The Top 3 Takeaways From our Discussion With Kate Mercer

Kate Mercer is the Digital Marketing Platform Manager at Corteva Agriscience, with 14 years of digital marketing expertise under her belt, including strategy, content, eCommerce, digital advertising, marketing automation and more. She has spent time in a range of industries from hospitality, to health and wellness, but the majority in agriculture.

Kate spoke to our cohort about digital advertising; here are three key takeaways:

1.1st Party Data.

New data privacy legislation and broad-sweeping moves from tech giants like Apple have made it more crucial than ever to have 1st party data on customers, rather than relying on advertisers or other platforms to reach customers on your behalf. Brands need to build a platform that allows them to collect high-quality customer data. Live customer data, like knowing how customers interact with your brand’s ads, or whether they attend your webinars, gives the ability to have a 360 degree view of their customers. The more you know about someone, the better you can satisfy their needs with your offerings and the less at-risk you are for using 2nd and 3rd party data to connect the dots.

2. Smallest visible audience.

The more we know about our customers, the better we can serve them. If we have enough knowledge about our customers, including their buying habits, browsing activity, channel management, etc., we can target them much more effectively, helping them convert faster. Focus on narrowing down your audience as much as you possibly can; create contextual and customized content, follow the customer journey, focus and measure, and remember to incorporate exclusions in targeting to remove irrelevant audiences.

3. Quality over quantity.

No matter how sophisticated your targeting is, if your ad copy is not engaging, your audience is not going to convert. Prioritize fresh, engaging content and visuals and use the native testing tools to help decide what is converting for your audience. Build with a mobile-first approach and then take the time to expand and reformat sizing across the board to reach all of your audience.

These days, consumers are relying heavily on product (or service) reviews when going through the research and buying processes, making it important for brands to prioritize transparency and creating fresh content for search providers (like Google) to pick up.