The goal of advertising is always to “reach the right audience at the right time with the right messaging”. Over the days, advertising evolved significantly, crossing some major milestones while adapting to the ever-changing market dynamics with consumer behaviour and expectations. So, this powerful marketing tool, which began with simple posters approximately 400 years ago, has evolved to iBeacon-based digital signage.
However, the most significant impact on bringing about this change was the advent and penetration of the internet with its ability to collect and store billion of user data. It is evident from the fact that Facebook has 98 personal data points on its 2.2 billion users, totalling 215.6 billion data points. It gets more massive and impressive with Google. The amount of personal data the search engine giant collects in a year might amount to approximately 569,555 sheets of paper.
All these personal data that the marketers are collecting are geared towards leveraging it for more personalised marketing.
Person-Based Marketing [PBM]
Person/people-based marketing is a more personal approach where each consumer is viewed as a unique target instead of being a part of a generic segmentation. For effective PBM, brands and marketers use personal consumer data from online and offline sources to create detailed customer profiles with their interests, shopping and online behaviour over the latest period of time and their latest purchase decisions.
It helps them to serve ads relevant to the consumers. It is very similar to Account-Based Marketing [ABM] and is often used interchangeably by people unaware of the subtle differences.
Account-Based Marketing [ABM]
Account-based marketing focuses on developing a strategy in which Marketing and Sales join their hands to create a personalised buying experience for a set of high-value accounts agreed upon unanimously. So, it is a highly targeted strategy that takes a more holistic view of marketing beyond lead generation.
An effective ABM strategy requires a multi-channel approach aligned with your company’s business objectives, sales, marketing, and customer success teams. ABM solutions are usually integrated with a CRM or marketing automation tool to run campaigns targeting the listed accounts.
PBM vs ABM
Simply put, “Account-based marketing lets you talk to key accounts, while person-based marketing lets you talk to key people.” Person-based marketing is the next step in the evolution of account-based marketing. While ABM focuses on critical accounts, PBM focuses on key people, and both are equally crucial for the B2B sector.
Another significant difference between the two is the timeline. ABM is more time-consuming; even after that, you can’t be sure you are talking to the right people. There is always a chance that your marketing content gets wasted if you are not reaching the right audience.
Alternatively, PBM is more precise, efficient and practical. PBM tells you accurately who has engaged with your content. So, directing your potential clients to the most appropriate marketing or sales workflow is comparatively easier.
How PBM works
PBM helps marketers get a complete 360-O view of their target audience that helps them with more targeted, effective advertising. With a personalised approach to multi-channel and cross-channel marketing, marketers tailor their messages for clients and prospects across different channels.
The whole process of marketing works in the following three stages:
- Data onboarding – A customer’s offline data, like their personal information and purchase history from their CRM or database, is collected and uploaded to a person-based platform.
- Match offline and online data – A customer’s offline data is matched with their online digital information, such as their browsing habits, device IDs, and social login credentials.
- Target offline customers online – The audience is segmented, and campaigns are created to target customers. This way, it is easier to target the audience with relevant, personalised ads from anywhere.
Benefits of leveraging PBM to reach decision-makers
Person-based marketing is a more practical strategy that works. It helps attract the decision makers as your target by showing them suitable ads and benefit by reducing your ad spending. The advantages of person-based marketing for reaching the decision-makers are the following:
- Customising your messages – With PBM focusing on the person and is not based only on tracking the cookies, it provides you with an opportunity to tailor customised, creative messages that resonate with the decision-makers.
- Omnichannel approach – You can reach your target audience online and offline more effectively as your ads are based on people instead of cookies.
- Leveraging the ‘right’ media at the ‘right’ time – Data helps you analyse and understand which media is converting and at what time your target audience is more likely to be receptive towards your ads. Hence, it increases the chances of your ads fetching more conversions.
- Media spending doesn’t get wasted – When you are doing everything right, including target audience, messaging, and platform, there are few chances of spending money that won’t deliver ROI.
- Extend your reach – You have chances of getting more customers when you target profiles similar to your current client base decision-making team. In the language of the ad, developing ‘look-a-like’ audiences, you can target audiences who are likely to be more receptive to your offerings.
Now that we have seen how you can leverage person-based advertising to reach the decision-makers, think everything through before starting the process. Then, consider if you have the in-house expertise to take care of all the following – do the data analysis, do the math, prepare the ad creatives, run the ad, and monitor the performance to gauge the ROI.
If you need help from digital marketing experts to enable you to leverage the power of person-based advertising to grow your business, get in touch with us at Bunjy. We are a top digital marketing agency in Chennai offering end-to-end digital marketing services to local and international companies.