Ok, I promise this article is about programmatic marketing. But it’s also about greatness. I’m not a Lakers fan, I’m not a Lebron James fan, and that’s not going to change. But I respect Lebron James.
I’m a huge Utah Jazz fan, but I have to respect the play of Lebron James. The most amazing part of Lebron James is he redefines who he is as a player every couple of years, yet has been a top 5 player in the NBA longer than any player in the history of basketball.
In true fashion, James decided to be great at assists in the 2019-2020 NBA season. He ended the season as the leader in assists in the NBA.
So how did he do it? What did he focus on in the 2019-2020 year to be so impressive at assists? He focused on putting the ball exactly where his players wanted it:
“It’s my responsibility to know how my guys want the ball,” James said.
“If they like it with no seams or with the seams. I know that might not make sense — some guys like it different ways. I get the ball right in my hand before I throw it. I know the guys on my team like seams or guys who like the ball high when they catch it. I know guys who like it low or midsection. I know where everyone wants the ball, and I just try to put it there on time and on target. All they have to do is catch and fire. It’s those guys working on their craft that allows me to do that.”
How Does This Apply to Digital Marketing?
Personalization is certainly one of the buzzwords of 2021. I’ve already watched half a dozen webinars this year about how important it is to personalize. And honestly, I couldn’t agree more. Personalization is hard. It’s difficult to 1) understand what each customer wants, in a scaled way 2) then to deliver that experience in a scaled way.
Much like Lebron James, we need to figure out exactly how our customers would like the product, their preferences and to deliver those preferences to perfection. Easier said than done, for certain.
Delivery of the Message
One way that personalization often gets overlooked is in the media format that is selected when attracting, retaining, or re-engaging customers. We may know the right message, we may know the right target, but are we delivering that message in the right way?
There are customers who are much more heavily influenced by a good video, others that make purchase decisions off of an audio ad they hear on their favorite podcast, or those that are stirred by the visual significance of a banner ad they see at just the right time.
This is where programmatic excels. Programmatic is focused on:
- Ensuring we are targeting the right target by using keywords, contextual, geography, and other sophisticated methods
- Once we’ve defined the right audience, we hypertarget only that audience using a variety of curated ads through display, video, audio, native, connected tv, and beyond
We’ve been hearing this for year…Get the right message, to the right people, at the right time.
Lebron did it successfully with his team in the 2019-2020 NBA season and we can do it by using programmatic marketing.
We have excellent clients. We’d love to share the strategies and approaches we’ve used to help scale the businesses of these clients. Let us help.