But success looks different for each of my girls. If my 7-year-old, the oldest, asks for seconds, then I know we have a winner. If the floor around my 3-year-old is not littered with shrapnel from food grenades, it is also a cause for celebration. Success in marketing is much the same, just less messy…sometimes.
Know your Audience
One of the most basic rules of marketing is knowing to whom you are selling. A popular process these days is developing a “buyer persona.” A buyer persona is a modeled representation of real buyers who influence or make decisions about the products, services or solutions you market. This model helps marketers understand not only what buyers are trying to accomplish, but also what goals drive their behavior, how do they think and buy, and why they are making buying decisions? It’s not a new concept by any means, but it’s arguably more important in today’s culture than ever before in the history of marketing.
Thanks to digital marketing and the ability to customize messages to buyers, it’s more common today to have many buyer personas as your targets as opposed to trying to hit everyone with one big media buy. A single campaign may include a combination of PPC ads, video ads, retargeting, social media engagement and promotions along with strategic print and visual placements. In reality, this campaign combo pack may be more cost effective than a traditional budget busting large print or TV media buy. With the flexibility and customization of digital advertising, we can effectively market to multiple buyer personas without watering down the messaging.
Measure Everything
In today’s world of “big data”, there’s no excuse for not measuring and optimizing your campaigns to deliver optimal ROI. Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and just about every other online forum offers analytics these days–most of it free. The “problem” (if you want to call it that) is knowing what’s relevant and indicative of success. The days of marketers selling on just impressions or reach is over. Even traditional print pieces like direct mail or billboards can be tracked through the strategic use of landing pages or hashtags. The ability to illustrate and track each step of a buyer’s path from prospect to customer is not only possible but expected.
Be Reactive
In the past, there was “set it and forget it” approach to marketing campaigns. We would develop the materials, purchase the placement and then wait. Days, weeks, sometimes months would go by and then the results would come back. The number of units sold or appointments booked were determining factors in the campaign’s overall success with allowances made for anomalies that could skew positive or negative results.
In today’s culture, we measure reaction in minutes and hours as opposed to weeks and days. Changing a campaign even after its launched is possible. Why? We now have access to nearly real-time metrics that allow us to customize digital marketing based on initial feedback.
For example, did you know that you can set up an email campaign with two separate titles? Title A, might be “How to Take a Picture of a Cat.” And Title B might be “Is Your Cat Photogenic?” The question is which of these titles encourages more engagement. Using a mail service like MailChimp, you can easily test the two titles before sending off your entire campaign. It works like this: The mail service will send a test batch of emails using both titles to a small percentage of your entire mailing list. Depending on which title garners the most clicks or opens, that title is then sent to the remaining contacts on your list, thus increasing your chance for engagement and boosting your ultimate ROI.
This process is known as A/B testing. And within digital marketing, it is both cost effective and strategically necessary. I believe this should be put into play with everything from landing pages to Pay Per Click or PPC ads to YouTube video ads. Savvy marketers should be consistently analyzing and reporting campaign metrics in order to optimize efficiency and success.
It’s All in the Recipe
This contemporary approach to marketing begins in the early concepting phase. Ensuring that every part of your campaign is measurable and that little is left to assumption does require a change in mindset…and a certain skill set to be sure. Combing through all of the metrics provided by various platforms can be both tedious and confusing. You’ll need to determine which metrics paint a picture of success and which ones are just nice numbers that pad egos.
Contrast Creative is adept at helping our clients understand their audience, identify key metrics and respond swiftly to customer feedback. Understanding analytics will boost your ROI. Remember: you have all of the ingredients for success. The secret is in the recipe.
Contact Contrast Creative for a free marketing consultation. Start gaining measurable results today.