After assessing performance and targeting data from FCA’s existing marketing strategies, we arrived at our solution and biggest opportunity improvement: define the company’s core audiences, and then tailor creative to those groups. First, we discovered that more than 50% of FCA’s digital shopper marketing efforts had overlap, which came as a shock to both us and our client. The company’s campaigns were competing against each other for the same users and driving up activation costs. With all campaigns focused on the same KPI, performance was driven by those predisposed to FCA. Bottom line: FCA wasn’t attracting new prospects.

Our key insight: there was no clear definition between the segment audience (in-market shoppers for competition), the retention audience (in-market shoppers for FCA), and the retargeting audience (shoppers who visited an FCA site). The lack of clarity spawned overlap between all three groups and ineffective, repetitive ads for consumers. By clearly dividing these segments, we could greatly improve our reach and creative direction. To do so, we developed the entirely new, first-to-market approached, coined the “Audience Hub.” The Hub consolidated data from all existing online campaigns, allowing us to define our own segments and eliminate overlap between FCA’s marketing efforts.

Our Audience Hub gave a clear picture of online campaign performance in real time, which created opportunities to optimize as we went along. We struck data deals with our partners to create custom data sets for the Hub specific to each FCA vehicle and in-market strategy, which helped us reach car buyers both on-site and across the open exchange. The Hub also enabled us to be very granular, optimizing our activations based on partner performance for each vehicle—a very nimble strategy considering FCA’s large stable of brands and models. We separated FCA site visitors based on their level of interaction with the site, and then evolved our targeting over time by directing messaging toward those consumers most likely to engage in lower funnel activities (actions with a strong correlation to vehicle purchase). We continued to optimize performance throughout the campaign.

The Audience Hub proved to be exactly what FCA needed to revamp its marketing and improve consumer reach. First, the Hub slashed crossover between campaigns: Overlap between shopper marketing campaigns plummeted from over 50% to less than 1%. In addition, our focus on net-new shoppers paid off—now 18% of FCA’s monthly shoppers are net-new consumers. These are people who, prior to exposure to our marketing, had never considered purchasing an FCA vehicle. This group has become highly engaged with FCA’s brands, and makes up the majority of lower funnel activity (actions with a strong correlation to vehicle purchase) on FCA websites. To top it off, we expanded our reach among net-new shoppers year over year, taking Ram trucks alone from 1.3 million unique monthly visitors in 2016 to a peak of nearly 2.3 million in 2017. Based on FCA’s market mix modeling, emphasis on this net-new audience provides an 11% ROI. By creating a clearer picture of our audiences and fine-tuning our messaging to each one, we drove real, sustained purchase interest in FCA’s brands.