Digital advertising technology, coupled with content marketing concepts, is opening up huge opportunities for more intelligent marketing. It is growing faster than most people can keep up. The new technologies such as personal interactive media and the use of facial-recognition, are causing a shift from basic advertising to more intelligent integrated marketing.
Managing all the components involved in modern marketing involves working with a different application, or tool not normally found in most businesses. Marketers are now looking more closely at the results of their campaigns so as to optimise their marketing budgets. The days of ‘one size fits all’ in marketing no longer apply. More businesses are using smart metrics to measure the impact of their ads and overall marketing effort.
When you revisit your website and social media ask the question, “how many people visited our sites in the last month without taking the next action step”. Intelligent marketing might be as simple as taking the information and knowledge you already have in your business and repurposing it in a more intelligent way.
Most businesses are under pressure that impacts their marketing budget, resulting in the need to squeeze every benefit out of their advertising budget. It is your job to provide them with an incentive to spend those dollars with you. For this simple strategy to be successful you need to ensure your costs are low and they get ‘more bang for their buck’.
Digital marketing and advertising is fast paced and not for the faint hearted
Even though new marketing technologies, such as marketing automation are being adopted slowly, digital marketing concepts are spreading like wildfire. Over the coming months Front Row Media will showcase some great advertising, so dare to be different when promoting your product or service. Clever advertising by KitKat, will help you think outside the square. The use of digital cameras within forms of advertising to overlay products as well as of real images, is taking hold.
How to make your advertising work smarter
Intelligent advertising starts with a clear picture of who you are trying to reach and what you want them to do next. Before you spend another dollar, write down the single action you want from each campaign, whether that is a phone call, an enquiry form or a purchase. If you cannot name the action, the campaign is not ready to run.
Next, look at the data you already collect. Your website analytics, email platform and social media accounts all show which messages people respond to and which ones they ignore. Patterns in this data tell you where your audience spends time, what time of day they engage and which offers move them to act.
A few practical steps help most businesses get more from the same budget:
- Set up conversion tracking so every enquiry or sale can be traced back to the ad that produced it.
- Run two versions of an ad side by side and keep the one that performs better.
- Use retargeting to reach people who visited your site but left without taking the next step.
- Send each ad to a landing page that matches its message, rather than to your home page.
- Review results every month and move money away from channels that are not delivering.
Turning insights into better campaigns
The real value of smart metrics is what you do with them. Numbers on a report do not improve anything until someone changes the creative, the targeting or the offer in response. Make it a habit to hold a short review after each campaign and agree on one or two changes for the next round.
It also pays to connect your advertising with the rest of your marketing. An ad that sparks interest should lead to helpful content, a clear offer and a quick follow-up. When your advertising, website and social media tell the same story, each part supports the others and your budget stretches further.
Finally, keep testing new ideas on a small scale. Interactive formats, video and personalised messages can deliver strong results, but the only way to know what suits your audience is to try them with a modest spend, measure the outcome and then scale what works. Small, steady improvements add up to advertising that is far more intelligent than a once a year campaign.