”
Essentially, he argues, it is the value of real, unique content created by professionals that, when combined with advances in data and targeting, that marketers need to recognise.
“Our storytelling is thoughtful,” says Miller. “It can take days, weeks or sometimes years. Society is rediscovering companies with strong media brands. And brands are created not by algorithms, but people who publish real stories and build real relationships.”
Trust, reinforced by real journalism, then is everything. And today, consumers are also becoming deeply wary of content churned out by digital platforms and social media. The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, for instance, reveals that our faith in it has changed profoundly in the past year.
“Now only a quarter of us trust social media,” points out News Corp Australia’s managing director of national sales, Lou Barrett. “As we know, 2018 was the year the tech giants came under huge scrutiny – for their measurements, for how they handle customer information and for the content they allow to go live despite being unchecked. But trust fuels confidence. And confidence generates demand.”
It’s a point concurred by Peter Field, the UK’s master of advertising effectiveness. “I’ve been analysing patterns of advertising effectiveness for many years, and one of the key themes is the fundamental difference between short and long-term effectiveness,” he says. “They pull us in completely opposite directions.” Emotional advertising, he adds, builds long-term growth, while rational behaviour drives immediate response.
The problem is that while the tech giants may well indeed know a lot about us, that data can’t drill down hard enough because they are merely scanning search results or purely analysing social media posts.
They may be making money out of other people’s content, but because they don’t create that content themselves, they are skimming the surface of our understanding. Publishers should attempt to solve the conundrum of reaching consumers by creating brand new ways of marrying data and content. Ways that have never been tried anywhere else. Modern publishers will succeed because they own the assets themselves.
Among the 24 initiatives News Corp announced, a core focus was on their enhanced capability of its data and targeting offering, News Connect. It can now collect demographic, behavioural and transactional data from 12 million Australians across platforms as diverse as Fox Sports, Ticketek and Realestate.com.au. UnrulyEQ was big news – a revolutionary new data-powered tool, offering unparalleled levels of consumer insights, which combines the depth of proprietary emotional data from video platform Unruly, and the breadth of audience targeting platform, News Connect.
This year, News Connect now includes Skyscanner’s 80 million customers as well as information from geo-targeting platform Near. The net result is 1,600 different customer segments. “It’s the most sophisticated digital targeting capability for professionally generated content,” says Eales.
That data is drilled down across assets the tech giants can’t reach.
For instance, Food Connect reaches 3.25 million Australians but can understand who are grocery buyers, who dine out and who have a preference for seafood.
Fan Connect, with 85 segments, understands the difference between sports fans who attend every game at a stadium, and those who prefer to watch local events. And then those who love fast food and those who want a home loan.
Meanwhile, Local Connect taps into real communities of people – those who may not live in the big cities but still matter to brands.
News has initiatives outside of pure data, too. The success of The Teacher’s Pet – 45 million downloads and counting; the most successful global podcast of last year – has led to NewsCast, a vast portfolio of new podcasts across sport, travel, food, fashion and true crime with high-profile presenters that have led to new partnership opportunities. Generation Dollar is a new initiative from Vogue – celebrating its diamond anniversary this year in Oz – that will guide women through their financial journeys.
Another key partnership was the unveiling of Code Block which allows consumers to become the sole sponsor of a sporting code across, print digital and television. Meaning they can own the pre-match build up and post-match analysis as well as the main event.
And reinforcing the value of trusted content, the company’s internal content agency, Suddenly Productions, launched Trusted By… a powerful new short-form video offering which leverages the trust in News Corp’s brands to endorse clients’ brands.
The initiatives and the News Corp philosophy of identifying ways brands can intersect throughout the consumer journey had the backing of Mark Ritson, technically known as the adjunct professor of marketing at Melbourne Business School. But really, he’s more famous for being the voice challenging the status quo of how brands should go about reaching consumers in 2019. He too believes the way we interact with businesses has changed. Our traditional marketing funnel needs to evolve. Consumers are now being bombarded with more adverts than ever before. Far more cynical, they spend longer and longer researching online and asking their friends their opinion. Product, too, isn’t enough. A personalised service is essential. As is one delivered by a brand with a good reputation. In a world of infinite choice, they are happy to take their money and time elsewhere.
“If you just focus on the bottom of the funnel,” Ritson concludes, “at the end of the journey, you realise you’re losing most of your customers at the middle or the top of the funnel, where you should be focussing your attention.
“Herein lies the great challenge.”
Isn’t this word for word Google’s pitch from 5 years ago? “Moments that matter”???
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