Trust and positive experiences will be the cornerstones of modern digital marketing
Digital marketing is moving into one of its most challenging phases in its history, as the demise of third-party cookies forces businesses to reframe a model that’s been in play for nearly two decades.
At the recent Adobe Summit, attended virtually by more than 100,000 people from around the globe, Adobe Vice President Suzanne Steele spoke with Stephen Kyefulumya, GM Media Growth and Innovation at carsales, on the subject of how customer behaviour and expectations have evolved over the past few years and how carsales is tackling the changing business landscape.
“We’ve had a trusted relationship with our customers for a long time,” Stephen told Suzanne. “Trust is now a buzzword because of changes in the industry, but we’ve been advocating trust for a long time.”
He added that the nature of running a marketplace business has allowed carsales to build strong bonds with their customers over time, grounded in the fact that car purchases are often triggered by personal life changes.
“We really need to change how we market to people with the third-party cookie deprecating,” he said.
“That first-party data set that we’ve built, and the trust we already have, means we can build personalisation at scale.”
A key insight into carsales’ future direction is the notion of people-based marketing.
“Offering people-based marketing at scale – which is marketing not dependent on a cookie –is one of our key strategies, how we bring all those things together in a well-governed, privacy-first people-based marketing solution,” said Stephen.
He added that carsales supports the changes. “It’s giving customers power back over their data, which is how it should have always been,” he said.
When it comes to customer behaviour post-COVID, Stephen and Suzanne discussed carsales’ Ipsos-sourced research series, and the ongoing lessons it continues to provide as it moves into its third generation.
In 2017, for example, the research showed that it took the average carsales buyer 2.5 months to move from the trigger stage to the purchase stage. In 2021, the timeframe had jumped out to seven months.
“What that means is that you’re looking what people are doing – looking, refining, revisiting, going back and adding things – so there’s a much greater need for data and personalisation from marketers to really influence the purchase journey,” explained Stephen.
“It’s just become even more important now for serious marketers to play a part in that, and data and personalisation is key.”
