Snowflake's Inside the Modern Data Stack for Ad & Marketing for 2023 (Martech & Adtech)

Snowflake released its annual report on September 14, 2023, and conducted a conference that revealed what marketers had observed. Just to let you know, some worries have been on people's minds for a long time. For instance, how to market during a recession involves better targeting, acting quickly, and doing more with less. What is interesting is the Gartners Marketing Expo chose a different route. I will discuss that in a different post.

Some factors that are important with data and change are:

1. Doing more with less
2. Incorporating AI into our work for efficiency
3. Privacy Concerns 
4. Targeting better and acting faster
5. Volatile Economic Pressure

CMO's or Top Leader's Priority

1. Developing a blueprint to get results quickly
2. Developing data science to bridge business and data

75% of marketing leaders who participated in a recent Spend and Strategy poll said they felt under pressure to accomplish more with fewer resources. To demonstrate their marketing value, many CMOs and their teams are taking on more duties. With all the investments made and increased data, there are now more expectations and a demand for people with a wider range of abilities. Tangible ROI is expected due to all the continuous investments in being customer-driven.

Nowadays, with so many options available, individuals are looking for something unique. Particularly under pressure from the economy, they want to purchase from a business that can provide an amazing experience. They seek a cheap price for the experience. It's important to stand apart because customers have similar issues and concerns, just like we do, and other stuff to think about.

How do marketers typically try to break through the noise?More stuff—more products, more services, more messages, more channels to test—just adds fuel to the fire. You'll end up wasting your time—all that could have been invested in refining your focus.

We should aim to be noticed, then understood, then thought about in a buying situation, and then shared with others.

The data stack path, in summary, is how to leverage technology to continue improving our marketing. CTOs and CMOs agreed that the capacity to have a large-language model will provide people with an advantage for the data stack path. You can prevent re-siloing with the aid of AI processing since you can address everything where the data resides. 

This segues into my next point,

How to Use AI to our advantage as marketers

• Transform the way businesses and customers interact.
• Increase operational excellence and optimize the user experience.
• Offer continuous customer service with the use of AI chatbots.
• Send personalized content to users based on their search.
• Segment the targeted audience based on their interests.
• Provide a deeper understanding of customers’ behaviors and help map out the best strategy for each customer.
• Utilize data to learn about the customer’s journey and craft a tailored message to serve the customer at the perfect time to convert them.
• Analyze customer behaviors to optimize demand generation and increase personalization.
• Improve the visual elements of campaigns and identify precisely where prime opportunities exist to engage ideal audiences.
• Ability to analyze content down to the color code and hashtag level to see which elements are driving the most engagement on social channels and digital platforms.

Q: Ok, well, you keep mentioning data latency and breaking down silos. Can you break that down into simple terms?

A: I'll do my best to break down three terms that were frequently used in the meeting: data silos, data latency, and tech debt. 

The amount of time that passes after an event before data becomes available is known as data latency. It may have an impact on the efficiency and precision of data processing and analysis.

A data silo is a collection of data kept apart from and inaccessible by other departments inside a company.  It grows as a result of the diverse priorities and aims of teams or departments across the organization. Within a company, data silos lead to a lack of efficiency, trust, and openness. Lack of efficient data governance and management causes data silos, which result in siloed data being dispersed across an organization's numerous departments and systems. These silos impede data sharing and integration and make it difficult to identify data silos. Problematic data silos keep vital information out of reach or disconnected inside the company, which results in inefficiencies and lost chances for data-driven decision-making.

This makes it difficult to view the data as a whole because they produce fragmented views. When your teams’ information and ideas are scattered, it is natural that their decisions won’t be well thought out. The best way to envision it is an iceberg. If you only see 15% of the problem, of course, you can't properly address the whole issue. Most companies want a 360° view of their customers because it lets them act proactively and send relevant, personalized messages to many customers at every stage of the customer journey. With silos of data, getting a single customer view is almost impossible.

Lastly, tech debt is a term for the cost of maintaining and updating code that was written quickly or poorly. Technical debt is a term used in software development to describe the cost of maintaining and updating code that was written quickly or poorly. Typically it's the result of doing patchwork or a quick fix over addressing the root of the problem. I must note that sometimes it is not intentional however, it can build up over time, increasing the expense of resolving the original issue.

Data Privacy Issues

Another challenge marketers admitted to facing with all this data available is privacy issues such as fines for storing data and issues with data governance. This raises the question of how data might be managed and utilized by marketers.

Globally, data privacy is becoming a critical concern. Digital marketing is changing new privacy laws, which require significant operational adjustments from firms.  These days, there are a lot of diverse tactics, including phishing, spamming, and simply exploiting client information in fucked-up ways. Digital marketers can utilize the following to acquire trust:

• transparency: having pages highlighting how customer data is stored and used.
• limitation on data collection: you need to have a valid reason to process personal information, especially financial data.
• data access and deletion requests: GDPR and CCPA give folks the right to access their data, and they can request it be deleted. As a marketer, you need a process to quickly respond to them and delete them immediately. 

Q: Well what are some strategies we can use to ensure compliance? We don't want to pay these hefty fines!

A: First, identify all the data you collect, how it is used, and where it is stored. Create an inventory of all the data you process from customers, employees, and vendor information. Second, sometimes it helps to make a data flow map to visualize how data moves in the process and potential threats. Third, update your privacy policy and implement data access and deletion procedures. 

Target Better and Act Faster

But in short, many marketers often start with just promoting products and services instead of starting with market research. They are trying to appeal to everyone instead of just one certain demographic in the hopes that something will stick. As consultants, we have to warn you not to waste time with those types of people. We don't want you to be one of those people who spend thousands only to never see any results.

Volatile Macroeconomic Pressures

This is just a fancy way of saying that the economy, which is always changing, influences our work. Sure, since we are in a recession and money is tight, people will be more price-sensitive, but remember that other factors also matter when making a purchase, such as functional and psychological ones. Customers don't always choose the products that are best for them (depending on the circumstances, like being pressed for time, exhausted, or apathetic). 

Okay, I feel like I rambled on long enough...

TLDR: 3 out of 4 CMOs felt pressured to do more with less, especially with a recession. Use ethical practices to stay compliant regarding data privacy. Use a data flow map to identify potential risks and keep your privacy policy up to date. Also, you can use AI to target better. However, don't be one of those people who try to spam folks as a way to stand out.