3 Strategic Principles to Revamp Your Digital Media in 2019

By now most marketers have put in place a few moderately effective always-on digital media campaigns. But more often than not, despite achieving some success, most haven’t significantly evolved their digital strategy and aren’t sure how to level-up their paid media.

While at Mediavision2020 we believe that leveraging new, targeted technologies and platforms for reaching consumers is the core of where media is going, it’s also critical you start with a strategic approach to developing your media plan. So let’s look at three keys to success for your 2019 digital media plan.

Customer-centric Media Plan

 1. Give to Get Using a Customer Experience Approach

Focus on solving salient customer needs, not just meeting business objectives. If you can’t shake yourself out of “what’s in it for me” thinking, you won’t get much out of your media. While you certainly need to consider the transactional goals you have for marketing, you can’t reduce every campaign to a transactional goal – not if you want to actually help people with their non-transactional goals along the path to purchase.

For example, here are a few need states your media could target that don’t necessarily immediately result in a sale or sales-ready lead, but nevertheless drive preference for your brand:

  • seeking inspiring ideas
  • need help comparing items
  • asking basic questions about how to get the most out of the product
  • affordability and financing
  • exploring customer ratings and reviews for validation of brand claims

If you can show up at the right time and place, addressing questions like this, you will drastically increase the overall reach and relevance of your media. This is the basis of a full-funnel digital media strategy.

Test and Learn Media

2. Stop Hanging on What’s Worked, But Build On It

Too many marketers get fixated on tried and true advertising tactics, but this eventually results in plateaued or decreased performance. While the temptation is understandable enough, it’s rooted in an aversion to taking risks.

Obviously you can’t simply shift all of your funds to new tactics, so where do you start? As a generic starting point, consider starting with 70% of your budget towards mature and proven tactics that have a predictable cost and return.

Dedicate the other 30% towards new, experimental tactics. For these new tactics, you’ll need a formal test & learn methodology outlined. You can’t kill a new tactic if it doesn’t meet expectations after just a few weeks, and you certainly can evaluate it if you don’t have a controlled method in place for measurement.

Media Measurement

3. Rethink Media Measurement

Base your measurements on what business outcome and customer action defines the KPI for the campaign, not on a one size fits all measurement approach. 

More often than not, marketers develop “bottom-of-the-funnel tunnel vision” and view their customers and campaigns in a rigid, simplistic light that prevents insight and growth.

For new campaign tactics you’re testing, focus on CTR and landing page optimization as the KPI. Before you can generate revenue, you have to connect the targeting and engagement elements. So don’t kill new tactics before they have a chance to take off.

Returning to the first point – you need to focus measurement on how effectively you helped your prospective customers. For example, consider whether shoppers used a website utility to completion, how many people shared or commented on content shared or maybe you need to look at customer feedback surveys.

So to recap, it’s really that simple: help your customers, test new tactics and measure what matters. Begin to incorporate digital media into your overall business strategy and marketing and you will see profound improvement.

At Mediavision2020 we apply these three principles to all of our client’s campaigns and would love to help you take the next step. Get in touch