A recent furore in the United States revealed just how far the advertising and marketing industries have progressed in the digital age.
It was revealed that the digital billboards in Times Square interrogate the profiles of pedestrians’ mobile devices and adjust their advertising to appeal to the audience. In other words, the advertising is customised to be most relevant to the audience physically present at any one time.
The technology is called RADAR and is quoted as utilising:
‘Anonymous, aggregated mobile data, from privacy-compliant third-party data providers to understand where your customers go and the best locations to reach them’.
Naturally, consumers feel a little uneasy about this invasive technology and many, including the government, have questioned its ethics.
The concept and technology will no doubt continue to provoke more debate, but this new development raises an interesting marketing question for smaller scale business to business marketing. How can we benefit from new technologies in an ethical way to reach and connect directly with a target market or individual who may be interested in our goods or services?
Some of the answers to this question have been around for some time, with those pesky email newsletters offering tracking that enables providers to view the email addresses of those who have clicked a link.
With the right content plan, such reporting enables a provider to discern a reader’s interest and qualify a sales follow-up in an intelligent and powerful way. Of late, this technology has even been used in individual emails, with applications like Contact Monkey and others leading the way.
Further to this ‘push marketing’, there are also powerful new ‘pull’ tools available on platforms such as LinkedIn, where you can map out a specific person’s skill, seniority, industry and demographic profile and target advertising and InMail ads to reach this specific individual. The strategic marketing impacts of these B2B context marketing technologies are very significant. They may not be as sexy as massive digital billboards, but they can greatly improve sales prospecting and targeted brand awareness.
At Aspire, we are using these techniques in an ethical way to help our clients increase revenue and profile through highly effective B2B marketing.
To find out more, read about our new service Aspire Reach and Connect.
