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Episode 12

Integrated Digital Marketing Strategies

About This Episode

February 28, 2024

Learn how to mix different advertising channels with paid programmatic advertising to create effective integrated marketing campaigns.

Pragya Sharoff | Head of Business, Publicis

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

Traditional advertising campaigns typically require a lot of planning and upfront investment before results are even realized. But with programmatic advertising now you can analyze data about user activity and engagement almost instantly. And campaigns can be optimized in real time, which can help you reach a campaign goal faster and more efficiently.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:23)

But then you think about the social landscape, research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points. So that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really it’s what’s going to set you apart. You’re tuning in, you’re tuning in, you’re tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.

Sneha (00:00:46)

There’s so much happening in the digital marketing landscape right now. It is all about how organizations can leverage a combination of online channels and platforms to achieve their goals. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I’m your host Sneha Suhas. And with me, I have Pragya Sharoff, Head of Business at Publicis joining us for the last episode of season four of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. So thank you for tuning in. And I’m going to be asking her about the latest trends. And we’re going to get some actionable insights so you can stay ahead in this evolving digital landscape. So before I start off, I’m going to pass it to Pragya. Pragya, please tell us a little about your experience so far, and your professional background.

Pragya (00:01:32)

Hi, I’m Pragya. I’m a digital marketer. I’ve been in the industry for about 13 years-ish now. So really working on the agency side to client side to leading the team and in terms of strategy, paid social, paid media. And so I’ve covered paid social, which was my strongest asset as well as paid social, programmatic. I did a little bit of SEO, offline media print TV advertising as well. So really covering the whole digital resume to bring holistic strategies for clients. I’m really excited to be here and speak more about my experience in digital marketing trends in the industry and everything I’ve done so far.

Sneha (00:02:16)

That’s great. Great to have so much experience on the table Pragya. Thank you for joining us. So jumping into my first question, Can you discuss your experience with leveraging various digital channels, such as paid advertising, search engine optimization, social media and programmatic marketing within marketing campaigns?

Pragya (00:02:37)

Speaking about my experience, I did spend a few years and paid social I did a little bit of paid search and programmatic which led me to have a thorough understanding of the digital remedy to be able to create holistic and strategic solutions for my clients. So it’s important to understand the consumers’ mindset. So think of yourself as a consumer, it’s most likely that you’re spending a few hours on social media like scrolling through Instagram, or Tiktok, or Snapchat. And the same evening, you’re probably watching a Netflix or an Amazon Prime or Disney Plus show, which may lead you to eventually search for a product or search for information. So these are the different digital channels you’re consuming in one T which makes it even more important as advertisers to reach users across these different touchpoints in the short attention span era we are in right now. So cross-channel marketing broadly helps brands maintain a conversation with their customers as they move through these multiple marketing channels and ensure the messaging is more personalized, which really pushes the user to make an action, such as clicking through the website, you know, learning more about the product and eventually making a purchase. Cross-channel marketing allows brands to track customer touchpoints and marketing return of investment, and we can create more meaningful customer experiences. So in terms of you may ask like how do you create cross-channel marketing successfully what’s most important to be able to create successful cross-channel strategies? I would say to start off with it’s important to gather customer data. So really collecting and unifying, this data can help us understand where our customers are, and where they’re spending most time which can further help us segment customer data. Just create different buckets based on demographic, behaviour, interest life stage and eventually create a cross-channel content strategy, which is super important as social media for example is superficial and search is the opposite, which is more text-heavy and more compelling copy and the most important piece is setting up multi-touch attribution and marketing automation, which helps you understand the value of each channel that eventually lead to a purchase.

Sneha (00:05:11)

So how would you determine the optimal mix of digital channels for a given campaign considering factors like target audience budget, and of course campaign objectives?

Pragya (00:05:22)

So the first step to understanding the optimal mix of digital channels or the right digital channels is really understanding your target audience. So consider demographics, psychographics, online behaviour and preferences. So the first few questions I would ask is, What is the age or gender of my target audience? What online platforms are they most frequent in? So for example, if my target audience is CTOs, and I’m trying to sell a B2B product or a service, I’m trying to think of what channels would CTOs use the most or like business owners use the most, then it’s most likely LinkedIn. If I were to target teens or tweens, then I know that most likely to be more active on TikTok, gaming platforms. If I were to target moms, then I would try to leverage Pinterest based on where the most active on or like spending most time in, and then I would start thinking of their interests and hobbies.
So if I were to think of teens and tweens again, for example, so what are their other interests and hobbies? So I know, most teens or tweens are interested, in gaming or, you know, entertainment, music, so I would try to reach them across Spotify, I would think of gaming communities, gaming interest groups, so I can tighten up my targeting a bit more. And then I would think of what are the preferred communication channels. So social media, whether it’s email marketing, or whether it’s SMS, so you can really narrow down your target audience and their user behaviour. And once you have a clear understanding of your target audience, then you will try to choose platforms that align best with your audience’s preference. And the most important thing is also thinking of your budget. So you want to try to maximize your reaching potential on these platforms. So you would prioritize the platforms that are most important to you. And you would project your audiences across these different platforms to narrow out the maximum reach potential and audience penetration levels across the platform with your budget, and then allocate the right budget mix. And then your next step would be aligning your channel with your message and calls. So some channels may be more suitable for specific type of messages or campaign objectives. For example, if you want to showcase visual content, you would use YouTube or Instagram. If you want to drive immediate conversion approaches, you would use SEM, for example. And if you wanted to establish thought leadership, you would use content marketing. So it is important for you to analyze all these different pieces to put together that perfect digital strategy.

Sneha (00:08:24)

Yeah, that’s great. And can you share a specific instance where you effectively utilized paid advertising in conjunction with programmatic to maximize campaign results?

Pragya (00:08:36)

Okay, so with the digital marketing industry constantly evolving programmatic advertising, and display campaigns have become essential tools for businesses to reach their target audiences effectively. So I would say now programmatic advertising really makes up almost about 70% of digital media spend to help make overall advertising campaigns successful.
That’s because programmatic advertising offers several benefits to advertisers, including precise targeting, real-time optimization, cost efficiency and large-scale breach. One of the biggest benefits is real-time optimization. So traditional advertising campaigns typically require a lot of planning and upfront investment before results are realized. With programmatic advertising, however, data about user activity and engagement can be analyzed instantly and campaigns can be optimized accordingly. And with this real-time optimizations, advertisers are able to modify their campaigns on the go, alter their bid strategy targeting and add creativity as needed to help your campaign work harder and make your overall strategy successful. It also enhances efficiency of your budgets. You can quickly identify underperforming ad placements and adjust your bids or targeting to avoid wasting money on ineffective placements which have resulted in a higher return of investment. And then the next piece is cost efficiency. Programmatic advertising allows advertisers to pinpoint your target audience more effectively, which can result in higher engagement rates and more efficient use of your advertising budgets. The next thing is in improved campaign performance. So a programmatic allows for better targeting as we know according to consumer behaviour and profile, which eventually leads to higher performance and your budgets being utilized better. It allows for better ad relevance as you can use your data to tailor ad content and messaging for specific audiences. I would say programmatic advertising also gives you better return of investment as it allows for more transparent reporting and helps you improve your campaign performance. It has provided you with real-time insights, enabling you to tailor your strategies accordingly, and you have more control over your ad spend, you’re able to optimize your campaigns better, you have greater control on where your ads are displayed. And this transparency helps prevent ad fraud and ensure that marketers are only paying for roll ad impressions that are displayed to roll users and you’re avoiding fraud or bot traffic completely.

Sneha (00:11:29)

Okay, awesome. And what role does social media play in your digital marketing strategy? And how do you ensure consistent branding and messaging across different social platforms?

Pragya (00:11:40)

So the first step is developing a consistent brand voice across social media channels is to identify your target audience. So once you define your targeting, you’re able to gather information like your demographic, interest, behaviour, etc, which is crucial, so you can create content that resonates best with your intended audience. And it’s important to note that your target audience may differ from platform to platform. So ensure you’re creating tailored messages crafted to each audience you’re able to show to each platform’s needs. And it’s important to adapt your creative across the different platforms because, for example, on TikTok content is more short quiz very bite-sized video content, you know, nine by six teams that people consume quickly versus a LinkedIn ad which tends to be more text in nature, more thought leadership, or even if you look at your Pinterest, which is, again, more visually appealing more images versus video. So it’s important to adapt to these different nuances, the different sizes across the platform, the different placements. On Instagram as well you have your stories ads, which is very similar to TikTok in feed content. And you have your in-feed ads, which is a little different, which is more your one-by-one sizes, they appear differently than your discovery for you content. You have reels which can be longer in format, and right now drive the algorithm. So it’s important to segment these different placements and create tailored content for the different platforms and different placements. So you’re really catching user attention and all the different places they’re spending their time in. The next piece is really analyzing the social media platforms, like I said, which is like ensuring you’re identifying unique characteristics. And by doing that, you’ll be able to analyze metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates, follower demographics, and visual help to give you insights into where your target audience is more active on and how you can tailor your brand voice accordingly. So I would say to keep your consistent brand voice ensure you’re using consistent language and tone. Even though your content itself may be different and your concepts may be different, but ensure your tone is the same across all your channels. So users are able to make a connection to your brand when they’re consuming content across different channels. It helps your audience also engage with your brand in a more direct and personal manner. Ensure you are responding to comments promptly and authentically. And actively responding to user-generated content to create a stronger relationship with your audience. Your audience is now very different compared to what it used to be before so users are more creative and create their content for your brand. So it’s important you’re responding to this content, you’re actively engaging and utilizing this content for your brand, and show you’re maintaining brand personality. So brand personality is basically a set of attributes that define your brand’s character and set it apart from others. It’s essential to uphold this personality and social media, due to the increasing importance of social media and brand identity. So your tone of content should match your personality as it’s the first interaction with potential customers. So it’s important to maintain consistency in the use of you, more emoticons, any other stylistic elements that define your brand, and use language that aligns with this, but, you know, personality that has foster brand identity and maintain that emotional connection with your target audience. The next thing is really nurturing your audience, engaging your audience and in a timely manner. And then adapting to platform-specific nuances and algorithms.

Sneha (00:16:00)

And I’m going to jump right into my next question about the rise of programmatic. So with the rise of programmatic, how do you approach audience targeting and segmentation to deliver personalized experiences to consumers?

Pragya (00:16:15)

So one of the standout advantages of programmatic is, of course, its capability for precision targeting and personalization. So once you gather data-driven insights, you’re able to dissect your audience into granular segments based on their demographic interests, browsing history, and more, and once you segment, it helps enable you to create highly tailored and relevant ad content that resonates with specific groups of users. So it allows for dynamic ad content that can change based on factors like your location, device, recent interactions with the brand. For example, if you recently browsed a particular product on an e-commerce site, but didn’t make a purchase, programmatic advertising can deliver personalized ads, showcasing the exact product enticing you to return and complete the purchase. I’ll also give you an example like Starbucks utilized programmatic advertising to drive foot traffic to its local stores. So they employ geo-targeting to reach users in proximity to Starbucks locations. So additionally, they incorporated time-of-day targeting to promote different menu items during specific hours, this helped generate a surge in store visits and sales. It help them effectively use programmatic to engage with nearby customers and drive them to the local stores.

Sneha (00:17:40)

Awesome. And how do you measure success? And the return on investment of your digital marketing efforts across various channels? And what would you say are some of the key performance indicators? And how do you prioritize them?

Pragya (00:17:55)

So creating a measurement strategy is key to ensure you’re evaluating the outcome of your campaign successfully. So in order to do that, it’s important to identify where in the funnel does your campaign objective fit? So starting with the campaign funnels role is split into three major stages. Starting with awareness, which is for a new launch, new product, or just increasing awareness of your product or brand, you’re educating users about benefits of your product, to ensure your brand is top of mind to drive that consideration before they make a purchase. So that’s your first stage. In this stage, I would look at metrics such as audience penetration, which is like what percentage of audiences are you reaching. Or within the whole audience, remet available? What is your percentage reach? What is your penetration? How many impressions are you serving at what costs and these would be important metrics at this stage. And then moving into consideration, I would look at clicks. So how many people are clicking into your ad or clicking to your website to learn more about the product, I would look at video views. Video completion rates are how many users are really watching your ad to completion engaging with your ad interacting with your ad, which shows us that they are watching your ads and they’re interested in your brand or service. And then I will come to conversion phase, which is where we’re looking at how many people finally made that purchase, how many people added to cart, dropped off, and what your conversion rate looks like what your bounce rate looks like. So all these different metrics in combination would help give you a better idea of where users are in the purchase journey and what eventually drove them to that final purchase. So when we talk about cross-channel strategy, it’s also important apart from your individual platform metrics, to be able to develop that multi-touch attribution model, which helps give you insight into which channel is contributing towards the success of your purchase. So, for example, a user may see an ad on social media and then eventually search for your product. And then while watching a show on connected TV, eventually click on it and make a purchase. So it’s important to ensure you are giving credit to all these channels in the purchase journey that led to a purchase because it wasn’t just the last click, it was that first ad on social media as well. So it’s important to develop a model that helps identify the different channels and how much they’re contributing towards that final purchase.

Sneha (00:20:57)

Alright, Pragya, thank you so much for joining us. Whatever you’ve shared with us has been really insightful, very valuable for anyone listening to this. And I also had a lot to learn today. So thank you so much for joining us. And you, to the one who’s listening to this. Thank you once again, for staying tuned. And also, being a listener of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. This is the final episode of season four. And we hope to see you soon. If you want to reach out to us, you can email us at academy@stackadapt.com. That’s academy@stackadapt.com. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. We’ll see you soon.

Episode Outro (00:22:15)

Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there’s three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAdapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

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