When it comes to Digital Marketing, the future is 'objective-first' not 'channel-first'!
We are often asked to suggest which digital channels or social media platforms would be the best choice or priority for a marketing budget. Whether this is a total business budget or a campaign budget, of course it needs to be split out for upcoming marketing activity.
We used to begin this process by reviewing things like the target audience - which platforms do they use the most? Or the content available - if it's video, then make sure we include video platforms as a priority.
But...
Most people use multiple platforms and channels every day.
Most users today will use at least three social media platforms, will use Google and maybe even another search engine as a starting point for most searches, will look at news sites, will sign up to emails from their favourite brands, and will be using tens of apps each week. In summary - digital users are everywhere.
Whilst some channels and platforms may have a skew towards one demographic or another, the lines are blurred.
People react to content based on where 'they' are at with you, not the other way around.
By this we mean that your potential customer will react to your brand based on where 'they' are in their journey with your business and your products or services. Not because you have put a video out on a platform that they use. You may have the most exciting music festival announcement to share, but if your potential customer is saving for a trip overseas and can't go out this year, they don't care. You may waste money speaking to them about it.
As all marketers know, marketing is about reaching the right customer in the right place at the right time.
So why do we often think about the right customer (audience) and place (channel) and not think about the time (customer funnel) when it comes to strategising our marketing resources?
The key consideration when planning your digital marketing needs to be the objective.
You can then map your activity and budgets out between each part of the funnel to ensure you reach your business goals in the most efficient way.
An Objective-First Approach
Continuing with our music festival example. We have $10,000 to spend on digital marketing for an upcoming national music festival. It is the second season for this festival and it has a dedicated pack of die-hard fans.
The objective is ultimately to sell as many festival tickets as we can, as quickly as we can.
We don't yet know which channels are the best to use this year, and how much we should earmark for each one.
We want to convert the die-hards straight off the bat, but we know we could reach way beyond them because many people don't know us yet and we know our evolving offering would appeal to many more.
Let's get stuck into it!
The campaign will be running for 8 weeks and we will be targeting new and existing customers, so we have applied a basic customer funnel to our plan as will need a strong element of remarketing and a communications and content plan to run across the entire 8 weeks.
We have split the budget out for each part of the funnel based on how we think will deliver the most efficient results - let's be honest, $10,000 for an 8 week national campaign isn't huge! Every dollar must count and drive that ultimate goal of selling tickets!
In each part of the funnel, we have included our objectives.
We have then selected the platforms which are best suited to each objective for this particular brand, and this is how we have defined the budgets and content strategy for each platform and channel.
This is an objective-first approach.
This is how to generate maximum results and the highest ROAS from your digital marketing channels.
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