In this series, Talk data to me, we chat with leaders from the world’s biggest brands and agencies about how they’re using insights to drive their business strategies.
We caught up with Anne-Sophie Pereira De Sá, strategic insights analyst at LinkedIn in the EMEA region, to get her thoughts on the attention economy, the rise of AI, and what it takes to connect with the new savvy consumer.
Tell us a bit about your role.
My role is to use a wide variety of data points to better understand our LinkedIn members. It can be anything from what piqued their interest, what content they engage with, and their online behavior in general, and on our platform.
The goal is to help our marketing clients make the best data-informed decisions about who to reach out to and how to engage with them, so they can drive growth for their businesses.
What’s keeping you busy at the moment?
The biggest thing is understanding the current economic situation and how it affects tech purchases. Understanding the situation, what has changed, and what remains the same helps us identify new opportunities for our customers.
How do data and the use of audience insights inform your business strategy? And how do they give you a competitive edge?
For us, the use of unique data ecosystem is really about understanding our audience and their behaviours. It helps us provide more guidance to our customers about who they should target and what content, message or tone they should go with.
What’s the most interesting thing about your audience?
When you look at the B2B tech buyer, one of the most interesting things is that they’re actually not that different from the B2C consumer.
We’re all human. We all rely on trust – whether that comes in the form of experts or our favorite information sources.
There’s a tendency to think of the B2B purchase journey as something very rational, which, of course, it is – it’s based on information. But there’s also the important role of emotions in decision making. Some of the best-performing campaigns on LinkedIn rely on different emotions such as humor.
What do you think the biggest threat is in your sector in the next few years?
One of the biggest challenges is probably everyone’s attention span and the competition for attention. The younger generations are used to short-format video, so they’re constantly being pulled in different directions. That means for brands to capture their attention, it’s probably going to be harder.
The two other challenges that I see are trust and authenticity. Who do you trust? What are the platforms that you trust? Why do you think the information is trustworthy?
To win consumer trust, brands need to speak with real purpose and authority on certain topics, which will force marketers to be more sophisticated in their approach.
What’s your take on the cookieless future?
As third-party cookie capabilities are deprecated and privacy rules tightened, 2023 will bring an increased focus on harnessing the benefits of first-party and zero-party data that customers proactively share to deliver more relevant, meaningful and personalized experiences.
We believe that a privacy first and a members first approach is critical as we look to building new solutions going forward.
What will be the biggest opportunity in your sector in the years to come?
The biggest opportunity is probably also the biggest challenge and it’s going to be AI. Everyone is talking about it right now. The rise of ChatGPT and artificial intelligence is a great opportunity. It’s going to transform our business, the way we ask questions, the way we automate analysis, and remove some barriers.
What top trend are you seeing emerge in your wider industry?
With the growing savviness and sophistication of the consumer, brands need to come from a place of authenticity, be a trustworthy source, and be able to capture attention without reverting to clickbait tactics. I think it’s going to be very interesting to see which brands are going to do it well.
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