Buying media like a commodity is costing you money.
The data generated from digital research, websites, SEO and content advertising provides a continuous, complex loop of real-time feedback, adjustment and optimization — across all screens — to drive persistently lower costs per action. It’s no longer enough to take this data at face value and iterate against it. Topline statistics such as click-thru rates are just empty calories. It’s time to join innovative tech with creative muscle to usher in a new era of paid media.
There must be a hunger for progress — it’s not enough to set and forget the buy and hope for the best. It is essential to approach media buying with a strategic focus on audiences, continual optimization and real-time management of the buy, with a client-facing dashboard at the core. The best firms assume responsibility for the results they generate for clients — beyond traditional reporting and metrics, which are often siloed — to deliver meaningful, action-oriented ROI.
Paid media strategy in a vacuum is less effective, which wastes resources.
Put the audience first
With technology accelerating, it is within our grasp to put the user at the center of everything. With tools such as a customer data platform, which uses machine learning to create a persistent, unified customer database, teams can make fully informed decisions about how to reach, treat and convert target audiences.
Ultimately, all this work is in service of creating personalization, which results in steady improvement and more efficient progress. Faster feedback means faster iteration. And faster iteration means faster progress to growth. This level of customization drives efficiency — not just at the top and bottom of the traditional funnel — and allows a better experience for those audiences. Win-win.
Consider the big picture
Audiences do not experience brands in silos, and they do not experience campaigns. Experts say that people experience roughly 5,000 ads per day. Go ahead and layer on the number of emails received, the organic social feed you scroll through at lunch, the news that’s playing in the background while you get ready in the morning. And while many firms focus on just one piece of this complex puzzle, they are missing the biggest piece — every brand touch point leaves an impression.
Gone are the days when media buying firms could own the paid media slice of the buy and not worry about the rest. It’s interrelated and integrated, and the greatest work comes from connecting the dots between channels and teams that are working together. After all, you wouldn’t have your family dinner prepared by three different cooks in three different kitchens.
Siloing or breaking a part of one of the channels that delivers brand experiences means an inferior experience for the audience and a resulting lack of transparency, optimization and efficiency for the brand. Paid media strategy in a vacuum is less effective, which wastes resources.
Unparalleled Flexibility
By unifying not only your data but also your resources, you can control messaging without time lost to cross-channel communication. SEO, paid search, paid social and organic social should no longer operate on parallel tracks. They should work together to offer standardized communication that can be adjusted on the fly.
Optimization means flexibility, and flexibility affords you greater control over your messaging. None of that is possible, though, without the continuous loop of real-time feedback, a tight connection between motivated teams and the ability to adjust your content and creative.
You’re either real time or late
It’s a common refrain in marketing and communications circles — how quickly things change. Well, now you should know that, up to the minute. It’s not just possible, it’s essential to review progress daily to reach client goals effectively and efficiently.
Most critical, it is incumbent on firms to surface results — the good, the bad and the ugly — in a dynamic, cloud-based dashboard accessible to the client and client teams anywhere, anytime. By organizing around unfiltered, unified data, teams can start smart and continue to iterate, which provides an edge and unparalleled speed for everyone to execute against.
For those firms producing reports weekly, biweekly, monthly — what are you afraid of? Quit hiding and adopt a mantra of radical transparency. This work must be done daily, by scrappy teams, working together and hungry to make progress for their clients and the audiences they serve.
