Navigating the Evolving Marketing Landscape with Slalom and AWS

Slalom

By:
  Lisa Hopkins, Partner Development Specialist – AWS
  Heather Roth, Director, Digital Strategy – Slalom
  Logan Patterson, Sr. Director, Digital Strategy – Slalom
  Fraser Gray-Smith, Sr. Consultant, Digital Strategy – Slalom

What is happening

In the last few years, changes in traditional analytics tracking, stringent privacy and data collection regulations, and tracking limitations by certain browsers and operating systems have created significant measurement and strategy challenges for marketers. Most marketers are used to leveraging third-party cookies and device identifier to drive audience building and retargeting strategies but are quickly learning that the macro data regulations will limit brands’ and advertisers’ ability to target and personalize messages to customers. This leads to higher acquisition costs, diminished returns on advertising spend, and challenges planning and executing effectively to gain more customer business.

Rebuilding signals in a privacy-focused world

For marketers, it is difficult to understand how these changes impact their ability to reach audiences and measure impact. Not only will signal loss bring ad effectiveness challenges with personalization and audience targeting, but there will be substantial impacts to campaign measurement and attribution. Below are some expected impacts on signal loss and considerations that marketers should consider reducing the impact on their business.

Figure 1: Impacts of marketing signal loss on marketing tactics

One of the most important efforts for marketers in the coming years is to build greater ownership of their customer data and activation channels. Owned data, or data that their customers willingly provide to a brand (known as zero-party data) or data that a customer consents to provide while engaging with a brand (known as first-party data). This data becomes the foundation for marketers as they plan around how to re-target and prospect high-value or engaged look-alike audiences. This data can also provide a foundation for personalized experiences based on prior orders, shared profile data, and other engagement with brand channels like web, mobile app, email, etc. (assuming customers opt into collection).

Depending on the amount of zero and first-party data that a company gathers, or if there is a desire to build a larger addressable audience, marketers may choose to supplement their first-party data with second-party data through a trusted partnership around the data exchange. As marketers develop their customer data strategies accordingly, effective identity resolution solutions become crucial. They must enable the integration of customer identities across their journey and facilitate accurate measurement of performance across various activation channels. Below is a framework for marketers looking to build up their customer data strategy to capture key data on customers for segmentation and activation:

Figure 2: Critical capabilities for customer data strategy

Simplifying the transformation journey with AWS and Slalom

In developing future marketing strategies, companies must navigate numerous solutions, ensuring their chosen infrastructure/solutions(s) align uniquely with their business characteristics, customer engagement approaches, and operational tactics.

This is where the combined expertise of AWS and Slalom can make a significant difference. AWS for Advertising & Marketing (AMT) collaborates with many of the top advertising and marketing technology vendors to offer purpose-built solutions for companies. This initiative simplifies the process around selecting the right platforms for customer data management, privacy-enhanced data collaboration, marketing measurement, ad intelligence and digital customer experiences. Many of these platforms are also available on the AWS marketplace, which allows streamlined procurement, deployment, and management. This can help provide faster speed-to-value, centralized governance, and better cost control – all critical enablers of a successful transformation.

As a proud member of the AWS Partner Network (APN), Slalom has achieved all five AWS Advertising and Marketing Technology Competency distinctions. These include Data and Audience Management, Digital Customer Experience, Privacy-Enhanced Data Collaboration, Advertising Intelligence, and Advertising Platforms. This recognition highlights Slalom’s proficiency in guiding customers to select and scale the appropriate technology and data solutions, optimizing their workloads on AWS.

Slalom’s success with clients is rooted in their philosophy that while general capabilities are necessary for optimizing marketing and customer experience in a privacy-focused landscape, companies must also consider specific nuances before making significant data and technology investments. This approach encompasses governance, operating model, and process considerations, ensuring customers maximize their investments and see benefits across the organization.

For companies exploring their future marketing and advertising strategy, there are a few considerations that Slalom suggests to help simplify your approach:

The first step is to evaluate the characteristics of your business to determine the solution architecture you need. With these data and technology capabilities in mind, it is important to recognize that not all companies will need the same solution. There are many characteristics of your business that will determine the marketing technology stack that will work best for your business objectives. Below are a few examples:

• Customer engagement model: Digital-only companies will have different data collection and identity management needs than those with multiple offline and online touchpoints
• Existing technology stack: It is important to assess the technology capabilities you already have in place and how they can be optimized, rather than simply replacing.
• Data ownership maturity: The amount of zero-party and first-party data you can collect will dictate how you can personalize experiences and expand your audience reach.
• Organizational structure: Where budgets and data management responsibilities are housed can impact technology investment and operating models.
• Regulatory landscape: Certain industries and organizational structures have additional data privacy and security requirements that must be accounted for.
• External vendors: Outsourced marketing practices may inform how data collaboration, identity resolution, and activation need to be managed and governed with third parties.

These factors will inform how your company will need to invest in the five critical data and technology capabilities. Our white paper will help you better understand how these characteristics play into their technology considerations.

Investing in new marketing and data technology is just the first step. This reset moment is also a unique opportunity to transform the role of data and technology in delivering your customer experiences by building a culture around this new solution architecture. This will require tight integration between strategy, analytics and operational teams to align on collective customer-focused goals, establish the right governance model around data management, ensure compliance, and provide teams skills and processes to deliver on their goals.

Slalom’s marketing transformation framework focuses on aligning the five pillars (Experience, Operations, Governance & Org Design, Technology, and Data & Analytics) to the overall marketing and enterprise strategy.

Figure 3: Core pillars of Marketing Transformation

Alignment across these pillars supports the development of a broader advocacy group to ultimately drive higher and accelerated rates of change adoption and a successful change to the organizational way of working. Learn more about the steps you can take to evaluate and mature your organization in each of these pillars. See the results our clients have seen in their transformation by downloading our white paper or reaching out directly to our team.

Looking Ahead with Confidence

The marketing landscape is continuously evolving, with emerging privacy regulations, technological advancements, and shifting consumer behaviors. By adopting a strategic, customer-centric approach and harnessing the combined expertise of AWS and Slalom, companies can confidently navigate this transformation.

Whether you aim to develop a robust first-party data strategy, implement advanced identity resolution capabilities, or deliver more personalized digital experiences, Slalom and AWS are here to help. Connect with our team to discover how we can support your marketing transformation journey.

Slalom – AWS Partner Spotlight

Slalom is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner and purpose-led global business and technology consulting company. From strategy to implementation, Slalom deeply understands its customers—and their customers—to deliver practical, end-to-end solutions that drive meaningful impact.
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