At Versium, we choose to underscore our product with an increasingly important word. REACH. The concept of reaching people and businesses is at the core of our mission. One of the pioneers in the field of advertising was Leo Burnett. Burnett once said, “When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.” This rather humorous take on a philosophy is applicable to Versium and our efforts to make it possible for industries to identify, understand, and REACH the prospects of their choosing. Data technology solutions is the instrument by which we employ data resources in order to achieve our objective of reaching high-performance prospects. The stars for which we grasp is the data that leads to greater knowledge and greater outcomes.
Looking Back
As we near the mid-way mark of 2022, we continue to be mindful of the past year – without question, the challenges of 2020 and 2021 have been impactful. Much of the growth in 2021 was really making up for the setbacks and uncertainties of 2020. However, there was still a tremendous amount of palpable uncertainty in 2021. Everything from major supply chain issues along with the inability for businesses to get product on the shelves played an important role in the way businesses market themselves. It was a constant shift of growth opportunity coupled with uncertainty. One of the noticeable growth areas was the customer’s requirement for digital transformation. We experienced significant growth in the SaaS services around work from home. Depending on geography, many businesses went back to work, in the workplace. Yet, there may be permanent changes regarding work from home and the desire to be able to manage an entire buy process from behind a computer, minimizing the amount of human and personal interaction.
Looking Ahead
We know continued changes to how marketers and advertisers leverage cookies, email becomes the most fool-proof way to directly reach someone. There will be a new and expanded focus on email marketing which will include first-party data and customer data across companies. It is critical that companies maintain updated and clean first-party data and customer data. With the increases in work from home, we need to reassure businesses that they will reach the audience they want to target. Enterprises cannot just rely on a trade show any longer and they cannot rely on cookies or retargeting any longer. As is often the case, there will be a burgeoning of new kinds of innovation. Some of these developments will target increased privacy around data and adherence to data privacy. In addition, there will be more on the horizon when it comes to automated and programmatic processes. There will be a new technology of AI driven spend and ensuring that first-party data is always contactable.
One additional area of perspective for the coming year is the overwhelming amount of systems with which marketers have to deal from an ecosystem perspective. Marketers tend to buy best of breed systems, and small businesses may use 15 to 20 different systems just to manage their marketing and advertising. It is a huge undertaking for the business and its various users to become experts in the multitude of systems and then manage metrics across multiple different systems. There will need to be a move to ease the user experience associated with all the different tools out there. We will see a lot more direct integrations, workflow automation between multiple systems, a lot more availability of APIs, so that users can log into a consolidated experience. This trend will continue to grow, especially as more systems become available. As this trend continues, it is critical that data is regularly reviewed and cleansed as it travels between systems to ensure that it is updated and usable for campaigns
As we move along in the industry, we will also see an emphasis on how to make account-based marketing (ABM) more effective. Many companies attempt to implement ABM, but, at times, struggle because of the expense involved and the runway to ROI. Improving AMB will continue to be an important arena for B2B. In addition to reaching a company, it is critical that companies reach the right people in that company. ABM campaigns will be increasingly focused on understanding and reaching the businessperson, not just the company. For 2022 and beyond, we will see a lot of technology build around this area. It is a powerful way to build awareness and to build a relationship with a buyer, rather than just with a company.
2022 will certainly continue to be about “reaching out.” Another way to put it is that marketers have to lean in like never before when it comes to implementing data rich and data intensive marketing programs and technology. As our world increasingly becomes a digital platform for all that we do, the data and the metrics will dictate and drive decisions and how far we can reach our customers and new opportunities. And our reach, at Versium, will continue to unfold as we further our scope, always looking to provide the finest data tools and technology for our far-reaching clientele.
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Dillana Lim, Versium CEO
