Author: Coegi

The B2B Digital Marketing Handbook

Posted on by Coegi

The digital marketing revolution is sweeping the world – and B2B advertising is no exception. Buyers and sellers are shifting to digital channels for conducting networking, brand building, product demos and training, and even transactions. 

Using this handbook, you can adapt your brand to the evolving marketplace by using the most effective channels, targeting methods and measurement strategies for reaching modern B2B buyers. In this guide you’ll learn the answers to key marketing questions, such as: 

How can you efficiently target B2B audiences?

B2B’s emphasis on precisely targeting niche audience groups will be affected by third-party cookie deprecation in 2023. Find a balance between leveraging non-cookie based second and third-party prospecting audiences and creating digital touch points with your CRM contacts to reach the buyers that matter most for your brand. 

What are the best channels for B2B brands to advertise on?

Some of the most effective and fastest growing digital channels we recommend for B2B marketers include social, display, search, connected TV and audio. Read the full guide or continue scrolling to learn how to activate each channel most effectively and achieve business results. 

How to measure the results of B2B digital marketing? 

Track the cross-channel customer journey via both sales and marketing touchpoints. Accurate measurement provides learnings to optimize the process, making the sales funnel shorter and ad spend more effective. A common misstep marketers make is focusing solely on attribution and sourcing metrics. This is an oversimplification that blinds true insights and efficiency. To more accurately track a complex buying cycle, we outline a five step measurement process to define omni-channel success.

Future-Proof Your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital-first marketing is the way forward for B2B brands. This handbook provides a deeper understanding of the high level trends you need to know to stay ahead of the competitive curve and capitalize on untapped marketing space.

Download the B2B Digital Marketing Handbook now to level up your strategy. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us to set up a discovery call.

Adapting to the Digital-First B2B Marketplace 

B2B digital ad spending is growing rapidly, and traditional spend is not expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Digital advertising will be pivotal for B2B brands moving forward as buyers become more accustomed to a digital-first marketplace. 

Here’s three simple shifts that can have a major impact:

Follow B2C’s Example

Leading consumer brands diversify and digitize their marketing mix to create robust omni-channel strategies. This is highly successful for meeting customers wherever they are online. Personalizing content is now an expectation for B2B digital marketing.

Lead with Data

Use CRM data to identify customers with the greatest lifetime value based on potential or historical spend to optimize your marketing expenditure. Then, create AI-based lookalike models to find new consumers who behave like your best customers.

Lean into Video 

B2B buyers engage heavily with video content across the consumer journey, perhaps to the surprise of the more traditional B2B marketers. Product demos, tutorials, webinars, and culture-based content all have an impact on engaging and informing buyers. 

Digital Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Companies are placing the highest investment for their account based marketing (ABM)  strategies into digital. The majority of spend occurs on social media, paid search, and e-newsletters. However, other channels such as display, CTV and audio are gaining more share of wallet each year. 

A barrier to successful ABM is the ability to efficiently and effectively personalize marketing at scale. This is addressable by using AI technology to segment and serve account-based ads on a programmatic level. There are also various methods for account-based targeting on platforms such as LinkedIn. 

Targeting B2B Audiences with Digital Marketing 

Impact of the Cookieless Future

It is important to maintain a forward looking mentality for lead generation. The cookieless future will affect targeting niche audience groups, an emphasis of B2B marketers. Brands should explore emerging identity-solution technologies while also prioritizing first-party data collection. Finding a balance between leveraging third-party prospecting audiences and your CRM contacts can define your success. 

Know Your B2B Audience

Use consumer intelligence tools to create highly specific audience personas. Understand where their media consumption lies so you can reach them in both endemic and non-endemic environments. Focusing on intentionally targeting high quality leads will achieve a much higher return on investment than a mass market approach. 

Job Title Targeting

Reach industry professionals based on the NAICS listed industries in which they work. Target using ABM, job title, job function and seniority targeting, firmographic, and intent signals. Further refine targeting through Boolean logic to reach specific B2B audiences.

IP Targeting

IP targeting enables brands to identify qualified households and businesses based on IP address. You can also create look-alike models using audience lists to expand reach. This allows you to target specific business locations and reach employees while they are at work. 

Geo-Targeting

Geo-fencing powers hyper-local mobile targeting in specific locations of your target accounts. Geo-targeting industry conferences can be effective to reach a high concentration of relevant professionals with greater efficiency. 

Retargeting

Website retargeting allows you to reach warm leads who have recently visited your site with sequential messaging. Conversion pixels can be particularly useful for B2B brands to place on key actions, like PDF downloads or form submissions. However, the deprecation of third-party cookies will inevitably impact this – so avoid overreliance on this tactic.

Key Channels for B2B Digital Marketing 

Brands need to enable digital transaction and communication across all stages of the lead funnel. Here are some of the most effective and fastest growing digital channels we recommend for B2B marketers:

Social Media

While social media is extremely useful in personifying the brand, it also goes a long way in driving new prospects and increasing customer lifetime value. Advertising and engaging content initiates that process. The most commonly used and highly effective social media for B2B brands is LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn has millions of active professionals with detailed targeting capabilities for reaching a business-focused target audience. On LinkedIn, individuals are more likely to be engaged in business-related activities, which is a great fit for B2B initiatives. 

Connected TV

Brands are realizing the value of video in driving awareness through storytelling, which is just as important to B2B as it is to B2C. CTV ads provide maximum impact, reaching users on the largest screen in their home against premium content. With advanced audience targeting across CTV devices brands can re-engage existing customers and reach new audiences. 

Programmatic Audio 

Programmatic audio is a growing sector for B2B. Placements in relevant podcasts or streaming platforms can reach very specific audiences. B2B spend in this category is currently lagging, but we expect growth in the next several years. By capitalizing on this tactic now, your brand has the potential to capture attention ahead of more widespread adoption 

Digital-Out-of-Home

Digital Out of Home (DOOH) refers to the purchasing of digital screens in public. With DOOH, you can purchase inventory nearly in real-time versus traditional methods that take multiple weeks and contracts. Digital screens place ads in locations where you know key decision makers are likely to be.

Display

4 out of 10 US B2B marketers said they plan to increase their display budget in 2022. Use display to drive consideration and lead generation through specific CTAs. Segment audiences based on attributes and behaviors. Then, connect with them on relevant sites and apps using a combined approach of contextual and audience targeting. 

Native

Native ads match readers’ interests with curated content and generate higher brand engagement. This is especially useful for targeting B2B buyers when they are consuming contextually relevant content. Plus, it can position your content as an additional resource to the topic they are reading about without being intrusive.

Paid Search (PPC)

To show up in highly competitive search rankings, combine organic and paid search strategies for maximum impact and profitability. When B2B buyers begin searching for information, they will likely land on a top ranking site on Google. So, it is critical to bid against the most effective keywords to place your brand at the forefront of the consumer journey. 

Measuring B2B Digital Marketing Results 

Tracking the cross-channel journey across sales and digital marketing touchpoints is essential. Accurate measurement provides learnings to optimize the process, making the sales funnel shorter and ad spend more effective. 

Focusing on sourcing metrics is an oversimplification that blinds true insights and efficiency. To more accurately track a complex buying cycle, we recommend creating a custom measurement framework. 

Use this 5-step process to define omni-channel success for your B2B marketing: 

1) Align Sales and Marketing Teams

First, sales and marketing must have alignment. The following steps of identifying business OKRs should be collaborative to meet shared goals and understand the impact of one another’s efforts.

2) Identify Desired Business Outcomes

Secondly, establish and understand your core business goals. This creates a roadmap that empowers marketing and sales teams to make informed decisions. From there, you can begin to build a strategic marketing plan to move the needle for the brand

3) Determine KPIs to Indicate Success

Begin to identify the signals that trigger audience actions and bring you closer to your goals. Next, determine how each touchpoint leads the customer to the point of purchase and how you can track directional success. Move beyond typical metrics that simply measure media efficiency and see what is truly impacting your business results.

4) Evaluate Incrementality

As you nurture leads and drive new business, evaluate the incremental effects of your marketing strategy. To test different tactics or channels, establish a performance baseline and then adjust one variable at time to see the impact. This will give you more accurate insight than attribution or last-click models. 

5) Create a Cycle of Test and Learn

Now it is important to identify the key questions we can answer to improve upon results in the next campaign. Create a learning agenda to determine which components are driving the best outcomes so you can adjust and optimize in the future. 

Apply these core principles and watch your business transform. Using this approach will allow you to track and communicate meaningful data about your buyers, no matter how complex your channel strategy may be. 

Key Takeaways for B2B Marketers

Agility will be key in 2022 and B2B brands have an exciting opportunity to leverage the digital marketplace to their advantage. Using this guide, you should be able to better understand how to adapt your brand’s strategies for long-term success.

With a digital-first approach, audience personalization, and strategic targeting, you can reach your highest potential buyers with maximum efficiency. 


As you continue to navigate these challenges, Coegi is here to be your guide!

Reach out to us at info@coegipartners.com for a strategy consultation to enhance your customers’ digital journey.

Retail Media Advertising Explained: Connected Commerce

Posted on by Coegi

What Is Retail Media Advertising?

Retailers are becoming ad publishers. They’re transforming their data and online platforms to sell valuable audience data along with advertising spots. Retail media advertising buys can be executed on retailer sites or programmatically on social and display channels. This data enables consumer brands to reach online shoppers. It can be activated by targeting ads based upon keyword searches, purchase history and other data collected via SKUs, purchase scans, and loyalty programs. 

The recent growth of retail media advertising has been astronomical. Amazon Ads alone is expected to reach $32 billion in revenue by 2023. Although many players are entering the market (Best Buy, Target, Kroger, Walmart etc.), Amazon still dominates with an estimated 76.2% of US ecommerce channel ad spending in 2021. Brands are leaning into this trend with 76% of marketers planning to frequently utilize point of sale data in 2022. With the CPG clients I’ve worked with at Coegi, we recognized the emerging trend of retail media and made sure we were incorporating this must-have tactic into our connected commerce strategies.

Reach Your Customers Wherever They Are With Retail Media

Retail media advertising empowers brands to be exactly where your customers are and deliver personalized experiences on and offline. 

  • How can you reach customers in-store? 
  • Where can you reach them when shopping online? 
  • How can you reach audiences when they’re scrolling through socials? 

Retail media lets advertisers be more data-driven and provides a reliable targeting solution. Targeting these shopper audiences creates the opportunity to deliver an efficient, personalized experience. The icing on the cake (or should I say cookie?) is that most retail data is cookieless. So, we are able to utilize it not only now, but into the future. 

With the landscape becoming increasingly cluttered, most CPG brands won’t have the budget to be present on every retail media platform, nor is that in their best interest. To make the most impact, brands need to research and test where their audiences are spending time. After making your selections, it’s also important to have unique strategies for each retailer. Your messaging and execution should look different on a Best Buy audience dataset versus a Wal-Mart audience. 

Connected Commerce Strategy

Connected commerce strategy is a concept developed by Skai. It means thinking about how you can connect all points of the customer commerce journey together. As retail media networks become more sophisticated, we are seeing more full-funnel implications. The Trade Desk reported that 39% of marketers surveyed use retail media advertising to drive brand equity scores and 44% use it to track sales growth. Take advantage of ecommerce site and programmatic placements to find prospecting audiences and track them through the funnel. 

For example, you could target an upper funnel retail media audience on social and display and then serve them a retargeted ad when they are actively shopping. Or, you could use Facebook conversion ads to drive to your Amazon product page and then develop a retargeting audience. For best results, I recommend strategically flighting media together and not having a standalone retail media strategy. Having supportive media across channels improves results for our clients at Coegi compared to solely running onsite retail media buys. 

Additionally, we recommend utilizing Amazon as a point of discovery along with Google Paid Search. When people start researching products, almost 75% start with Amazon. They are exploring, reading reviews, and connecting information to make a purchase decision. It’s important to look at the whole ecosystem of commerce and make sure all those puzzle pieces are connected. Understand what channels can help each other to incorporate a true connected commerce strategy. 

“Retail media presents retailers with an opportunity to better personalize their e-commerce sites, improve discoverability of products, and better monetize their first-party data. Likewise, it offers brands an opportunity to better reach their end customer and access more granular insights into marketing performance and effectiveness..”

– Forrester Now Tech: Retail Media Solutions Q2 2021, Colin Colburn

How To Measure Retail Media Advertising Success

The primary drawback to retail media, currently, is the segmentation from publisher to publisher. Wal-Mart data lives in one silo, Target data lives in another, and so on. Marketers have to be very mindful of where to invest for maximum impact. Using a trial and error method to test and learn is necessary. This allows you to see where your customers are responding because we do not see integration across channels with retail media. 

Look to outside partners who can aggregate data sets from multiple publishers and measure the big picture impact. Coegi works with partners so we can directly tag our in-market media and measure the direct impact of media on sales. These partners feed back real-time information so we can make optimizations and improve business outcomes. 

“For marketers wanting to take full advantage of retail media’s potential for reshaping attribution, and their overarching strategies for guiding consumers through the purchase funnel — or true “closed-loop marketing” — managing across retail data environments will be key”  – The Trade Desk

A more sophisticated approach is needed to ensure every dollar is spent wisely and effectively. This advanced insight from provides the competitive edge needed to maintain efficiency in this competitive market with rising costs and influx of demand. 

Key Takeaways

Retail media allows brands to: 

  • Utilize 1st party shopper data to reach customers wherever they are
  • Consider and understand the full shopper experience from discovery to purchase
  • Be data-driven and track closed-loop measurement, prioritizing cookieless solutions whenever available
  • Clearly understand the impact of ads on consumer behavior and sales 

At the end of the day, retail media is a must-have tactic for CPG brands, especially for challenger brands looking to break through. Explore connected commerce strategies for your brand to maximize the impact of your media spend and efficiently drive customers through the purchase funnel. 

Recommended Reading:

Increase B2B Conversions Using Account Based Marketing

Posted on by Coegi

Account based marketing (ABM) is a focused strategy that blends sales and marketing efforts to reach high potential B2B customers. However, many brands struggle with achieving the level of personalization and automation needed for effective ABM at scale. Thankfully, there is a solution: programmatic ABM. Using automated buying tactics, brands can serve targeted ads to thousands of highly segmented B2B consumers within target organizations using technology and data for personalization. 

Why Account Based Marketing?

B2B marketing has historically emphasized quantity of leads generated first (Marketing Qualified Leads), with quality to follow (Sales Qualified Leads). Unfortunately, this method has led to 79% of leads never becoming customers, not to mention wasted media dollars. The account-based approach instead focuses on decision makers in target companies rather than mass outreach. By doing this prequalification, the sales funnel becomes shorter and every customer touchpoint is more intentional and personalized. This is why 77% of marketers believe ABM is their top driver of sales and marketing success. 

Zeroing In On the Target

Emarketer data shows that one key barrier to successful ABM is the inability to efficiently and effectively personalize marketing at scale.  We know this is a critical issue to solve as, “40% of company executives in e-commerce report that personalization directly affects their sales and company revenues.” Once you have your ideal customer profile nailed down, how can you make sure you are reaching these individuals?  Can you reach them at scale, with personalization and within your given budget? Here’s where programmatic activation comes in.

Programmatic Account Based Marketing: Powered By Technology

Programmatic advertising automates the ad buying process. Just because you are targeting individual business accounts, you don’t have to have massive teams calling or emailing accounts one by one to succeed. With proper campaign segmentation, you can tailor ads to feel highly specific and relevant to individuals within these companies.

AI-powered creative learning takes this one step further by determining which combination of imagery and copy will be most effective for different audience segments and adjusting in real time. Programmatic and AI also allow agility and flexibility across channels. You can take a social ad and run it on digital or test a top performing display video on CTV – all while being confident your media spend is serving ads to real, qualified decision makers. 

 

ABM Investment Across Digital Media Channels

Activation: First-Party First

When available, start by leveraging existing CRM data. Activate against this high value pool of leads who have already shared their information with you via content downloads, newsletter sign-ups, or other acquisition activities. Carefully segment these individuals so you can serve highly relevant and personalized ads based on their industry, level of seniority, interests, geography, etc.

  • Work with a programmatic agency to activate 1PD segments across various digital channels and media publishers.
  • Track user behavior and data trends
  • Use AI tools to create lookalike audiences to expand the targeting pool

Expand and Refine Your Ideal ABM Customer

To expand further, strategically incorporate third party data. Various data partners can be tapped to reach decision makers across digital channels. Keep in mind that with third party data in particular, it is important to have a smart targeting strategy. 

Start by refining your audience. Yes, you want to achieve scale and pack the lead funnel for your sales force, but the way to do that effectively and efficiently is by ensuring you understand what the ideal customer looks like. Your cost per lead may be higher when you narrow the targeting parameters, but you can expect a greater return by reaching audiences with the highest potential lifetime value and reducing wasted hours sifting through unqualified leads.

Layer your targeting with firmographic, job title, and seniority parameters that indicate a high potential account. Look at your best customers  – what do they have in common? Segment your target personas into specific buckets so you can tailor your creative and messaging accordingly – adding the personalization now expected by B2B buyers.

Some targeting tactics for B2B accounts to consider are: 

  • Intent targeting to identify individuals and organizations who are actively searching for a particular topic or solution
  • NAICS job title targeting to reach specific job titles or organizations 
  • IP/Geo-Targeting to target specific business locations or industry events
  • Social targeting by skill/title/industry/location across platforms

Using programmatic activation with a digital partner allows brands to reach these highly sought after audiences with efficiency of both budget and time. 

B2B Channel Strategy: Time To Diversify?

Companies are placing the highest investment for their ABM strategies into digital, with the majority of spend occurring on social media, paid search and e-newsletters. These are all key ways to reach buyers, however, other channels such as programmatic display, CTV and audio are gaining more share of wallet year over year. Consider some of these more untapped spaces to allow your brand voice to be heard without competing with the noise. 

When choosing your channel strategy, don’t put all your efforts into one high-performing channel, such as LinkedIn. Instead, activate ads across a variety of channels based on the media consumption habits of your target audience and other behavioral insights. Use data-informed programmatic placements to meet the audience wherever they are active online.

To determine the best channel mix, it’s critical to build a cycle of testing and learning into your measurement strategy. This enables ongoing learning and optimization to improve the lead nurturing process by identifying what is working and what isn’t. Ask questions and test various tactics to find answers so your brand avoids stagnancy and reduced efficiency in the sales cycle.

Key Takeaways

  • Account based marketing doesn’t have to be tedious. Taking a programmatic approach enables efficiency and scale for brands with large target account pools.
  • Refine targeting criteria and segment key audience groups to personalize creative accordingly. 
  • Capitalize on your first party data, then expand reach with high quality third party data to reach verified decision makers.
  • B2B brands can benefit from an omni-channel media approach and considering non-traditional B2B media placements

Start reaching hundreds to thousands of B2B leads today by working with Coegi to build a programmatic ABM strategy. Download our guide to B2B Marketing to learn more. 

B2B Marketing Guide
Download the Complete B2B Marketing Guide

Digital Guide to Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Marketing

Posted on by Coegi

Healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing is a complex landscape. A long-standing emphasis on in-person rep sales and difficult to navigate privacy laws have made the industry slower to adopt new marketing technologies and trends relative to other industries.

Coegi created this guide to help healthcare and pharma marketers feel empowered to break the mold of antiquated marketing practices.

Creating A Clear Digital Roadmap For Your Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Marketing Strategy

This playbook aims to debunk the uncertainty surrounding health and pharma marketing. We outline best practices and provide a clear roadmap for your healthcare brand to create best-in-class marketing strategies. 

What You’ll Learn: 

  • How to leverage key trends affecting the industry
  • Targeting methods for reaching patients and HCPs
  • Most effective channels and strategic tactics for health advertising
  • How to set KPIs, measure campaign results, and impact your bottom line 
  • What steps to take to ensure compliant advertising
  • Best practices to improve healthcare marketing strategies

Why Digital Marketing Is Critical For Healthcare Advertisers

The healthcare industry as a whole is pivoting towards data-driven strategies. Events, provider education, and patient treatment itself have now shifted from in-person to blended online channels. Omni-channel advertising strategies work in tandem with consumer preferences moving towards digital treatment options such as tele-health to supplement more traditional healthcare. 

Ready To Level Up Your Healthcare And Pharmaceutical Marketing?

Download the Digital Guide to Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Marketing now. If you have any questions along the way, don’t hesitate to contact us to set up a discovery call.

A Disrupted Ecosystem Leads to New Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Marketing Opportunities

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated a large shift toward digital technologies in the healthcare landscape. For example, the acceptance of telehealth practice rose to 71% post-pandemic, despite very low adoption prior. As AI tools and telemedicine create efficiencies and digitize patient and healthcare provider communications, marketing efforts need to follow a similar trajectory. 

Similarly, visitation restrictions forced greater reliance on marketing channels rather than one-to-one sales meetings. This provides a massive opportunity for healthcare and pharma marketers to adapt and create a competitive advantage.  

How to Build Successful Patient Relationships

Patient-centric healthcare and pharmaceutical brands must gain loyalty through consumer relationships. Loyalty is at a historic low while openness to change and preference for convenience are soaring. 62% of consumers expected their preferred brand for healthcare to change post-pandemic. Additionally, 80% of patients said they’d switch providers solely for “convenience factors”. 

Marketing strategies must be customer-centric to capture loyalty. In today’s healthcare ecosystem, that requires leaning into omnichannel, digital strategies and leading with empathy. 

Patient Targeting Strategies for Health & Pharma Brands 

Despite the challenge of compliance and data privacy laws, brands still have a variety of ways to target patients by using first and third-party data as well as machine learning to identify and segment consumers who are receptive to healthcare advertising or are actively researching treatment options.

Local & Geo-Targeting

Hospital systems and healthcare practices should lean heavily into local targeting to reach their core audiences. These campaigns can drive location visits, but should also increase awareness and education. 1 in 4 people surveyed said they do not know enough about local health systems to make an informed choice. 

With data partners, pharmaceutical brands can target programmatic buys to specific zip codes that over-index for a particular condition. Using anonymous provider prescription data, data can be matched to zip codes with the highest lift in specific prescriptions. You can even map it to these households via IP addresses. This enables omnichannel online targeting to reach healthcare consumers through display, video, native, and social media channels.

Condition-Based Targeting

Use third-party data providers to access unique healthcare segments. This anonymous data is not subject to some of the strict HIPAA guidelines, as it cannot be tied to PII. This allows you to reach your relevant audience at scale without media waste. 

Interest Group Targeting

Interest targeting is a great way to reach patients as well as families and caregivers who are also interested in a specific condition or topic. This expands reach to the key decision-makers in the healthcare process. Data providers often define “interest” by what content consumers are reading online. 

Retargeting

By placing small pieces of code on a website, known as pixels, brands can retarget website visitors with programmatic ads. You can also build lookalike audiences to expand the retargeting pool. In instances where the topic or condition is considered sensitive, lean on the other tactics above to reach your key audiences.

Key Channels for Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Marketers to Reach Patient Audiences

Local and Paid Search

Search engine is often the first touchpoint in the patient journey as they begin researching a symptom or diagnosis. Establish your brand as a resource with relevant, helpful content through both paid and organic search. 

Local search is impactful when patients are looking for a nearby healthcare location. Providers should have mobile-optimized websites, complete Google business profiles, customer reviews, and relevant content for local optimization. 

Social Media

Use the power of social media to build brand trust and authenticity. These platforms are a great way to reach patients in a more personal environment where they are active daily. 

Most social platforms offer demographic, interest and behavioral targeting parameters. There is also an emerging trend of HCPs becoming popular creators on channels like YouTube, Twitter and TikTok. This organic influencer content can be highly effective, especially if you amplify it through paid social. 

Programmatic Display 

Today, patients of all ages are consuming media digitally and using mobile devices to find healthcare information. In 2020, display was the fastest-growing format for healthcare and pharma ad spend. Mobile optimization is a key adaptation for advertisers moving forward. Over 80% of smartphone-using patients use them to identify or interact with physicians. 

Contextual display targeting places ads next to relevant, trustworthy content when consumers are in the appropriate mindset. This can be done with keyword matching for specific web content or by running PMPs on specific healthcare publications.

Native Ads

Native ads match readers’ interests with relevant content and generate higher brand engagement. You can repurpose high-performing social ad content and target these ads to the audience segments of the campaign. Match these ads with contextually relevant articles to align with health content that would demonstrate how your brand or facility could best serve that individual. 

Programmatic Video

Video Ads capture user attention on sites or social media channels with engaging motion and sound based messaging. Use quality video to: 

  • Show brand personality and bring messaging to life
  • Show your product/service in action
  • Optimize for mobile placements

Connected TV

Television streaming times are soaring. This is especially true for the 55+ age range, a core healthcare demographic, who also make up the highest proportion of CTV viewers. 

The high-impact video content and addressability of CTV ensure ads reach relevant audiences. Using specific healthcare patient and provider audiences on CTV buys reaches high-value, addressable segments. Cross-channel integration platforms can ensure you reach the right audience with the appropriate frequency, thus optimizing omnichannel strategies.

 “CTV is an untapped space eliminating barriers from a cost-to-market perspective. TV is now an accessible market for pharmaceutical players.”

Colin Duft, Coegi Account Strategy Director

Measuring Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Marketing Campaign Results

Using Full-Funnel Media Metrics

To measure campaign performance, it’s critical to understand how all your KPIs work together. We start by building a custom measurement framework factoring in multiple KPIs correlated to core business goals. Think outside the box of typical stats such as CTR, CPM and CPC to find more meaningful ways to track and attribute success. 

When media metrics do not answer your business questions, consider adding advanced measurement tactics. These data points will provide a more robust view of overall performance and marketing’s impact on your true business goals. 

Advanced Measurement Tactics for Healthcare Brands 

Healthcare brands with physical locations may find it difficult to measure the effects of digital marketing on in-person traffic. Medical device and pharmaceutical brands can likewise struggle to measure the results of in-person sales teams plus both on and offline marketing. In these instances, advanced measurement studies can help provide answers and display incremental lift in brand awareness, sales, or traffic. 

  • Foot traffic lift studies can be highly informative for hospitals or retail health brands. They provide online to offline attribution for campaigns aiming to drive consumers into physical locations. They use mobile location data to quantify the impact of media campaigns on incremental increase in visitation.
  • Brand lift studies can be effective for pharmaceutical brands to measure KPIs such as brand favorability, brand affinity, or ad recall. These can gauge success for omnichannel campaigns on branding goals.

Starting a Conversation with HCPs: Strategic Targeting, Channels & Measurement

Ad Targeting for Healthcare Providers 

Healthcare providers are relatively easier to target than patient segments. There is publicly available information and fewer privacy restrictions. However, there are occasionally some challenges with achieving scale as well as higher costs. Regardless, brands can reach HCPs across the wide range of content they consume to increase opportunities for engagement.

ID-Based Targeting

National Provider IDs are personal identifiers for specific healthcare providers including their practice location and specialty. Utilizing this data set via demand-side platforms allows for compliant, 1:1 HCP targeting across multiple channels and devices. 

Geo-Targeting

Brands can also use NPI numbers to target relevant practice locations for particular physicians or specialties. By targeting a geo-radius around POC locations with high volumes of particular diagnoses or treatment types, you can remain compliant while also reaching your target audience.

Retargeting

Re-engage previous HCP website visitors with highly relevant creative. This tactic helps build consideration, with the ultimate intent to continue engaging based on prior actions. 

Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting tools can look at categories, keywords, and tags on web pages to deliver highly relevant programmatic content. At Coegi, we map these to the National Library of Medicine MeSH Taxonomy to ensure the most relevant terminology is applied to our digital media. 

Rx and Dx Targeting

Through data partnerships, brands can target NPI numbers of providers who prescribe certain prescription codes. Likewise, brands can target by diagnosis using ICD-10 codes to find their core provider audience. 

Key Digital Marketing Channels to Reach Healthcare Providers 

Endemic Display 

Reach healthcare providers on the key sites they visit for the latest trends and best practices in their field. These endemic sites are a more premium placement due to higher prices and lower supply. 

HCP Network: Doximity

Doximity is the leading social networking site specifically for healthcare providers. There are various ad placement options including sponsored content or in-feed ads. This can be a particularly helpful channel for new or emerging brands. It’s a great tool to educate and inform physicians about a new product offering. 

Paid Social 

Social media advertising helps reach HCPs outside of their professional environment. Use data providers to access ailment clusters and physician databases available for targeting on social and search. 

Programmatic Display

Display is the fastest-growing ad format in healthcare and pharma. Programmatic ads allow healthcare marketers to promote relevant information to HCPs outside the limitations of endemic websites. Also, banner display ads provide an easy format to drive traffic to specific website landing pages.

Paid Search

Similar to patients, practitioners also rely heavily on online resources to find new techniques, products, and information relevant to their practice. Outside of medical journal websites, providers prefer to receive communication from companies via search engines. 

Measuring HCP Marketing Campaign Results

At Coegi, we firmly believe all campaign spend can be accurately measured. When advertising to HCPs, the one-to-one addressability of some tactics allows for clearly traceable marketing ROI. However, other tactics can have less direct attribution toward objectives.  

In these instances, advanced measurement studies can help provide answers, explore correlations, and display incremental lift in metrics such as brand awareness, brand affinity and sales lift. 

Advanced Measurement Tactics

Brand lift studies can gauge success for omnichannel campaigns on brand-based goals. Awareness surveys with key practitioner groups can inform how a brand is perceived and the level of recognition or ad recall achieved within a target audience. 

Ready to level up your healthcare advertising? Schedule a discovery call with our business strategy team to get started today.

Driving Leads Through Consumer Education for Finance Brands

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi partnered with a financial services brand to develop an education-based approach to lead generation using downloadable guides for home buying, auto financing and growing a business.

Highlights

240,227
Impressions

0.079%
Conversion Rate

Challenge

Making the decision to apply for an auto loan, mortgage, or even open a new checking account requires a significant lift on the consumer in terms of research and compiling information. Many institutions lean towards offering financial incentives for opening an account or emphasizing low interest rates. 

While offers such as receiving $200 for refinancing or opening an account can act as a compelling call-to-action, the consumer needs to be educated on the process ahead of receiving this messaging for it to be effective. Offering monetary incentives to an uneducated audience can lead to abandoned applications and a higher cost per lead. Educating your target audience with branded collateral positions your brand as an industry thought leader. This also builds trust with your audience and leads to greater conversion activity, and ultimately higher customer lifetime value. 

Solution

This financial services client regularly offers e-books on various financial topics. They observed the benefits of this educational approach to campaign messaging. This client promoted guides on home buying, auto financing, and growing a business. Coegi adjusted their target audience based on the topics to ensure relevancy. 

The campaign uncovered that paid ads related to e-book downloads outperformed campaigns focused on monetary promotions. In Q4 2021, their Fall Homebuyers ad was given a quality ranking by Facebook and served more frequently than its counterparts. Users were 125% more likely to download the guide and request more information compared to messaging offering a discount. This campaign positioned the client as an expert in their industry and built trust among their target audience. 

Messaging Homebuyer Guide Closing Cost Discount
Impressions 240,227 14,417
Conversions 190 5
Conversion Rate .079% .035%

Education-based advertising is often viewed as an upper funnel marketing tactic utilized to build awareness and inform potential users. However, this campaign showcased the down-funnel impact educational materials can have on conversions. Our client was able to use educational guidebooks to empower their customers when making financial decisions. It was effective in building trust among the core audience and leading them to request more information.  Brands in the financial services sector should prioritize educational materials to create trusting consumer relationships and efficiently nurture leads.

Advertising on Reddit to Reach Niche Audiences

Posted on by Coegi

Reddit is not always the first platform that comes to mind when advertisers are thinking about paid social, but it should not be overlooked. Reddit is a fast growing platform that allows advertisers to reach a very niche audience at a reasonably low cost. The Reddit platform does have some downfalls though, such as a less advanced reporting platform as compared to competitors. Here, we discuss the benefits and challenges of advertising on Reddit and some helpful tips to create a successful campaign.

What Is Reddit And Who Uses The Platform?

Reddit is a network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies and passions. It is a discussion-focused platform and is often referred to as “the first page of the Internet.”

There are 52 million daily active users, which represents a 44% increase from October 2019. The platform sees 430 million monthly active users.

  • The vast majority of Reddit users are in the United States. 221.98 million users are in the United States, followed by Australia with 17.55 million users and India with 13.57 million users.
  • Two-thirds of Reddit users identify as male.
  • Reddit is most popular among the 25 to 29 year old age group. 64% of Reddit users are between the ages of 18-29.
  • The majority of Reddit users have a college degree or some college education.

Benefits Of Advertising On Reddit

  • Reddit ads can reach very niche audiences. There is a community for anything you can think of on Reddit. Ex: If you are selling liquor, you may consider targeting the r/cocktails or r/Bartenders communities.
  • Because Reddit has such a large number of users, CPMs are more efficient than some other social platforms.
  • Audience targeting is not only based on interests like other platforms, but also based on communities, also known as subreddits. These communities are often made up of very engaged users, so it is important to learn about the communities you are targeting and tailor your creatives to these communities.

Challenges Of Advertising On Reddit

The Reddit platform reporting capabilities are not as advanced as some of its competitors. It offers basic metrics, but does not go into as much detail as some of the other platforms, specifically with regards to engagement.

For example, users upvote and downvote on Reddit to express their approval or disapproval on a post, but this data is not available to view on the Reddit dashboard unless you are an admin. This would be important information for hands-on keyboard execution partners to have.

The Reddit dashboard only displays six months of data, so you are unable to see spend and performance for campaigns longer than 6 months ago. Because of this, we recommend Reddit campaigns run for less than 6 months.

Best Practices For Advertising On Reddit

  • Utilize community targeting and interest targeting in each ad set. When testing interest targeting vs. community targeting, we have found that community targeting tends to perform more efficiently when it comes to CTR than interest targeting, but combining interest targeting and community targeting in one ad set outperformed both.
  • Conduct research on the communities you would like to target. Look to see if these communities have many active members and what they discuss. Use this information to tailor your creatives to these users’ interests.
  • Use creative that feels authentic to your audience. Users of Reddit appreciate advertisers to meet them where they are.
  • Utilize both placement options (conversations and feed) at the ad set level in order to diversify where your ad will be seen.

Reddit is an excellent platform for reaching niche audiences at a relatively low cost. The platform is not as sophisticated as some of the others, but the ad performance on Reddit speaks for itself. If you are looking for a new platform for paid social, do some research on subreddits that your target audience may identify with and give Reddit ads a try.

Snapchat Swipe-Up Ads for Retargeting Teens

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi developed a social strategy for a higher education client using Snapchat swipe-up ads to target potential students. Despite tactical challenges of targeting restrictions, this social campaign resulted in benchmark-breaking performance.

Highlights

1.88%
Peak Swipe-Up Rate

0.91%
Avg. Swipe-Up Rate

6,345
Total Swipe-Ups

Challenge

For colleges and universities, advertising to potential students can be a tactical challenge. Most social media platforms allow targeting of individuals under the age of 18, but some severely limit advertisers’ ability to retarget to this key demographic. Potential students spend their time across several platforms. So determining where to most efficiently invest marketing dollars for this age range is not always clear.

With these challenges, higher education advertisers often pivot to target parents instead. While this can be effective, our client wanted to reach the students directly. 

Solution

After completing a strategic review of our options, we determined that Snapchat was the best option for two reasons. First, the platform allows advertisers to retarget the under 18 demographic, removing that tactical hurdle. Secondly, the target audience for our higher education clients are highly active on Snapchat. Beating out TikTok and Instagram, 35% of teens say Snapchat is their favorite social media app. With 87.3 million US monthly users, almost 30% of total internet users and 69% of teens and young adults, Snapchat quickly became the clear choice for this consideration campaign.

Snapchat swipe-up rates were the primary KPI. The benchmark for success was a swipe-up rate of 0.5%. With a budget of $3,300, the campaign generated 6,345 swipe ups, for an average rate of .91%. At its peak, the campaign generated a remarkable 1.88% swipe up rate. 

Part of this success was due to our use of lookalike audiences. This allowed us to scale and reach a broader audience and achieve a swipe-up rate of 1.05%, once again outperforming the 0.5% benchmark. 

Takeaways for Snapchat Swipe-Up Ad Success

An analysis of these high-performing campaigns leads us to believe that a significant portion of the success is attributable to the tactical strategy. The ads were being served to the right audience, at the right place, with the right technical execution. Both campaigns had different approaches to their creative design. This leads us to believe the visuals contributed less to performance than tactical execution. We hypothesize that with optimized creative strategy, similar campaigns would see even greater success.

To get started with Snapchat campaign optimizations, we recommend the following: 

  1. Focus on strong, front-loaded storytelling to hook the attention of the viewer. 
  2. Keep videos short. Snapchat recommends 0:03-0:05 seconds long. 
  3. Place your branding, offer and CTA in the first few seconds to ensure it is seen.
  4. Catch viewers’ attention with movement at the beginning of the video. 

 

Using Non-Media Data for Agile Tourism Marketing

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi collaborated with sister agencies, RADaR Analytics and True Media, to create a proprietary tool that allowed our tourism client to shift marketing dollars in real-time based on COVID-19 infection rates and consumer reception to travel. This offered our client a unique data set to inform marketing decisions – maximizing their dollars and promoting safe travel.

Highlights

124MM
Impressions

3%
Lift in New Website Visitors

20%
Lift in Time Spent on Site

Challenge

COVID-19 had a substantial impact on the travel and tourism industry, including one of Coegi’s tourism marketing clients. Spring and summer, historically their largest promotional period, came to a rapid halt as COVID-19 rapidly spread in 2020.

The tourism client’s ongoing objective is to support the travel and tourism industry throughout the state. However, as a government-funded organization, they also had to avoid promoting unsafe travel that could contribute to the spread of COVID-19. As a result, they tasked our team with developing a targeting strategy that continued to grow the industry in a responsible and innovative way.

Solution

We collaborated to create a proprietary tool that responded in real-time to both the COVID-19 pandemic and consumer interest in travel to allow for effective decision making and dynamic campaign adjustments. The end result was the COVID-19 Scoring Model. This model crossed weekly CDC level data regarding COVID-19 (case levels, 7 day rolling averages, death rates) with real-time interest indicators (Google trends data, website activity, on-site conversions). This gave each county in the state a score from 1-4 that indicated the level of opportunity in each market. 

Using this tool, we had a unique data set to inform decisions regarding geotargeting, messaging, and frequency to ensure the strategy aligned with likelihood of travel as well as safety. Coegi and our traditional media sister agency, True Media, collaborated to automate information collection and efficiently apply it to our digital media buys.

We were able to continue our omnichannel approach and expand awareness against a general traveler audience, as well as passion audiences based on preferred activities in the state. We also placed location data on top of our persona targeting in lower-funnel campaigns to ensure we were not reaching users who were strictly isolating.

Despite these challenges, we were able to drive strong results for our clients in the second half of 2020, fluidly shifting audience, geographic, and messaging strategy as data became available. Our campaigns cumulatively delivered over 124 million impressions, 61% above initial projections. We were also able to achieve a 3% increase in new website visitors and a 20% increase in time spent on site. 

Nine Easy Ways to Stay Up to Date on Social Media Trends

Posted on by Coegi

Social media is an ever-growing and evolving landscape with new platforms launching and new features being released on a frequent basis. Being able to reach your target audience on the right platform with the right feature or placement is crucial. It may feel overwhelming to try to keep up with the continually changing social media advertising trends without committing significant time – these nine tips will help you stay up to speed without sacrificing too much time.

Spend Time on Social Media Every Day

Try to set aside 10 minutes every day to scroll through your brand’s social media feeds. This is a great way to see what people are talking about, what’s trending today, and what changes are happening.

Social media tips to use your time efficiently:

  • Customize your feeds so that you can easily see relevant and trending content/topics.
  • Save articles to read for later so you can revisit when you have more time.  
  • Ask your team to also spend 10 minutes a day on social media and then share interesting findings regularly.
  • Familiarize yourself with new social platforms in order to understand new consumer trends

Use SEO to Find Places Where Your Business Could Fill a Market Gap

Use tools like SEMrush, Keyword Hero, Screaming Frog, or SEOquake to see what your customers are searching for in your industry and vertical, analyzing their behaviors at various stages in the funnel, and understanding nuances between various types of consumers.  Using keyword and search research will not only help you stay on top of trends, but can also help guide your brand’s content creation and create best practices.

Utilize Customer Feedback

Solicit customer feedback via surveys and customer interactions on your business’s social media pages. Surveys and feedback will help you to better understand your audience, their needs, and their interests, allowing your team to provide even better customer support and service. Additionally, feedback from your customers and social media followers helps you identify what type of content resonates with/performs best. 

Ideas of questions to ask:

  • What’s one feature/product/service you’d like us to start offering?
  • What [BRAND/COMPANY] product can you not live without?
  • What kind of [BRAND/COMPANY] content would you like to learn about?
  • What’s your struggle with _________?

Of course, once you receive feedback, you need to apply it

  • Your customers have the best pulse on your products and services and may think of things you didn’t. Listen to their suggestions of how to improve current offerings, things they’d like to see, or new ideas.
  • Don’t ignore negative feedback. Negative feedback is an opportunity to understand pain points, make improvements, and improve customer service.
  • Incorporate feedback into your product roadmap.
  • Thank your customers who provide positive feedback. These people will become positive advocates for your brand.

Keep an Eye on What Your Competitors Are Doing

Set aside 10 minutes a week to look at what your competitors are posting and promoting. Ensure you derive inspiration regarding emerging trends in your industry, or even some of your personal favorite brands, but are not copying content. Share your unique POV and showcase the expertise of your brand.

Subscribe to Trade Journals, Publications, Newsletters and Magazines

Schedule time on your calendar weekly to read through your subscriptions to keep on top of the latest trends and changes.

Some good publications that frequently share the latest and greatest on social trends include:

Join LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are a great way to network with other business owners and social media enthusiasts. You’ll be able to ask questions of your peers to learn from their experiences and discover new social media sites/trends. Some great groups to join include “Social media Marketing Group by Connect365.io”, “Digital Marketing: Social Media, Search, Mobile, & more”, and “Digital Marketing.”

Attend Conferences Monthly or Quarterly (whether in-person or virtual!) 

Get the most up-to-date and relevant information about social media trends and advice from industry experts. Conferences are a great way to network and interface with other professionals in the social media industry who have different backgrounds.

Stay Current with Twitter and TikTok Trends

Twitter and TikTok function differently in terms of the type of content and algorithms than the other social media platforms. Here are some tips to help stay on top of what’s trending in both platforms:

Twitter

  • Create a stream on Twitter with hashtags such as #socialmediamarketing, #smchat, or #TwitterTip to help understand what to expect in the coming weeks.
  • Follow social media marketing influencers on Twitter and LinkedIn (sometimes discovered through hashtags!) and spend time reading their content.

TikTok

  • The “For You” page is a great place to start to see trendy and viral videos but this should not be the only place to look for trends.
  •  Hashtags help people find relevant content (think #mentalhealth, #prank, or #taylorswift). The most-used hashtags in video captions are the best place to see what is trending on TikTok. Many users will often use hashtags relevant to their niche in addition to one or two trending hashtags to help boost their content organically.
  • Keep an eye on challenges on the platform. Users are actively creating and engaging in challenges, which can create new trends. Many challenges include lip-syncing, dancing, or skits.
  • Observe what influencers on Tik Tok are posting. Influencers and celebrity posts on the platform will be popular in addition to clueing you in to what is trending.

Commit to Learning

The world of social media is always growing and changing. By spending time daily or weekly on social media platforms and news, you’ll be able to have a firm grasp on trends and changes. 

Staying on top of social media trends can be a daunting task. Using these 10 tips can help you use your time efficiently and stay in the know.

 

Further reading:

Measure What Matters

Posted on by Coegi

One of my long-standing mantras at Coegi is ‘Measure What Matters’.

So when the ANA released a report entitled ‘Media KPIs That Matter’, I was more than a little intrigued.  What the report found won’t surprise too many of us that work in performance marketing: most brands focus on KPIs that don’t really align with their business objectives.  

So why is this?  For starters, there is a lot of pressure for digital campaigns to be ‘data driven’.  I bet if the ANA asked if their members organizations are data driven, 100% would say yes.  The challenge is that there is too much data for the decision makers to truly understand. For marketing veterans that came from creative or PR backgrounds (that weren’t exposed to digital media buying earlier in their careers), it is challenging to grade the effectiveness of an omni-channel digital marketing.   Thus, they lean on the stats they feel most comfortable with: CPM, CPC and CTR.  Website traffic, reach and completion rates.  What we have longed referred to at Coegi as vanity metrics. To be fair, media efficiency should be a factor, but far less than many brands think. As my friends at The Trade Desk say, you can’t report on CTR on an earnings call.  

But what about ROAS?

Isn’t that the magic metric we should all be optimizing to anyways?  It should be in theory, but in practice, it all depends on attribution.  Is 100% of the conversion credit going to the last touch or last impression?  There are very few digital programs that are even attempting multi-touch attribution, and those that try are stymied by walled gardens that don’t share a unified measurement framework.  ROAS numbers are only as accurate as the data you use to analyze it, and too often there is more noise than signal in last-touch attribution.  Recent changes to app tracking on Apple phones and the impending elimination of third-party cookies on Google Chrome make attribution all the more challenging.

So what about the agencies?  Isn’t it their job to advise their clients as to the metrics they should be measuring?   Certainly many performance strategists are pushing to move towards more meaningful measurement, but it often involves a lot more institutional buy-in at the brand that you would expect.  Advocating an advanced measurement framework at the end of a proposal just isn’t going to cut it.  Often, you not only have to educate the marketing team, but the C-suite, product and sales teams as well.  

Creating a path to measure what matters

So what is the path forward for marketers trying to determine their media KPIs?  From my perspective, there is no singular KPI that defines success for any digital marketing campaign.  Instead, we should build custom measurement frameworks across multiple KPIs, that incorporate not just media efficiency metrics, but also engagement, brand lift, transactional data, and ROAS analysis, to get a better understanding of your digital program as a whole. Furthermore, it can be worthwhile to revisit the more academic and statistical forms of analysis, such as media mix modeling, matched market tests, and regression analysis, to get to the heart of success. 

Recommended reading:

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