How Pinoy marketers can win consumers’ trust in digital age with Google, according to experts

June 6, 2022 - 9:37 AM
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A number of industry leaders last Tuesday shared their insights on how search engine giant Google can help marketers win the consumers’ trust in digital trust in the digital age.

During the roundtable discussion organized by Adobo Magazine for Google Marketing Live, industry leaders acknowledged the changing behavior of consumers online.

(L-R, clockwise) Angel Guerrero, Founder, President and Editor-in-Chief of adobo Magazine; Crisela Cervantes, Head of Marketing Communications of Globe; Dennis Perez, Integrated Marketing and Commerce Lead of Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing SEA; and Cat de Leon-Vinuya,  General Manager of media agency Spark Foundry. (Screenshot via YouTube)

 

Digs Dimagiba, chief marketing officer of Metrobank and president of the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP), said consumers are now “more conscious about who they’re going to trust” with the information they are obtaining. This makes transparency more important for consumers so they know how their data will be used.

“[We need to] go back to the fundamentals and respecting and treating the customer as an equal partner. In order to do great business and grow the industry, we need to create an ecosystem of trust…[with] privacy as the most important currency,” he said.

Scott Beaumont, president of Google Asia Pacific echoed this at the Google Marketing Live online event saying trust has to be earned.

“Even the most successful brands can only succeed when their customers trust them,” Beaumont said.

“[At Google] we want to work with you to create privacy-safe digital marketing strategies, anchored in insights from your first-party data, given with people’s consent. Tools like Google Analytics for Firebase–our apps measurement solution–enable you to access those insights while upholding user privacy. They free you to focus on your unique strategic value — without worrying about the tactics. This is how we achieve responsible growth together.”

Aside from trust, Crisela Cervantes, head of marketing communications at Globe said marketers must use existing of existing data within the databases of companies.

She said that they used to heavily rely on targeting interests and demographics but she said it is more efficient if the first party audience signals are utilized right.

“The opportunities are endless when it comes to data-driven marketing,” Cervantes said.

For Dennis Perez, Integrated Marketing and Commerce Lead at Unilever Beauty and Wellbeing Southeast Asia, it is understanding what data marketers have or what solutions they have.

“It’s all about combining data-driven marketing without sacrificing trust and privacy,” he said.

The marketing pundits likewise suggested the need to find a healthy mix of channels to reach target audiences.

Cat de Leon-Vinuya, general manager of media agency Spark Foundry, cited that TV viewership dipped even before the pandemic. She said that in some segments to date, online has surpassed TV consumption, especially in the last month with younger audiences straying farther away from traditional media.

Because of this, she said markets must also leverage various channels like the video-sharing platform YouTube.

“The younger audience is starting to get more and more elusive from the traditional channels, therefore TV may not necessarily be the right mix when it comes to trying to reach this audience. Hence, the scale now has to be tipped to explore different channels such as YouTube as a way for us to do incremental reach,” she said.

De Leon-Vinuya said YouTube will bring value in assisting or complementing TV campaigns as a mode of discovery or to educate consumers about a product.

Unilever’s Perez agreed with this and said the marketers must produce content that matches their respective audiences.

“Let us not put the Filipino in one box with 110 million people in it. Filipinos have so many facets and dimensions, and you can split that into a hundred boxes with a sizable amount of people–but you need to make sure that you give the content that really matches the audience that you’re talking to,” Perez said. —Rosette Adel