MarTech360 Interview With Meggie Giancola, Senior Vice President of Sales, Vericast

“Marketing solutions must be agile enough to balance this need for privacy with the capability to understand and activate consumer desire.”

Hi, Meggie, can you give us a background of your professional journey?

Upon graduation from Miami University, my career has been comprised of nearly two decades in media sales and marketing technology.  Spanning across all verticals and categories, my experience has been consulting clients on their go-to-market strategies across multiple mediums including digital, in-store, print, audio, and social marketing.

Tell us about your current role at Vericast.

Currently I lead digital sales as the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Solutions at Vericast, a leading marketing solutions company based in San Antonio. We help thousands of businesses across industries connect with and activate their consumers through data and insights. On behalf of our clients, I specialize in connecting the dynamic digital ecosystem with Vericast’s suite of marketing solutions and provide strategic thought leadership in marketing strategy, analytical solutions, media activations, and performance measurement.

What sets Vericast apart from the competition?

Vericast has over a century of industry-first innovations, beginning with the print industry and then evolving with digital advertising platforms. As marketing requirements increasingly became data-driven, Vericast built on its long-standing CPG, retail, and financial industry relationships by integrating zero-, first-, and third-party data management with our advertising delivery systems. With over five decades of marketing expertise under our belt, we succeed due to drawing on deep-rooted industry knowledge, bringing forward-thinking solutions to market, and maintaining trust that comes from executing countless advertising campaigns for some of the most demanding companies across industries.

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Our proprietary Consumer Graph technology has powered many Vericast solutions for the last decade. The Vericast Consumer Graph deepens consumer insights through online data from text-mining algorithms, so advertisers can find high-intent, value-seeking shoppers and maximize ad spend efficiency and ROI. This technology analyzes billions of everyday behaviors to locate consumers ready to act at the right time. It also uncovers visitation patterns and where people live and shop through 33 billion daily location signals. Our Consumer Graph is unique in the fact that it connects online and offline behaviors, providing a best-in-class, holistic view of the consumer. This provides our partners the ability to execute precision at scale and achieve stronger ROIs.

With all the industry changes, marketers face headwinds with the who, what, when, why of delivering their messages. Vericast is ahead of the problem to reach a brand’s “known” and “unknown” audiences.

How have Sales and Marketing Technologies evolved in the last decade?

The rapid pace of new policies, legislation, and regulatory changes regarding data and privacy impact all companies that market and advertise to consumers. Much of what transpires is consumer-driven – they want and need privatized engagement. This is prompting European and U.S. regulators to establish laws and guardrails that will impact advertising platforms and the entire marketing ecosystem.

On the flip side, consumers still want personalized engagements. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. They want personalized but privatized content delivered to them in digital mediums. In the current media buying ecosystem, these two things are at odds. Companies need to find a way to execute against both.

Due to this paradox, marketers are leaning toward data-driven marketing that respects the privacy of their audience. The availability of intelligent data collection tools supplemented by artificial intelligence has supercharged marketers’ ability to gain actionable insights from data.

According to you, which are some of the recent marketing trends that can help businesses drastically boost their sales?

Brands are in the middle of a loyalty crisis—consumers are less loyal to brands in favor of finding the most savings with the best quality. To capitalize on this trend, marketers need to offer money-saving incentives to attract and retain customers and emphasize the value of their product for the price.

The industry is also discovering that when messaging is aligned with content, it has a greater impact (a 107% increase in brand favorability). With this knowledge in mind, marketers can provide customers with valuable touchpoints in real time, while retaining consumer privacy (since this never pulls personal information on an individual level).

An interesting development over the last few years is the concept of affinity. A consumer isn’t just about brand quality or lifestyle. The brand must be worthy of a consumer’s trust. Brands that build a trusted relationship with their customers through deeds and actions will see something greater than just a sales lift. We’re looking to influencers and social to help deliver those messages more authentically.

How does marketing amplification make a difference?

Platforms utilizing market intelligence insights ensure marketers get the most out of their marketing campaigns. Amplification allows marketers to gain insight into who the decision makers are, their needs, and when they are most likely to purchase. This can dramatically boost sales.

To employ impactful marketing amplification, marketers need to look at whether the datasets they are receiving are high quality—in other words, holistic, non-stereotypical, and well-informed information to subtly personalize campaigns. Utilizing low-quality data can turn consumers off your brand if it makes incorrect assumptions about behaviors or lifestyles. In contrast, high-quality data will create a consistent campaign even across omnichannel, targeting the most relevant and action-driven consumers.

As influencer marketing is still dominating the marketing industry how is it impacting customer acquisition and retention?

Influencer marketing is a unique channel, bringing trusted sources for third-party consumer validation. Marketers must identify how to amplify their traditional influencer campaigns using data-driven strategies when developing social campaigns. Tools like predictive intelligence allow marketers to ensure they are reaching new consumers and staying top of mind with influencer testimonials.

Vericast recently conducted a survey about the advertising paradox, can you tell us more about what opportunities it is creating for marketing solutions?

We learned that consumers want to engage with brands that offer incentives at the right times. According to the survey, 27% are likely to respond to personalized advertisements that offer a deal or discount, and 20% said they purchased after receiving a personalized ad. However, half of the consumers consider retaining their privacy more important than receiving personalized marketing. Marketing solutions must be agile enough to balance this need for privacy with the capability to understand and activate consumer desire.

The key challenge we have identified is that marketers must work to transition their unknowns to knowns. Transparency is key to making that happen; brands that can be open about collecting and using data will put consumers’ minds at ease. This allows consumers to gain affinity and loyalty to the brand, thus increasing growth.

Can you name 5 Marketing/Sales tools you use for marketing/sales?

The Vericast Consumer Graph continues to be a trusted intelligence hub for our partners to harness powerful deterministic and predictive intelligence to find the ideal target audiences and relevant action to achieve their broader KPIs and ROIs.

Quadrant Analyses – We offer a variety of analytical tools to help select not only the right audiences but the ideal geographies for their campaigns/initiatives. Our analytical tools help our partners connect multiple datasets, whether sales data, coupon redemption, total store sales, or market sales, then marry that back to our consumer graph to focus in on key geographies and audiences for further precision at scale.

Measurement & Attribution – Providing attribution to any KPI or campaign objective is key to proving performance and allowing those insights to fuel the next campaign for continued learning and enhancements. Our end-to-end platform allows us to do just that.

At this point, privacy is a clear challenge to the industry and will impact the entire technology stack. We’re encouraging our clients and partners to adopt a privacy-forward approach to avoid business disruptions in the near term. Our message is simple: the world is moving from a reactive opt-out to a proactive opt-in. Regardless of where the legal bar is set, gaining a consumer’s trust is pivotal to your future sales. Establish that relationship today; the time investment will pay dividends for years while your competitors scramble to react and regain their footing.

Multi-Channel Partnership – At Vericast, we have the power to execute across multiple digital channels (Core Display, CTV/OTT, Influencer, Paid Social, Search, Digital Out of Home, Audio, etc.) which allows us to be a strategic partner and manage our clients’ overall KPIs throughout this dynamic ecosystem. As changes happen in real-time, we shift spending/strategy into different tactics to keep our clients compliant with regulatory changes without hindering their ability to achieve their broader goals.

What would you like to advise all the marketers and sales strategists to enhance their marketing and sales efforts?

With the changing privacy landscape, marketers must identify what new privacy legislation and processes mean for their campaigns, brands, and consumer relationships. The best marketers will be able to consider all this while still finding ways to have a personalized relationship with consumers. This is a Herculean task, but it’s made infinitely easier using data-driven technologies that can safely provide targeted insights to mitigate some of this legwork. We’re helping our clients do this every day, and we’re rapidly learning and iterating to create a world-class offering. Marketers shouldn’t just look for flashy B2B solutions. Look for a partner with innovation at its core and one who understands how to build consumer affinity by converting unknowns in the ecosystem to known consumers.

Thanks Meggie!