There is a growing movement to connect CRMs to ad tech and utilize their in-depth customer data for advertising and marketing campaigns.

"Linking campaigns to sales provides better insight for marketing and enables more targeted advertising." - Louis Moynihan, AdExchanger

Traditionally, DMPs (Data Management Platforms) have housed large swaths of data to help marketers find information regarding customer demographics and behavior. This data is most often used for audience segmentation and ad buying. DMPs and CRMs are beginning to converge, linking powerful advertising data with real customers and their actions. This change means that ad campaigns can be tied directly to concrete revenue via attribution.

"The combination of ad and Web analytics enables a full, life-cycle view of every customer and campaign. These converged analytics give us the power to optimize the customer journey and report on ROI produced by a more powerful customer experience." - Louis Moynihan, AdExchanger

For example, companies such as Datalogix and Acxiom can create an audience through offline purchase and interest data to inform your next campaign. These tools append your existing, known customer information to create a more powerful, customized experience - especially in the awareness stage when you don't know a lot about your individual customers. When we learn more about our existing users, these insights can inform who we go after in the future. These insights all fit together to boost your marketing and achieve your goals more quickly and intelligently.

This progression means greater transparency across an organization in order to tie outbound activities with real revenue goals. Marketing teams will now be able to understand how both known and unknown prospects respond to campaigns and then know how each step of the customer journey impacts revenue directly.

Understanding How & Why

Understanding how digital marketing works is just the beginning. Marketers need to think in bigger terms, too. How do people enter the funnel in the first place, and why? How do audiences first hear about your brand, and how does this affect the efficacy of your overall marketing efforts?

Once a lead knows about you - whether through press, word-of-mouth, events, reviews, advertising, or content - everything you do must be aligned with driving your goals.

So go back to the most important question - WHAT ARE MY GOALS? Dig in and look at what you're doing currently and adapt to match them. If you're using digital marketing tools and don't know what your goals are - well, that's about as effective as trying to use a map without knowing your destination.