How Tech is Changing Just About Everything in Marketing

While we’re all about pioneering the latest technology for testing creative, we’ve learned when to use it and when to use more traditional routes, such as with our ThinkPad Beatboxer film. Because this spot focused heavily on surprise and disruption, using eye tracking would actually skew the results, translating a viewer’s confusion or shock as a negative emotion. Since the video shows a ThinkPad continually being torture tested while the music goes on and on and on no matter what the laptop goes through, we wanted to make sure we read the reactions correctly–that necessitated asking viewers specific and simple questions about their interpretations, perception and consideration of the product. We got high marks in this testing: more than 95 percent of people said they would find out more about the product; more than 79 percent said they perceived ThinkPad as a quality brand; and 84 percent would now consider ThinkPad. When we launched the film on our global social platforms, we reached 2.6 million people and achieved a nearly 50 percent engagement rate, substantiating our positive testing results.

In addition to optimizing our content, we’ve been experimenting with dynamic creative. This tool lets us leverage real time product pricing via our website data feed along with consumer site behavior data to build out a more automated, yet customized, advertising program. We’re able to individually message each consumer with relevant product messaging in the right place at the right time.

However, we’ve learned that for other types of content, especially the most time sensitive ones like real time marketing content, just getting it out there organically in social is a good way to see if it has legs. If it takes off organically, we support with paid media.

We optimize rollout with the right platforms to reach our audiences at the right times, and we carefully monitor and track how it performs with the platform tools and our social listening team. This allows us to get real-time feedback that rolls into the next piece of content.

There’s no question that today’s marketers must embrace data and insights. For the left-brained creatives amongst us it’s not always an easy switch, however the power that comes with using technology in marketing means that every dollar spent can be tracked for ROI. It analyzes every interaction and consumer engagement, making every campaign ultimately more successful.