IRCE: The Killer Strategies You Need For Digital Ad Buying

At this year’s IRCE, Wpromote Founder & CEO Michael Mothner joined Klipsch Web & E-Commerce Manager Dave Gans to deliver a presentation about the future of digital marketing. Klipsch is a valued partner of Wpromote, and we work with them to craft the strategies that will push Klipsch to dominate their industry. Combining our companies’ expertise, Mothner and Gans spoke about the five most important strategies marketers and advertisers need to use when completing their digital ad buys.

Do Not Silo Your Approach

Many advertisers fall into the trap of siloing their agency partners and teams, thinking that if they hire the best person or company for each digital channel, their overall results will be the best they can possibly be. However, the truth is that each person or company will be optimizing only for their own individual channel, subsequently missing the overall strategy or big picture.

Siloiing your approach will lead to underperformance of each channel.

It’s important not to treat all channels the same, and this is especially true of creative. Imagery and even messaging should leverage the unique aspects and audiences of each platform to their utmost. Messaging should be consistent, but not identical, and aware of the channel on which it’s being used.

Budget should be spent according to company goals to achieve the best possible output. Set KPIs at the start of every campaign that align with what your company wants to achieve, and measure success by which goals were achieved and which still need work.

Takeaway: If you silo your marketing campaigns, the results will not tell the full story. Integration is key!

Think Full Funnel

Advertisers and marketers should be selecting their KPIs based on their place in the funnel:

• Top/Awareness: clicks, impressions, engagements, and some transactions
• Middle/Consideration: clicks, more transactions, and email signups
• Bottom/Conversions: transactions and revenue

Guide customers through the funnel to increase profits and customer lifetime value

Utilize ad sequencing to create a new customer acquisition path through the funnel. This requires knowing the difference between awareness and conversion campaigns: awareness campaigns will bring customers into the funnel, and conversion campaigns will convince them to buy. Awareness should lead into conversion in your ad sequencing.

Wpromote’s Three Bucket Strategy should be the primary driver for your spending when it comes to the full funnel:

• ROI: Proven campaigns that produce ideal return
• Brand: Awareness and top-funnel initiatives that help long term
• Testing: Experimental campaigns, new betas, and expansion opportunities

Takeaway: Invest in all areas of the funnel. If you don’t run awareness campaigns now, you will hinder future growth and success.

Find The Right Attribution Model

Attribution is complex. There is no one “cookie cutter” approach for advertisers to take, because every company – and every customer – is different. Some models to consider include:

• Last Click
• Position-Based
• First Click
• Time Decay
• Linear

Attribution modeling can even vary based on individual campaign. For a simple example: a lead gen campaign may require first click modeling, but a conversion campaign could be better suited by using last click modeling.

All have merits based on your needs, so experiment with your attribution modeling and avoid reliance on just first click or last click.

Takeaway: Attribution needs to be driven by smart data, and the primary focus should be on finding the right attribution model for your business.

Know Where To Invest

• Newer Brands: focus more budget on prospecting tools, such as social media and paid search advertising; a new brand’s messaging should focus on introducing the brand and story to target audiences

• Established Brands: spend budget on a healthy mix of full-funnel investments; focus slightly more budget on conversions, loyalty programs for last customers, and middle- and top-funnel strategies

• Large Retail Brands: focus on simply making lower-funnel buying process as friction-free as possible, including “free returns in store” and “reserve online to pick up in store”

Takeaway: Make sure you invest in the full funnel as best suits the needs of your particular business.

Implement These Winning Strategies

There are fundamental, winning strategies that all marketers should be using to ensure their business will succeed:

• Shoppable Ad Units: Are a great way to drive traffic to specific product pages and conversions on both desktop and mobile.
• Leverage Paid Media To Capture Emails: Leverage paid search and social ads to capture email addresses for future retargeting and lookalike email campaigns.
• Optimize To CLV & Profits: Reward past customers through loyalty programs to increase CLV and dramatically improve overall profits.
• Smart Retargeting & Display: Our methods of retargeting and display must change with the digital landscape, using tactics like dynamic retargeting, dynamic social, and YouTube remarketing
• Don’t Skip The Foundation: Key foundational items should not be overlooked. For example, make sure you include sitelinks, mobile design, and repeated testing.
• Consistent Brand Voice: Your brand should be consistent on all channels and stay in line with the image you want to portray to your audiences.
• Dynamic Localized Messaging: 75% of US smartphone users are more likely to take an action after seeing a location-specific message.
• Find New Customers In Your Existing: You can find your next 100 customers within your existing database by leveraging 1st party matching, custom audiences, programmatic, and lookalike campaigns.

Takeaway: Marketing is shifting to position the customer as the channel. Start adjusting your campaigns to focus on customer centricity to get the best results!

If your business is ready to adopt these killer ad strategies, then contact Wpromote today!