The current obsession of every company and every marketing department should be the creation and consolidation of their own customer databases. This is what evolved, AI-driven digital marketing agencies actually do.
Let me tell you a very interesting story about how the way we look at databases changes completely into something far more modern and powerful.
The symptom: more expensive leads, less interest
One of my clients in the education sector is facing the same problem it has had for the last few years: acquisition costs keep rising, while the leads that come in show less and less interest in what the institution offers.
The story starts with a sales advisor who has been running into an increasingly obvious wall. They keep running campaigns and contacting the people arriving through Meta lead ads, keeping a steady flow going as they have done for years — but those leads are less and less interested and convert less and less.
Low conversion rates have caused several programs to shut down and different business units to struggle. No matter how hard this salesperson and her team try, the commercial department's expectations are not being met. The marketing budget has been reduced, investment in social media and search has been reduced too, and conversion, far from improving, has continued to fall. Everything points to a difficult road ahead for the institution — or at least for this division.
This situation is worrying and, obviously, problematic. But this is not the only institution living through it. I have met many other businesses experiencing exactly the same thing. Ad costs go up, campaigns are optimised, more leads are generated — and those leads still do not convert easily. As a consequence, everyone ends up blaming lead quality without finding a real solution.
The shift: obsess over your own database
With that reality on the table, they came to us — and from there we decided to radically transform where the effort was going. The solution we offered as an agency was not to focus exclusively on getting more new leads or making them cheaper, but on making the most of the databases they already had and becoming obsessed with continuing to build them, using very different mechanisms from the standard Meta lead form playbook.
Meta makes it easy to capture leads through forms — but there are far more interesting mechanisms once you integrate platforms like ManyChat. That is where a real value exchange becomes possible.
Value exchange: the new way to get data
The strategy focused on creating truly valuable content that, in exchange for the user's participation, delivered even more value back to them. Posts with clear calls to action like “comment INFO to receive more information”, combined with content produced by the actual professors and professionals behind each program, produced a radically different proposition. This strategy dramatically reduced costs compared to the traditional way of acquiring leads.
Today, you should no longer be capturing leads through the traditional form-only bet. The real strategy is to generate a value exchange. People will not hand over their data unless we create content and systems that give them something genuinely useful in return.
In other words: data is not free.
Content marketing that converts at every stage
From there, the strategy is complemented by content marketing systems that support conversion by delivering value at every stage of the user's journey.
When we talk about delivering value, we mean creating content that people actually want to consume. If we are offering a program on animal health, we should be sending tutorials on how to care for and maintain a dog's coat. If we are offering programs related to hair care, we should share content on new formulations, industry trends and updates — including how artificial intelligence is transforming that industry.
The idea is to maintain a permanent, free stream of updates that complements the programs on offer and keeps people engaged. On top of that, we add e-books and other assets valuable enough to make the value exchange happen.
That takes care of the lead acquisition stage. When it comes to communicating with that lead afterwards, platforms like ManyChat allow us to run content marketing strategies that deliver value from the very first moment a person interacts with the institution.
The outcome: lower cost, higher conversion, long-term relationships
Thanks to this mechanism, acquisition costs have dropped dramatically and conversion rates have increased significantly. Interest and relationship are sustained not only with the new database but also with the existing one, which significantly reduces sales costs and gives rise to a completely different digital marketing model.
For me, this is a new way of understanding — and doing — evolved digital marketing.