Month: February 2023

Building a Brand Performance Strategy for Bread & Butter Wines

Posted on by Coegi

Brief

Coegi partnered with a high-growth wine brand to launch a full-funnel digital campaign to quantify the impact on both brand and performance goals using advanced measurement studies.

 

Highlights

10.6%
Ad Recall Lift

9.1%
Purchase Intent Lift

621%
Site Traffic Lift

Challenge

Bread & Butter Wines came to Coegi in 2020 seeking a stronger marketing strategy to stand apart from the crowd of wine brands. Coegi was asked to provide a holistic, integrated marketing strategy that could reach their full-funnel goals:

  • Drive brand awareness in the US and Canada through emotional connection
  • Via increased brand awareness, drive trial and move brand into selection set within target consumers

Solution

Our targeting strategy reached consumers based on multiple data signals such as demographics, interests, and competitor affinity. This data indicated what was going to drive brand trial. Initially, we created six audience personas to focus on niche competitive opportunities and product use cases. Going into 2023, this was narrowed down to two core personas using purchase behavior data. 

We also used advanced research to understand wine buyers aged 25-54 and living in their top 8 sales states. Using an omni-channel digital strategy, our initial goal was to increase reach and frequency against key audiences. We selected channels offering efficiency and effectiveness, while also balancing lower-funnel ROAS goals. 

Key channels we are prioritizing include: 

  • Influencer and content partnerships to build trust and authenticity
  • Connected TV, display, and Facebook/Instagram to drive reach/frequency and website traffic
  • Instacart, Citrus Ads, and paid search to drive ROAS 

Additionally, we used advanced measurement through Upwave, Facebook, and Nielsen Catalina to understand the full-funnel impact on the brand – from ad recall to purchase intent. 

Throughout our multi-year partnership, we have served billions of cross-channel impressions. In the first three months, we saw a 621% increase in website visitors period over period and 27,000 site actions. 

The first Instacart campaign was especially successful in driving trial, with a nearly 3X ROAS, increasing attributable sales across all varietals. Instacart has continued to have a strong impact. The most recent campaign touts a 4X ROAS, 32% increase in YoY Instacart sales, and an average cost of conversion of $3.73. 

Our campaigns run with Nielsen Catalina were successful at driving incremental value for the brand. The display campaigns helped reclaim former customers with especially strong performance from lost/lapsed customers. The CTV campaign boosted exposure among key audiences and generated $230,101 in sales value of products transferred to their e-commerce cart after seeing an ad. 

The Bread & Butter team continues to be pleased with the Coegi partnership. 

Social Media Marketing for Higher Education Brands

Posted on by Jenny McNamara

Looking for a way to stand out among the sea of colleges and universities competing for the attention of potential students?

Paid social media marketing is one of the most effective tactics you can use for your higher education institute.  

Most higher education marketing plans under-utilize paid social media in favor of more traditional advertising tactics. While these channels can be effective, there is a major opportunity cost in omitting social media channels where potential students are most engaged. 

Social media is a must-have tactic to reach student audiences and revitalize education brands’ market positioning. In this article, you’ll learn Coegi’s key best practices to optimize social media marketing for higher education so you can drive results – from awareness to enrollment. 

Using Social Media to Compliantly Reach Potential Students

Higher education audience targeting strategies can feel fairly prescriptive. Colleges and universities want to reach and engage with prospective students, whether undergraduates, masters, or professional students. This might seem pretty straightforward; however, reaching undergraduate students in a data-driven way is becoming increasingly challenging due privacy laws restricting advertising to minors. 

But, not all hope is lost. The data clearly shows that young adults are highly active on social media. So, while perhaps less frequently targetable by demographics, higher education brands can and should use social platforms to reach these individuals from a contextual standpoint in a compliant and authentic way. 

Tips for Targeting and Resonating with Student Audiences on Social Media

  • Avoid over-segmenting your audience to prevent overlap. For example, an audience of “all prospective students” and an audience of “prospective journalism students” will overlap and compete which will limit performance. 
  • Tailor creative to specific audiences and social media platforms. What performs best on Facebook will be different from what resonates with users on TikTok. 
  • Contextually target student audiences on social media using specific hashtags, TV shows watched, or other relevant interest factors based on research and trends.

Parents are Students Too When It Comes to Vetting Schools (And They’re Also On Social Media)

While paid social media is an excellent tool for reaching young students, focusing solely on students can limit your education campaign’s full potential. Nearly everyone is on social media – not just teens and young adults. Incorporating parents into your audience mix can vastly increase higher education campaign reach and efficacy, whether they are looking into colleges and universities for themselves or on behalf of their children. 

Social media encapsulates a wide demographic range, though the preferred social channel may vary. For example, Facebook and Instagram remain very popular with older generations. Consider leaning into these channels to capture more of your parent and professional student audience.

On the other hand, Snapchat and TikTok have higher usage among younger audiences. By creating a cohesive strategy across multiple social media platforms, you can ensure you’re reaching every potential decision-maker in the school selection process.  

Tips for Advertising to Parents on Social Media 

  • Sprout Social indicates that parents love hearing from other parents. Lean into messaging that focuses on building a community of support and educational resources across social media. 
  • Incorporate parent testimonials or useful statements from school administrators through short-form social media video formats.  
  • Use swipe-thru or animated graphics to highlight job placements, internship rates, and other ways your school can help facilitate their child’s success. 

Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment 

Leaning into social media opens the door for innovation within higher education marketing. Young audiences are on the forefront of changes to the social media landscape. This gives higher education advertisers the unique opportunity to test out new tactics and be early movers in the space. Your brand can increase credibility and favorability amongst your key audiences by creating social moments that surprise and engage these individuals.

This also applies to the types of creative you use. Students want to see something engaging and on-trend. TikTok, in particular, is a space to experiment with creative short-form video formats and explore innovative ways to drive leads. Check out these universities who are using TikTok to engage with students: 5 Universities and Colleges Winning on TikTok

Tips for Innovative Higher Education Social Media Campaigns

  • Research current social media trends among your target audience groups and regularly swap creatives to stay fresh and relevant.
  • Try using less formal creative messaging such as meme Reels on Instagram or trending TikTok challenges and hashtags.
  • Ensure your social media ads have a clear call-to-action to lead users towards application. 

Measure the Right Actions

Education brands face a unique challenge with social media marketing because their most critical action, submitted applications, is often not directly measurable. Obstacles, including third-party website domains and pixel data limitations, can complicate attribution. However, there are a number of high-intent actions users can take on your website that are worth measuring in paid social media campaigns. 

First, determine which lower-funnel actions are most important and measurable. Two such examples are clicks to start the application process or clicks to sign up for a campus tour. After determining these KPIs, optimize your social media campaigns for them.

From there, establish a conversion rate between “clicks to apply” and completed applications, for instance. By taking this analysis a step further, education brands can work to create a more complete picture of social media campaign attribution. 

Tips for Measuring Social Media Marketing Success

  • Identify existing data that can inform your measurement baseline. If you can cross reference campus visit button clicks against real campus visit data, you can identify incremental lift attributable to social media ads.
  • Develop data tracking strategies before media launches so you have an accurate picture of performance across the entire social campaign. 
  • Ensure all aspects of your strategy align with key KPIs so your campaigns garner meaningful results. 

Social media marketing for higher education brands offers fresh and engaging opportunities to reach the full spectrum of your target audiences. Think outside the box and explore how your institution can creatively show up on social platforms to drive high-intent actions, while also building greater brand awareness. 

To see some of these strategies in action, view our case study on Using TikTok to Reach College Students.

If you’re looking for a higher education marketing agency partner, contact Coegi today to learn more. 

CTV Targeting Best Practices: 4 Tips for Higher Performing Advertising Campaigns

Posted on by Coegi

How can your brand achieve extensive advertising reach without putting valuable marketing dollars at jeopardy? Create a smart CTV targeting strategy. 

TV advertising is a high impact advertising channel for building awareness and increasing share of voice by reaching your target audience in a non-skippable environment. However, the landscape is shifting. 47% of the U.S. TV viewers are already cordless and, by 2025, there will be over 235 million connected TV viewers. Is your brand reaching them? 

In this article, I’ll lay out how you can leverage the targeting and addressability benefits of connected TV in your large-screen video advertising plan. By the end, you will be able to apply four key learnings to your CTV targeting strategy to improve both your marketing ROI and your audience’s experience with your brand:

  • Pair cable and streaming for optimal reach and frequency
  • Diversify streaming platforms based on your CTV campaign goals
  • Leverage the addressability of CTV audience targeting
  • Lean into the power of contextual CTV targeting and premium placements

4 CTV Targeting Tips

#1 – Pair Cable and Streaming for Optimal Reach and Frequency

Before we dive too deep into specific CTV targeting strategies, let’s get one thing straight. We aren’t saying you should ignore linear (cable) television to go all in on digital. Linear TV is still one of the fastest ways to effectively reach mass audiences. However, the best way to achieve comprehensive consumer reach at an appropriate frequency is having the right mix of CTV, OTT, and linear. 

Traditionally, marketers would pour the majority of their big-screen budget into linear TV, and save a small fraction for CTV. There was a misperception that CTV had limited efficiency and reach. It was also more difficult to control ad frequency and compare measurement between linear and streaming. That has since changed. Today, these channels are beginning to speak the same language in terms of measurement, allowing for cross-platform comparisons and omnichannel reporting. 

Treating CTV as simply an incremental tactic is not only outdated, but inefficient. Connected TV ads can offer much greater control in regards to reach and frequency versus linear buys. To maximize results, pair linear and CTV/OTT in your media plan to create an omnichannel video strategy. Then, use cross-channel integration platforms to avoid siloes or ad fatigue, as well as understand impact. 

Hear why there should be a more equitable distribution between traditional and streaming television from our President, Sean Cotton, in this short video clip:

#2 – Diversify Streaming Platforms Based on Your CTV Campaign Goals

CTV targeting success comes down to knowing your marketing objectives and aligning that with placements that make sense based on where your audience consumes television content. You may be understandably concerned by the fragmentation of connected TV. There are so many streaming services and devices that it feels challenging to unify the experience. 

When evaluating targeting decisions, you have to evaluate what you value most: 

  • The streaming platforms on which your brand appears (Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, etc.)
  • Reaching audiences on a 1:1 basis

If you really want to advertise on a select few premium streaming platforms, you should be open to targeting a broader audience. Layering multiple audience segments on top of strict inventory limitations causes difficulties with achieving scale. But, you can leverage research to justify this strategy knowing that your audience spends time on platforms like HBOMax or Hulu, and take comfort knowing your ads are running on quality inventory. 

If your priority is reaching a highly specific audience, cast a wider inventory net. Look beyond the Hulus and walled gardens like Amazon Prime and YouTube TV, and instead lean into an omnichannel CTV buying strategy. While this will require more due diligence to ensure brand safety among lesser known CTV services, it creates an opportunity to take a more holistic approach to the opportunity across your consumer base.

#3 – Leverage the Addressability of CTV Audience Targeting

The golden rule of marketing – do everything in your power to avoid wasting media dollars. At least that’s our philosophy at Coegi. Needless to say, the typical “spray and pray” approach often used to reach broad audiences with linear TV makes us cringe a little. By using data-driven CTV partners, you can still reach broad audiences without overspending. 

There are a lot of data providers that can be activated to reach users on a 1:1 basis. This audience-first approach reaches high-value, addressable segments without overspending on mass media buys. Plus, you improve the user experience by serving relevant content in an engaging, large screen format.

You can also gain greater addressability through automated content recognition – an effective technology to simultaneously improve your audience targeting, ad personalization, and measurement in a privacy preserving way.. Automated content recognition (ACR) technology captures and identifies audio and visual on-screen content. It can capture any content being viewed on a smart TV screen: linear, streaming, video-on-demand, commercials, video games, etc. This data is fingerprinted and can be tied back to IP addresses, creating unique user IDs for specific devices 

The primary ACR targeting methods include:  

  • Target based on ad exposure (competitive conquesting)
  • Content affinity (live tentpole events, shows watched, games played)
  • Viewership behavior (cord-cutters, sports fans, etc.)

ACR data empowers you to better understand and reach your unique audience, as well as personalize messaging. 

#4 – Lean into the Power of Contextual CTV Targeting Strategies and Premium Placements

Audience targeting offers many benefits in the ability to drill down to specific behaviors, purchase history, and more. However, to maximize CTV targeting success, it’s important to balance audience-based and contextual targeting strategies. 

Why? Households share devices, so you cannot always be sure the person you are trying to reach is the one in front of the screen. Additionally, third-party cookie deprecation will impact overall addressability. Contextual CTV targeting does not rely on third-party cookie data, making it a more future-proof solution. It is also a valuable tool to achieve scale by targeting specific networks and content genres using audience affinity data. 

If you want to put a true stake in the ground, secure premium CTV placements through programmatic or direct publisher buys. Think live sporting events, award shows, or an ad spot on the latest Netflix series taking the world by storm. 

These premium placements are more expensive, with CPMs often ranging between $40-50. But, it’s critical to understand the value of running your brand’s message alongside highly recognizable content. If your audience is made up of huge sports fans, the impact of running a thirty-second ad spot during the NBA Finals could be invaluable to your long-term brand performance. Premium CTV placements both elevate trustworthiness for newer brands and energize existing brands. 

Learn more about how to optimize your CTV budget with quality inventory from Coegi’s Director of Programmatic Operations, Hannah Schatz, in this clip: 

The ways in which viewers consume TV are changing, but the overall love of programming remains. Knowing your brand and how your target audiences index against specific content is essential in the future of CTV targeting strategies. Implementing these data-driven targeting tactics will give you access to higher-quality ad space. 

For more information, view our OTT/CTV Advertising Webinar here or access our TV 2.0 Guide to gain a better understanding of the CTV ecosystem. 

Coegi Partners

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