Co-Founder & President at BFO (Be Found Online), a full-service digital marketing firm, 6-time Inc. 5,000 and AdAge #1 Best Place to Work.
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The pandemic has impacted businesses and entire industries in countless ways. It has changed the way our workplaces look, how we gather, where we shop, how we interact with others and more. And the shifts will no doubt continue into 2022 and beyond, creating an even bigger need for exceptional business planning and agility.
As leaders pivot and perhaps even revisit their 2022 business plan due to the newest Covid-19 variant, ever-changing restrictions, supply chain issues — you name it — I’m urging leaders to also reassess their digital marketing approach. When was the last time the team reviewed your media mix? Do current investments match today’s reality?
The digital media buying and planning landscape has changed more in the last year than in the last decade. And as many businesses seek to tighten budgets in anticipation of the unexpected, maximizing ROI is a must.
A strong marketing plan is varied, utilizing multiple channels, while also remaining hyper-targeted. However, determining what initiatives to throw money behind — and how much — can be confusing or overwhelming. While plenty of marketing dollars go toward campaigns themselves, it’s equally (if not more) important to direct money toward preparing for campaigns and supporting overall brand strategy.
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Below are several steps that can help your team make sure your 2022 marketing plan is hitting the right customers on the right platforms.
Identify (or revisit) your ideal customer.
Pinpointing your ideal audience is critical to the success of any marketing strategy. This will help you determine what platforms to market on, what messaging to use, what media types to leverage (video vs. static, etc.), a strong call to action and more. Consumer needs are changing more quickly than ever it seems, and your marketing plan likely needs to shift to accommodate.
Personify your ideal customer, narrowing them down to traits, potential hobbies, age, income range and purchasing habits. Sift through your list of current and repeat customers to find common themes. For instance, while a fitness brand may have targeted stay-at-home moms pre-pandemic, their core audience likely broadened given the increased amount of time people are spending at home due to remote work.
I encourage businesses to assess their core customer persona — and their habits — regularly to detect any shifts, or else they risk wasting precious ad dollars. Your Google Analytics account likely has a lot of this information already.
Determine platforms before developing campaigns.
Don’t fall into the trap of developing a campaign without a specific platform in mind — the two are very much dependent on one another. It’s important to choose where you’ll intersect your core customer base (utilizing the persona we identified earlier) and then build out a marketing campaign that’s well suited for the platform.
For example, a graphic ad banner that’s featured on the Wall Street Journal’s Lifestyle page will look very different from the graphic you choose to push out via sponsored posts on Facebook. Perhaps your audience has shifted to an entirely new social platform or e-commerce site, as many brands are pivoting from Instagram to TikTok, or from Amazon to Walmart. It’s key to stay up to speed on new platforms that are gaining traction.
Taking a look at your website analytics will also provide plenty of information on how customers and visitors are finding your site and what platforms are pulling in the most leads.
Optimize your entire conversion funnel.
Now that you have a targeted campaign in place for a specific platform, it’s time to close the loop to ensure these leads convert. Even with an increase in media consumption during the pandemic, media costs continue to increase.
Many teams make the mistake of spending a lot of time and resources on campaigns but then neglect to reevaluate where they’re sending those leads to. Does your website load fast enough? Is the content on your site fulfilling your customers’ needs? Are you still relying on the same e-book downloads that worked back in 2017? By using website analytics to see how customers are interacting with your site, your team can then enhance your site based on heavily trafficked pages, preferred content or popular features. Beyond web analytics, now would be a great time to look deep into your CRM to determine which channels are truly driving revenue.
Use the 90/10 spending rule.
While the bulk of your budget should be spent on proven strategies for regular, short-term lead generation, I recommend leaders set aside a portion of their budget to be spent on testing out new strategies or technologies. Perhaps your business has found that paid search has driven the most ROI, but your website analytics show customers spending a significant amount of time on your blog. In this case, I’d suggest putting some resources (10%) behind building out a content marketing strategy while also executing your tried-and-true methods (90%).
Deploying a successful digital marketing strategy is all about spending money wisely. This means dedicating a significant amount of resources toward regularly evaluating the ideal customer, tracking web traffic and enhancing your site to boost conversion rates. The digital media landscape has undergone a decade of change in a matter of years. With the changes to ad targeting, the impacts of iOS14 and the not-too-distant future without cookies, it’s critical for brands to be rethinking where they spend their dollars in 2022.
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Author: Dan Golden, Forbes Councils Member
