If you would have offered a local business owner free commercial time during Super Bowl LIII, he or she would likely have been elated. In fact, many struggling local business owners would much rather have their message broadcast to a national audience than a local one. When it comes down to it, that might be why their marketing is failing to engage customers.

For a variety of businesses, local advertising is one of the most effective ways to get customers into a store. Some of the most promising channels are community blogs, small local newspapers, and frequently updated events pages that keep users coming back for more information. However, before sinking your entire advertising budget into ads at every bus stop around town, make sure you’re getting the most for your money.

Local advertising is often thought of as low-tech, but that needn’t be the case. Like any ad campaign, the most effective local ads are informed by a wealth of data. To ensure that your ads resonate with your intended audience, follow these three steps to let local work for you.

1. Cast your net on a niche.

Too many business owners decide to target “men between 24 and 30” or “young professional women,” either because it’s easier than digging into the data to find out who their customers actually are or because they think casting a wide net will help them catch more prospects. Instead of targeting huge swaths of the local population, narrow your audience — and your messaging. That doesn’t mean you have to exclude a potential customer base. Rather, identify multiple target audiences and alter your message — and the platform you deliver it on — to fit each niche group.

Lathan Fritz, founder of Amerisales, explains the value he’s seen in taking this approach. “We run national campaigns for our clients, but we’ve found that some of their best dollars are spent targeting locals. If we run a compelling ad directed at a specific niche, let’s say purchasing managers in Chicago, pretty soon you’re actually talking directly to that individual, and you know who they are and what they’re looking for.” Narrow your audience by examining what types of people buy your products or services. Analyze the audience analytics on your data management platform, and send surveys to your best customers. Focus on learning why they love what you have to offer, what pain points they share, and what makes them act.

2. Local is online, too.

Local advertising doesn’t have to be direct mail or a 2×4 sign at the local Little League field. Facebook ads let you construct geofences and limit your audience to a specific area, while the Google Maps ad feature allows business ads to appear in location search results. With the right targeting, you can show ads to people in certain areas at certain times, meaning you can increase local traffic right when you open or aim to bring in more customers at happy hour.

For instance, New York’s Korean fusion restaurant BarKogi uses local awareness ads that change based on the time of day. If users see the ads on a weekend morning, they feature a tempting brunch offer. In the afternoon, ads spread the word about upcoming happy hour specials and encourage audience members to grab a drink with a friend. Depending on your business, you can use local ads on Facebook or Twitter to ensure that people in your area know what you offer and when it’s available.

3. Digitize to gain eyes.

Another alternative to a direct mail ad or static billboard is digital signage, which you can easily update. A 2019 report on digital signage in the retail market states that a whopping 94 percent of retailers use or have used in-store digital signs. According to a study conducted for Impax Media, grocery store shoppers notice digital screens when they’re waiting in a checkout line, and 84 percent said that the visual content helped them pass the time as they waited. For small business owners, whether a screen is in a checkout line or at a gas pump, it represents an opportunity to combine the power of digital advertising with local messaging.

Put messaging on screens around town, from bus stops to digital billboards. You can even keep customers entertained during their dreaded visit to the DMV by advertising on the Motor Vehicle Network (MVN). No matter where you place ads, ensure they make viewers feel that your brand understands their experience. For example, a bakery ad on the MVN might tell customers, “You deserve a treat for checking the DMV off your list.” If you have a brick-and-mortar presence, you can use digital signage to promote your offerings in-store. Even national brands see the value in this, as evidenced by General Motors adding digital signage to its local dealerships, allowing the company to better personalize its campaigns to each specific region.

The “support local business” movement might be taking off, but that doesn’t mean local sells itself. Given a choice between Starbucks and a local coffee shop the customer isn’t aware of, the choice is clear. It’s the job of local ads to change that choice. As with any ad campaign, local advertising needs data to flourish. Instead of broadcasting a message to a widespread and unreceptive audience, local businesses must take the three steps outlined above to identify their customers and engage them in ways that generate results.

The post Local Advertising Is the Best-Kept Secret, and Tech Can Help appeared first on ReadWrite.

Data has never been more critical to marketing success. Companies are striving to employ the latest analytics to drive improvement in all areas of operations.

The good news is that the majority of consumers are willing to provide data, given the right conditions. In fact, a 2018 survey by Acxiom found that 58 percent of Americans are willing to give some data to a company if they know what they’re getting for it. Coupled with the rise of artificial intelligence approaches to analysis, we should expect a steady gain of business insight and savvy, data-driven decisions.

Making the most of data

First off, if you aren’t using AI yet, you should be. According to Demandbase, back in 2016, 80 percent of B2B marketers thought AI would play a significant role in the industry by 2020.

However, not all companies are maximizing an AI approach to data collection and analysis. Only 26 percent of marketers are confident in using AI, and a mere 10 percent of marketers have implemented AI into their strategies at this point.

Yet AI opens a whole new realm of possibilities for marketers. For example, retailers can use AI to analyze weekly SKU performance data, allowing stores to fine-tune their promotions for the best results. And because AI can analyze customers’ behavior in real time, it can prompt automated systems to respond rapidly enough to influence consumer behavior favorably. This has important applications not only in retail, but in banking, telecommunications, entertainment, and many other areas.

Data points to ponder

For these reasons and more, making the most of your data is critical to enhancing overall performance. These three strategies should drive your approach to data and AI integration.

1. Task your team to do the tough thinking.

AI can provide an adaptive and customized user experience with a speed and precision that cannot be achieved by human customer service reps. Particularly because software can connect customer data from a variety of sources — social media and website use being two of the biggest — AI can help place and modify advertising in a way that matches well to particular users and shapes their purchasing decisions.

But that’s actually good news on the personnel front because you’ll need your human marketers to allocate their energy to things like determining long-term strategy and designing customer experience. As Norm Johnston, global CEO and chief digital officer of Mindshare, observes, “The rapid evolution of AI in media will enable our people to focus on innovation and intelligence rather than repetition and reports.”

2. Build data collection into your product.

In the initial design of your product, be it a physical object or an application, you should already be thinking about ways to collect data from the end user. Some websites, for instance, require visitors to sign up and share personal data (such as connecting a LinkedIn or Facebook account) to make full use of their sites.

Remember that data isn’t always just consumer behavioral data. AI machines also collect data like speech patterns, which are critical for making iterative improvements to speech recognition software. CMOs, in turn, use speech recognition products such as Alexa and Siri to direct and improve the customer experience. For example, Hyundai recently teamed up with Google to integrate the Google Home voice assistant into its luxury Genesis brand. Drivers can start and lock their cars and request navigational help, all without pressing any buttons. It’s a customer’s — and a marketer’s — dream.

3. Keep your data squeaky clean.

It’s easy to get carried away and simply throw as much data as one can, as fast as one can, at AI machines. In some cases, marketers are collecting too much of the wrong data; in others, they haven’t collected nearly enough data. But quality is often more important than quantity.

As Sourav Dey, managing director and head of machine learning at Manifold, notes, “Remember the AI uncertainty principle. When data is missing, incomplete or dirty, you won’t get much value from your AI.” Manifold, an AI engineering services firm, was able to capitalize on this approach to help a leading U.S. baby registry become more customer-centric. Ultimately, the firm created customer prediction tools using more than 300 potentially predictive features from its data sets, and these tools allowed the registry to estimate the lifetime value of its customers just a few days after they signed up.

For AI systems to excel, they must be trained on relevant data. To produce the most useful results, humans should sort some of the data to ensure it’s representative of whatever they’re attempting to analyze. Anything extraneous, such as HTML tags or random gibberish, needs to be removed.

Marketers that commission their teams to do the deep thinking, help build the pipelines for incoming data right into their products and services, and make sure to cleanse the data they collect will enjoy significant advantages in the marketplace. Those who start early and optimize these systems continually can look forward to encouraging returns in the years to come.

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Companies may be well aware they’re sitting on a gold mine of data, but most of them have no idea how to exploit its value. Case in point: According to research by Forrester, up to 73 percent of corporate data goes unanalyzed. Information is collected, then neglected.

That’s as unproductive as living with Superman and never asking him for private air transport during rush-hour traffic. It’s time for organizations of all sizes to learn how to make their efforts more effective by using data, starting with data’s role in helping marketing achieve its goals of personalization and authenticity.

Using Data to Drive Marketing Success

To be sure, marketers already rely on a wealth of numbers and statistics to assist them in day-to-day operations. Consider the sophistication of retargeted ads and keeping up with the latest semantic and contextual changes in Google’s algorithms. However, marketing teams still underutilize massive amounts of data that could give their businesses a competitive edge.

Although this is more a case of benign neglect than deliberate indifference, the consequence could include damaging brand loyalty. After all, consumers demand customization in the marketing messages that reach their eyes and ears. Anything less than authentic personalization rubs potential buyers the wrong way — and drives them straight into the arms of another service or product provider.

Even if you’re already starting to make use of the big data your company gathers, consider taking these three steps to use data to gain market advantage.

1. Look for data patterns and anomalies.

Ever had a gut feeling that led to a marketing decision? Now, you can use data to test your intuition before you leap. As MIT researchers have shown, algorithms can comb through data to find predictive patterns that can help support or reject your theories. Ensure that every choice is collectively mapped out, using both human and artificial intelligence. By leaning on big data analytics, you can give your marketing team members a smart way to test their hunches pre-launch.

As Code North America, which specializes in unraveling data’s mysteries by detecting consumer engagement and behavioral patterns, notes, “Today’s digital touchpoints — mobile, social, web — all generate massive quantities of big data.” To achieve personalization and understand your audience, you’ll need to leverage big data’s superpowers to find the patterns in this massive amount of data.

2. Personalize content without burning out your marketing team.

We’re only human; fortunately, data isn’t. Data doesn’t need to sleep, eat, or take breaks. After collecting and organizing consumer data, the members of your marketing team can execute their strategy across multiple platforms and channels. With the right tech, this can happen almost instantaneously and without much oversight.

While your marketing team members will still need to create valuable copy, much of their strategy can be data-driven. Your marketers can use software to recommend the best next step based on the data they’ve collected on how individual customers have responded to incentives and messaging you’ve sent them in the past. Why should marketing employees waste precious on-the-clock minutes sending out messages or incentivized recommendations across multiple channels when they can work on high-level responsibilities instead?

3. Understand your audience — really.

You likely have at least a skin-deep understanding of your target personas, but why stop there? Data can grant you the superpower of X-ray vision, giving you insight into who audience members are and what they want. Don’t worry about your assumptions; you can make clearer judgment calls with the assistance of data. Sue Unerman, chief transformation officer at MediaCOM UK, likens the experience of using data to go beyond face value to an evolutionary jump: “It’s like we were using ancient maps almost, and now we’ve got GPS.”

Imagine being able to predict where your audience members will be — and be there waiting with exactly the right solution to their problems. This happens every day for marketing teams that make use of data to understand their audience and leverage its motivators to create fans and increase profits.

To be sure, data can’t usurp the place of marketers. However, when used in an innovative manner, it can make their jobs much easier and give them more wins. Think of it as the stealthy superhero who saves the day and then quietly leaves to score another victory without fanfare.

The post How to Put Big Data’s Superpowers to Work for Marketing appeared first on ReadWrite.