S3
Episode 8
How to Add Programmatic to Your Marketing Mix
About This Episode
Learn how to add programmatic to your marketing mix, how to scale with programmatic, and best practices for programmatic ads.
Helene Parker | Founder and Chief Programmatic Coach, Helene Parker Consulting LLC
Transcript
Episode Introduction (00:00:00)
The number one question when it comes to the platform is how many DSPs should I use? You can start a campaign the same way, which is entering your advertising campaign budget flight, and then your tactics in all DSPs no matter what, and what exactly is non-negotiable for your team inventory. Measurement transparency, tracking, targeting capabilities, creative upload I think it’s one of them that you should consider user interface friendliness, resources from the DSP. If it’s hard to get in touch with your DSP support team, I think that’s something that should help you make a decision.
How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:29)
But then you think about the social landscape, the research data is hugely significant when we combine all these different touchpoints 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 is what’s going to set you apart. You’re tuning in, you’re tuning in, you’re tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.
Matt (00:00:58)
Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt, and I’m on the Education Development Team at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special guest and a very special episode centered around building the next-gen Media Team. Now typically, we showcase agencies that work with StackAdapt, or partners that we have. But in this episode, I’m really excited to welcome in Helene Parker, who is an independent consultant, an industry vet, and most importantly, a programmatic guru. As always, we’re going to have our guests introduce themselves. So Helene, please tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience and some of your areas of expertise.
Helene (00:01:31)
Oh, my gosh, well, Matt, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. This is exciting. I’m a big fan of StackAdapt content in general. So for those who don’t know me yet, thank you for having me. Thank you for spending some time with us. I’m Helene Parker, and I’ve been working in the programmatic advertising industry for about close to 10 years. I started way back when as a trader, and my expertise is definitely trading media buying activation, building up a department from scratch. And then of course, over the years, when you work with fantastic agencies, you get to wear multiple hats, and some of the hats I’ve worn have been adding up, saying search paid social, you name it. So they’re different skill set that you get to acquire along the way that is a benefit right on a resume. But my expertise is definitely programmatic media trading and buying. So in the last three years and a half, I went ahead and started my consulting business where we offer training and workshops. So what I mean by that is that you’re probably listening to this, you might be an agency, you fit into two categories, you either have a handful of traders that are coming up to speed, different level, and you really want to be efficient. Then you hire somebody like me, we spend a day together like boot camp style. And then we assess different topics like optimization, or how to upsell how to create a media plan efficiently, things like that, just to plug in on the efficiency for you and your client that you’re servicing. And the second category is like, I just hired this employee from scratch, I really just don’t have the time to bring him up to speed, you hire me. And then I bring them up to speed on your behalf. Again, one day, a couple of workshops, type of style. And then we go through things like the fundamentals to how to meet what our media placement, what’s the difference between guaranteed versus non-guaranteed. And so that’s where my heart is now, you know.
Matt (00:03:27)
Fantastic. Well, you know, what, when I think of passion in the programmatic space, it’s Shiv. For me, you have digital, and you and so it’s awesome that you know, in our bonus episode, we had Shiv and Shiv’s been working with StackAdapt quite a bit this year. So it’s awesome to have you on the episode and pick your brain a little bit about you know how agencies can move into that next-gen move into that next year and really succeed. So what we’ll do for the episode, we’ve got four main questions, I’m sure we’ll have a few other questions that are offshoots of this. But to start out what I’d like to know from you is the role of the agency, you know, how is this changing? And what should an industry vet or even a beginner in their career, know about what the agency looks like today compared to what it was even five years ago?
Helene (00:04:23)
Well, like five years ago, an agency was a one-stop shop, right? Like agencies offered full services, programmatic search, creative, PR, you name it. I think in the last couple years, we’ve seen more agencies really niche down onto you know, one or two services and then partner. So if you had to ask me where the agency world is going, I would say just that. I think it’s important for us as clients or as partners of agencies or agencies partners ourselves, to understand that this market is shifting dangerously, and we need to be adaptable. And what I mean by that is that agency needs to understand that partnering outside of that agency is really important for their own success. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re like, what is she talking about? I’m full-service agencies, that simply means that there’s going to be a point where you’re going to blow up in business, right? I’m gonna throw this in the university, you claim it by now say amen, or whatever you want to say. But let’s say, you have business development, a big project that came in and now you need staff, normal agency will go out and hire right away. The reality is that we’re not missing of talent, we’re just not as strategic in hiring that talent. So if you’re in this position where you need to hire somebody, then this is the time to level up your partnership as an agency. So StackAdapt, for instance, partnership with StackAdapt, if you’re doing self-service, maybe you should add a you know, managed service to help you stay afloat with your team or consider staff augmentation, there are a lot of great staff augmentation agencies out there. So here are two things to remember, you have to be adaptable. And that all that means simply, you may have to step out and partner with another agency, or partner with something like a staff augmentation. And just so we’re clear, because I know we understand terms differently. Staff augmentation is basically an agency that allows you to tap into their strategists tap into their traders account management, to really help you bring an expert right away. And it’s short-term commitment, usually. And if it’s long-term commitment, then great, right? Great for that person, but it can help fill in the blanks faster and more efficiently. So it’s time to normalize this. It’s time to as an agency to normalize. I know we like to work to white labelling, but it’s time to normalize the transparency that we have this big business, we had to partner up with a digital X media A. We are rosy as SMB consulting, a, I don’t know of work reduce, you know, all of those are great options for staff augmentation. So I would say that’s where the agency world is now, normalizing and really reaching out to those external partners that are going to help us just look better in front of the agency, because now instead of turning things in two weeks, you can do it in five days or three days. And then also, you’re not overloading your core employees with additional tasks, because you know, they’re overworked, underappreciated. Now you get to really empower them to lead in a team and maybe get involved in that partnership, right? So that’s how you want to look at where the agency world is. I am all for partnership. I think partnership is like a hidden secret in our industry. That’s how we like it’s like a hidden success, right? So if you’re listening to this, and you’re trying to get into the industry, I would say definitely be aware of what’s happening in the agency world. But I will also say, you know, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid to take risks. Don’t be afraid to work for an agency. Working for an agency is a great way to acquire that skill set, that knowledge, they like this, right? Because you get to wear those multiple hats, you get to get your feet wet in different piles of water, puddles of water, I would say. So it’s a pretty, it’s definitely an exciting time for agencies. I will say this, and hopefully we won’t get any death threats from this. But if agencies are not flexible and adaptable from what I was referring to, I don’t think agency is going to be around for a very long time. So I think it’s a dangerous statement, but I’m gonna own it. Okay, because when I talked to Brent In-House, their biggest thing is that, you know, their agency is not transparent enough. You know, there’s a trust issue, there’s a dissent that, you know, it’s kind of shady in the back end. So, as an agency owner, as an agency team, you want to make sure that transparency and trust is there 1,000% That is making sure that you understand what’s missing, and fill in the blanks from what’s missing. And staff augmentation might be one, training might be one, increasing your partnership with StackAdapt, one of the DSP might be one. So that’s that’s what I would say.
Matt (00:09:34)
Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned those in-house teams. And we do have a question later on about that a little bit more. But for now, I want to dive a little bit deeper into more of what you do. And when we were talking in our kickoff call a week or so ago leading up to this episode. We talked about kind of that roadmap or framework that you provide that would help an agency achieve success. So I think it was the three P’s for an agency, and they’d love to hear a little bit more about that. And how you normally break that down when building out a successful team.
Helene (00:10:10)
Thank you for asking, yeah, I play on words, they’re the three P’s of programmatic, right? So, every clients that we work with, whether it’s an agency or a brand in-house, or a tech, I’ve had a handful of like SSPs adtech reach out to me, we teach a framework. So it’s a programmatic activation framework. And we focused on the three P’s, which is the platform, the process and the people. And so I’ll go on into each really quick and tell you what exactly we teach and why it’s important. The biggest thing about this workshop, for instance, is that the end of the workshop, the teams are much more efficient, they understand, One, how to handle the platform or how to maximize the DSP partnership. Two, they understand that they are lacking of automating like internal automation or internal workflow efficiency, that could be fixed with like a process that can you process like a media map or something. And then the people is like, literally, the most important because we keep the last, the best for the last. The people section is literally just on understanding like how do you first hire that perfect that programmatic ninja? How do you onboard them successfully? And how do you retain them? And so those three Ps are, you know, and they said, like a couple hours type of workshop. And we go over this framework with all of our clients, because we don’t only go over like fundamentals or optimization, best practices, those are definitely paths. But after going through that framework, or after going through that programmatic activation session, they’re able to really put everything they’ve been doing into like into perspective. So as painting the picture, as an owner of an agency, as a part of the department head, you’re really able to understand like, oh, well, I know that we have processes down. We have maybe people found like most of our traders stays for two or three years, which I don’t know any company, maybe that has that long of a trader. But now we have to focus on the first, which is platform. And where are we lacking? Again, there’s a lot of things you want to understand you want to maximize your platform. So you might be thinking right now saying, okay, three P’s. Pretty cool, whatever. I think I got it. But let me go through maybe a couple key points that Copan Seco takeaways with each of those three P’s for you. So let’s address the platform one, I think the biggest misunderstand, the biggest the number one question when it comes to the platform is how many DSPs should I use? I don’t know, if you get that, Matt, on your head or maybe not right? You can start a campaign the same way which is entering the advertiser campaign budget flight, and then your tactics in all DSPs no matter what. What I would say is that the biggest difference is what exactly is non-negotiable for your team? So for instance, if user interface friendliness is the most important for you, then definitely stack it up. Right? Definitely the Trade Desk? I don’t know. Definitely, I don’t know basis, right? If creative upload is one of the many things you need to have in bulk, then maybe you might want to consider other DSPs, right that I mentioned. Because the other DSPs take a while like maybe a DV 360. If you want to consider omni-channel reporting, and you’re already running, SA 360, then definitely DV 360. So look at the three or five things are non-negotiable, inventory, transparency, and measurement and reporting. Okay? Because transparency is non-negotiable. If a vendor is not able to give you what you need, you should run, don’t work with them. I don’t care. So what I say inventory, measurement, transparency, tracking, targeting capabilities. Creative upload is I think it’s one of them that you should consider because it can take a lot of time and can lead to a lot of human error, UI friendliness. And then I’ll end with resources from the DSP. If you’re, if it’s hard to get a touch with your DSP support team, I think that’s something that should help you make a decision. Because Matt and his team at StackAdapt know StackAdapt the best period. If you’re walking through the DSP, like say, StackAdapt, and you have a question or you’re really stuck in terms of performance, they’re the first person they’re the first people you need to reach out to, because they know their technology, the best period. So having that support team is really important. So just to recap, when you’re looking at your DSP, if you’re thinking about how many DSPs to get, just think about those things, you know, go back to those that I just mentioned, make sure that the top three are checked from new DSP and if that’s the case, then cool. If that’s not the case, then if you need to niched in, then maybe you should consider another DSP like simplify, started with mobile and geofencing and addressable, right? So, and I’m just throwing DSPs out there those are as example, they’re not sponsoring me. I’m very, very agnostic when it comes to the DSP because I want to, I want to prioritize your need versus the technologies offering, because they have a lot to offer for you. So that’s the beauty, right? It’s the beautiful working in our industry. So we’ll move on to the process part, which is the non-sexy conversation literally, process is like, we come we have to go through this like, process can be like this. In order to understand if you have efficient processes, you need to understand your internal workflow, but not you only as a manager, your whole team, brother, your whole team says, you need to make sure that everybody on your team understand who is the creative designer, who’s the reporting analysts, who is the programmatic ninja, okay, who is the account executive, and things like that. And some companies are really great, some agencies are a really great way to kick off costs, internal kickoff calls to go over those details. That’s great. But how do you standardize the process? So do you have one document where you hold all the magic, I like to bring up the media map, do you have a media map that maps out everything you need to know to activate this media to launch the campaign to whatever you need to do. And also, does anyone on the team understand their role or is confused about their role? So that’s where a process needs to be implemented, and the same process have to be implemented everywhere. So that’s why I call it like the non-sexy part because it’s just like, it’s tend to be boring, because it’s repetitive. But trust me, six months from now, you’re gonna go back into that media map, you’re gonna go back into that internal workflow, review your notes, and see oh, this is why we did that three years from now, when you’re pitching the client again, or upselling them, you’re gonna understand, oh, that’s what we did. So that’s why this process needs to be standardized. And once you standardize the process, there’s always a way to automate something. So that’s just an exercise we go through with the clients to help them understand like, oh, actually, you spend a lot of time in emails, how about you invest? Or maybe you should consider a project management tool where everyone on the team get to see that comment. Okay, because it’s pertained to that one client for the sake. And you don’t have to repeat yourself email and then be harassed. In your Slack, be called and texted on your cell phone. So that’s what processes are about.
Matt (00:17:42)
Helene, I’m interested to know in, you know, the first half, we talked about those three P’s, the framework for programmatic and the framework for agencies, let’s zoom in a little bit on people, because as we mentioned in the first half, that’s the foundation that’s what you need to run the effective agency and the platform and the processes don’t happen without it. So I’d love to dive a little bit deeper on that. And any additional thoughts that you have?
Helene (00:18:08)
And of course, people I mean, people is pretty straightforward is how do you hire what are the soft skill set you need to look for when you hire programmatic ninja, because technical skill set can always be taught. But some of those soft skills don’t always come very naturally. And then the onboarding part is again, going back to some of those processes. What can you standardize, because employees like agents, companies with poor onboarding processes are 74% more likely to lose their employees, right? And this is from a Lorman Stats, a study I pull from Lorman. So it’s great. 74% of who’s not going to last more than a year and a half, because they’re so confused about boarding or they had such a bad experience. So it starts with that, like in order for you to service your client correctly, you have to make sure your people will also servicing your client, or taken care of.
Matt (00:19:07)
Fantastic. Now, we’re just about at time with the episode, but I wanted to ask, in terms of the agency, you know, at the beginning of the episode, we talked about the past and how things have changed, moving up to the present. What does the future look like? I’ve been asking guests recently, you know, think 15 months in the future, that would put us at the end of 2023. What does that agency look like? And how can that agency set itself up for success in the future?
Helene (00:19:37)
I love that question. I would definitely say partner, I would definitely say go ahead and be flexible in your offerings and their services. So my one-minute thing about about this topic would be adaptable. Make sure you have partnerships set in stone set in place. Consider staff augmentation, encourage your team to grow and to go learn and to do trainings, you know, hire me to help you do your training. Because in the future, if the agencies are not adaptable, if agencies are not able to provide transparency, trust and efficiency for their clients, I don’t think we’re gonna see a lot more agency. So, I think the future is definitely like the agency is going to become very niched into a couple of services that they’re going to become expert at. And they’re going to stop partnering with other experts in other niches, and build partnerships like that to service one client. So be adaptable, it’s a lot going on, but it’s always gonna be a lot going on this is programmatic, but understand that things are shifting, employees are shifting, our media shift shifting, you know, client, like the consumer is shifting, so you got to shift with them. And you got to be maybe two, three steps ahead. By being two, three steps ahead is really, like I said, partnering up with others, and really investing in education, like you guys do.
Matt (00:21:02)
Awesome. Well, this puts us right about at the end. But before we started recording I had mentioned you know, think of a resource that you would recommend to anybody who’s listening to this, it could be your own newsletter that you put out, which is really great and very informative, or any other websites, blogs, podcasts, anything that can help programmatic advertisers stay on top of what’s latest and what’s trending.
Helene (00:21:30)
Oh my gosh, I love this question. So yeah, I do have a newsletter, and you can sign up on LinkedIn or on my website, heleneparker.com, okay, y’all, but don’t call me Helene in the streets, just call me Helen. But I would say I also have a podcast called Programmatic Digest Podcast, and we just cover that. We cover like industry trends, and we discuss like, what’s the latest thing you need to learn about? And I have a course. So if you’re listening to this, and let’s say, you want to learn more about programmatic activation, it’s available on my course you can learn on your own, or you can hire me to you know, teach it to your people efficiently. I would say external resources I love AdExchanger. I love Digi Day. I definitely love U of Digital’s newsletter, y’all, you need to tap into that because Shiv does a great job in recapping the top, I think five trends that you need to know in a week, and really demystifying what it means and adding his professional opinion to it. So definitely look into U of Digital’s newsletter. I think my podcast is a great resource for people that learn audibly. And, of course, I have a newsletter for that and, you know, tapping to StackAdapt resources. So you do all of this to make sure you’re empowered. So you know use some of this work, maximize this partnership, they’re doing this because they want to make sure you have options out there, you know what’s up. So definitely maximize your partnership by tapping into their resources, their newsletter, listening to those type of podcasts, but you have to do one of them, you have to continue educating yourself. And that goes by reading articles, talking about it, listening to podcasts, or like attending webinars or things like that. But you got to do one of those things very often and consistently.
Matt (00:23:20)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining. This has been an awesome episode. For any of our listeners who are in this spot in their careers looking to move into programmatic or looking to build that next gen agency team. We hope that you took a lot away from this episode. But until then, we’ll see you in the next episode. And this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast.
Episode Outro (00:23:47)
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.
