Inside the World of Influencer Marketing with Tagger Media’s Peter Kennedy

This Q&A is an adaptation of a conversation between Coegi’s SVP of Marketing and Innovation, Ryan Green, and Peter Kennedy, the founder and president of influencer marketing company Tagger Media, which was recently acquired by Sprout Social. You can listen to the full episode of the podcast here

Read on to hear Peter’s insights on the startup journey, and how he was able to adapt and build a successful company by focusing on customer needs. ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Ryan: I’m happy to be joined by the founder and CEO of Tagger Media, Pete Kennedy. Thanks for joining us today. I know we have some big news to talk about but would love to hear a little bit about your background, a quick elevator pitch, and resume of how you got here today.

Pete Kennedy: Thanks for having me here. I’ve been doing stuff for a long time, but I’ve always kind of started companies. That’s always been my thing. So I’ve started companies in the independent travel space back in the.com era, I started a medical device company, I started a water sports recreational business, and then obviously most recently started Tagger Media about eight years ago.

Ryan: So, I don’t wanna bury the lead here. Tagger just got acquired by Sprout Social, so congratulations. I’m sure that was quite the process. I’d love to hear, and I’m sure our audience would love to hear a little bit about what happens during an acquisition – how do you know that the company that’s acquiring you is the right fit? What was that process like?

Pete: I think selling a company is harder than actually starting a company. Crazy enough. When they say that the deal changes a hundred times a day, it really does. We talked to Sprout probably in December of 2022 for the first time. They reached out and said, hey, we’re kind of looking at this space. The real conversation happened [in the late spring of 2023], and they came out and we met with their CEO, their president, head of business development, and what we were looking for is an opportunity to win in this space. 

Sprout has 30,000 customers and they’re all doing influencer marketing, ’cause it’s such a major part of the media mix and it’s obviously such an important part of the social space as well. What we were looking for is not only a company that we could scale with in a major way, but also the right cultural fit. This team is absolutely amazing. A lot of people are coming from Salesforce at that company, which is interesting. So they have this growth mentality and we have like maybe 10 sellers around the world. They have like 600. So it’s just this machine that we can jump into which is great, and that the entire team is so excited about Tagger and the ability to sell influencer to all their customers. 

Ryan: Let’s step back a little bit to when you first were kind of coming up with the concept of Tagger. Most businesses, and you’ve started a number of them in various industries, we’re trying to find a problem to solve, right? So what was the problem that you were really looking at and where did you see your ability and your team’s ability to find a unique solution with Tagger?

Pete: It’s so interesting, that ideation stage. There’s like five stages of a startup, right? There’s ideation, there’s launch, there’s validation, there’s growth, and then there’s maturity or exit. Ideation stage is so much fun and there’s two ways that you can really do this: One is, which is the smart way to do it, identify a need, and then create solutions based on that need. Or you can create an idea that you think is interesting that might pertain to a market and then you build that. We actually did both of those things when we started Tagger. 

We first started with this idea, and the idea was we wanted to disrupt the music industry. The music industry spends billions of dollars every year trying to find new artists and then promoting those artists. They do that by having boots on the ground all over the world. They have music bookers, they have doormen at venues who are seeing artists that they think are interesting, sound producers, all these different people. A lot of times they’re able to find these people very early on, but what we did is we said, well, let’s listen to everyone who matters in the music space, primarily on Twitter at the time. If everyone’s talking about “Ryan”, we could predict that “Ryan”’s gonna go somewhere. Not surprising. The most popular people early on are gonna go somewhere and it really had nothing to do with listening, likes, or views, which that market had been somewhat gamified. 

So we created this platform where we just tracked all these people, but we had to create databases of all these musicians. We had to create databases of all these people who were talking about musicians. When we turned on the platform, we found, like Dua Lipa eight years ago, we found Billie Eilish eight years ago. I mean, we found all these amazing artists and go to the music industry, right? To validate this concept and they all said, what do you idiots know about music? I was like, nothing, but listen, we’re doing what you’re doing, but we’re doing a million times a day and they said, we’re not interested. (Now, fast forward, most of those music companies are clients, not to find artists, but to find influencers.) 

Then I went to New York and I took 40 meetings in like a two week time period. And every time I was just pitching a new thing because we had this really interesting platform where we could understand audiences and their propensity, and we could find artists and all these things, but we didn’t know what we had and how it might apply to someone else’s business. Gary Vaynerchuk over at VaynerMedia, “Gary V”, his team heard what we were up to. We got a meeting and they heard about these crazy people running around New York meeting with everyone. Gary and his team were like, listen, we love your data, we love how you can understand audiences, but you need workflow around influencer marketing. 

I asked the most important question: what is influencer marketing? Because I had absolutely no idea. And he said we have 30 people running campaigns for these big brands around the world and we’re really doing it on Excel spreadsheets. So if you can take our workflow, and by the way, they were hiring like a thousand influencers per campaign. Absolutely crazy and they said, if you can take our workflow and put it into a platform, we’ll be your first customer. 

So I moved to New York for a month, and I lived with them to really understand what they actually needed. Instead of just making a spreadsheet on a platform, we wanted to take that workflow to figure out how we can make it easier. My development team’s in Poland, so I was going back and forth during that month. But by the end of the month, we were able to deliver them a product that worked for them. 

Then it was really interesting. We then brought on a couple more clients. So we could have gone big and just raised money and hired all these people, but we didn’t, we slowly got another client and then another client. We focused on agencies because they had the biggest pain points. Just like I did with Vayner, we would get a new client and then I would go sit with them for weeks and just go in their office and I’d watch the bouncing ball: Like, you discover influencers, but why are you discovering those influencers? Is there a strategy? Who’s the strategy person saying we need to go do that? I’d go meet with that person and then we would have to go pay these people. I’m like, well, who pays these people? They’re like, oh, that’s, accounts payable. I go talk to them. I’m like, well, what are your pain points? So it was interesting, within like a year, I would walk into every agency or any brand, and I would know more about their business because I lived with all these different people to really understand what their needs were. That’s really how we did it. So I was able to identify a need based off of them telling us “this is what we need,” then really just going in and understanding everyone else’s needs so that you can build a unified platform that works for both brands and agencies.

Ryan: So, continuing on that, what are some of the ways that influencer and content marketing has changed and how have those changes evolved the way your platform has changed? You talked about having a modular concept for different workflows with different agencies in house brands, et cetera. But the marketplace has changed quite a bit too externally, so what things have you seen change over the years and how has your company reacted to those changes?

Pete: Yeah, definitely. There are multiple different ways it’s changed. First of all, what you get from influencer marketing has changed dramatically, right? 

Back when I started this, it was very much a PR focus where it’s just like, let’s get these mentions out there. It kind of was replacing newspapers, magazines, and traditional PR because that had kind of died off and was really being replaced by influencer marketing. So it was very much awareness building KPIs. But that shift, that allowed money to flow into this space, is when agencies and brands started to look at this more as a paid media execution versus a PR execution, right? So we would go into agencies, especially PR agencies and train them about paid media. 

Really, Vayner was the one who kind of got me on this. I mean, the Chris Aldi who was running their influencer business, he works for us now, but he started Gary’s paid media business. He’s like, no, this is paid media. This is what it is. So, even if you’re paying someone or you’re giving them a free product, you’re giving them something that costs you money, it’s paid, right? So I think that was a big change. 

Then the platforms made it easier to report on these campaigns and measure an influencer campaign the same way we measure your other media mix. That was massive. For Procter and Gamble to put $200 million into this business, they need to be able to measure this the same way we measure their other media mix and that was vital. 

Then a big shift that we’ve seen, especially over the last two years, is we’re not selling our platform to the influencer marketing team. We are now selling to the strategy team, the analytics team, the growth team, the new business teams at agencies, the technology team. All these different teams are using our platform really to get a holistic view of what’s happening socially, right? Social listening is important. Sprout has this amazing social listening platform and they’re listening to everyone in the world. What we do is we fine tune that down to the people who actually matter in terms of moving culture and those are influencers or creators. So having that view is helpful when you create that strategy. 

Then I think the last thing that’s changed dramatically is just, AI and, well, I’m sure we’ll talk about this, but AI has just allowed us to really get a better understanding of what’s happening, being able to ingest billions of bits of data, consolidate that down to really specific things so you can be like, okay, yeah, It’s raining, but how do I make it rain harder? Or how do I make it stop raining? You need a platform like ours to do that.

Ryan: When we think about who, what, when, where, why and we’re talking about AI, I think AI has a lot of potential in the first four, and it’s that fifth one that seems to still be the human element of it. I think that’s almost true in your platform to some degree as well. I know you have why definitely covered there but that’s where the humans are spending most attention. Thinking about the, why the marketers behind the screen are interacting in that area, probably the most, if I were to summarize.

Pete: Well, I think that that is actually where AI comes in the most, to be honest with you. Let’s say that your client manufactures pickup trucks. Well, why are people buying your pickup truck versus someone else? How did those customers — marketers always say the customers actually position your brand. Marketers don’t position the brand, right? The consumer positions the brand, not marketers. So if we can take all the content from influencers about pickup trucks over the last eight months, it’s probably a million pieces of content. I can’t actually go through all that content to pull out nuggets, but I can put that through AI.

What AI will do is they will look at all of that content and they will pick out themes like within two seconds: Towing capabilities, technology, interior comfort, all these different benefits. Then you can then stack rank how your brand fits within each one of those based off of mentions. So if your pickup truck is mentioned the fewest times in terms of towing capability and the few times you were mentioned, you have the worst sentiment. Everyone’s saying your towing capabilities are horrible. You as a marketer was like, I think our towing capability’s amazing. Well, the market doesn’t and the people who move culture are actually saying the opposite of what you think. 

So as a marketer, my strategy now on the why could be, oh, towing capabilities important for this industry because it’s the most talked about benefit with all the benefits of the pickup truck and we’re the worst. We probably need to create a campaign around our towing capabilities. Maybe we need to go back to the product team and say, listen, our towing capability sucks. We need to make it better. But I think AI allows you to filter all this data to understand what are the benefits and where do you stack up along those benefits?

Ryan: There’s obviously positive use that Tagger has with AI. Another thing that is a benefit to us is being able to sniff out fake followers and bots and things of that nature too. As AI becomes more sophisticated, as there are deeper fakes, things like that, is there a roadmap that Tagger has to help marketers at scale, identify where there’s nefarious content? Where we’re to avoid certain areas so that when we are looking at a plan with 2000 content creators on it, that we’re able to get the 200 out that may be coming from a negative place to make sure that we’re focusing our spend on what’s gonna move the needle and what matters?

Pete: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that fake followers is definitely something that is important but there’s two things that I think are even more important. 

One, it’s content, right? That’s what we’re also seeing. Like I said, we’re selling into all these different departments, but that influencer content is being used across the entire customer journey. So for example, yeah, you’re gonna run a campaign and it’s gonna be an awareness building campaign, or maybe you’re trying to get conversion. But that customer journey, okay, they’re gonna see that influencer content and then they’re gonna start to see other social media ads about that brand. As you know, you have to see something multiple times before you go buy it. Well, what we know is that influencer content performs 300% better than branded content — on TikTok It’s like 3000% better. Why? Because it’s user generated content and does better than branded content. So now we’re seeing all this influencer content being used in paid media ads and then when you go onto these product pages on an e-commerce site, we’re seeing influencer content because again, it does better than branded content. 

Then when we look at like cart abandonment emails, they’re AB testing that with influencer content, it’s actually converting better. So all the way along this customer journey, what you’re seeing is the influencer content. So yes, if your sole purpose is I just want to go out and buy an influencer, hire their audience essentially, and use that as my conversion, yes, fake followers is super important – but to me it’s like, let’s go find creators who make amazing content. Who creates content that’s authentic to themselves and authentic to their audiences because we, through our affinity data, we can really understand, like, do these audiences care about these things? Then let’s go take that content and use it across our entire e-commerce, our entire customer journey so that we’re getting the most outta that content. So fake followers are becoming a little less. 

Then we’re also looking at more in terms of first party data and saying, well, do certain influencers convert better than other influencers do? When you start to be able to get more and more of that data, then it’s like, Ryan, you might have a hundred thousand followers and maybe 50% of them are fake, but you convert better in healthcare than anyone else. I don’t really care. Now, maybe what that means is instead of paying you based off of your a hundred thousand followers, yeah, I’m gonna pay you based off of you having 50,000 followers, but if I know that your conversion is so high, your followers don’t really matter because I’m paying you based off of what you’re gonna convert from me anyways. Again, not always. There’s multiple ways to think about that and I think fake followers are getting less and less relevant and more about, well, what can we do with this data and what’s our ROI on this campaign as a whole?

Ryan: Switching gears a little bit. Thinking about brands that really do well in the content marketing space, there’s obviously some brands that have built the almost entirety of their marketing function around influencers. I have some brands that don’t spend a dime on influencers and that are performing very well for themselves. 

What are a couple examples that you see of brands that are using creators and influencers appropriately, making it part of their bigger ecosystem, but using that to really drive their brand growth, their conversion growth, their sales, all of it? 

Pete: Companies that do it well are finding influencers that are authentic to their brand category, but whose audiences also care about those things. I think Lululemon’s done a really interesting job of this, because yes, they’re out there promoting all of their clothing, which is great. But they’re also partnering with mental health influencers as well because they know that that’s an important part. So when brands are partnering with influencers to, yes, talk about their products, but more importantly they’re talking about things that matter to their audience. Mental health is something that matters to their audience and they realize that. 

So, back in the day, influencer content used to be polished and beautiful and just everything. And now it’s real because people are looking for social connection and they’re kind of rejecting this social comparison, you know? I think that companies like Lululemon have realized that. You’re gonna see every size model in their content, you’re gonna see them talking about issues, not about working out, but about mental health, things that matter to their consumer. 

Then another company that I think did some interesting stuff was Behr Paint. They create paints and they have a bunch of different colors and they partnered with Emily Zugay and she’s this hilarious influencer that basically takes all of her paints and then she destroys the paint colors and renames them. So she might take like, green or something and call it like, cute green or way more clever than what I’m gonna come up with. But again, it’s kind of rejecting this high gloss social comparison and being real and hilarious. Brands are able now to kind of take the polish off of themselves, I think which is kind of interesting as well. Letting an influencer who, this is what she does, and that’s why she has a big audience, literally kind of like destroy the brand in a way because, you know, that that’s what people are looking for. So I think those are two pretty interesting examples. But, there’s hundreds of brands that are doing a great job of promoting their companies, but really bringing in social issues that matter to their audience, which is gonna be different from a brand next door whose audience is completely different.

Ryan: Very brave of Behr to strip off the gloss, so to speak. I think that leads into my next question: what changes do you predict will come in influencer marketing over the next couple of years? You’ve talked about the change from that curated content to a lot of more unfiltered content brands that are looking to partner with longer term ambassadors. Then just one-off activations with individual influencers as I’m sure you’re looking at how your company’s going to grow with the recent acquisition. Where do you see the marketplace going?

Pete: Yeah, again, I think that you’re gonna see more and more influencer content being used across the entire customer journey. I think that’s gonna be a big shift. Honestly, though, I think AI is gonna be a major addition to the influencer marketing process. Again, it’s not gonna replace anyone’s job, it’s just gonna allow them to be better at what they do. 

So a couple examples would be, just sending out communications with creators, being able to analyze that creator’s content and their voice, and then writing emails to these creators. You have to ask these people to work with your brand and not every creator wants to work with your brand. So being able to create a voice that’s gonna resonate with the creator using AI and be able to do this across a hundred influencers at the same time, is gonna make you way more efficient in your job. So that’s one quick example. 

Another example is just to take all of your content as a brand and look across all these creators instantaneously to find that perfect match of tone and thought and content in order to find those right creators. I also love this idea. AI does a great job of summarizing content. What it doesn’t do a good job of yet is to say, hey, here’s what’s happening in my industry. I have a hundred thousand dollars. How should I spend that? It can’t do that yet. I think in the future it might be able to, because again, it can just summarize data pretty well, but it can’t tell you how to spend your money. 

Ryan: So can I surmise that there may be some changes or enhancements to your platform that artificial intelligence is gonna be able to fuel?

Pete: Oh, we’re already doing it right now. So, I’ve already seen a lot of this. Like I’ve seen all this stuff already on our platform. We’re still developing it and we’ll be launching it over the next month or two, but yeah, it’s just gonna make your life so much easier.

Ryan: Coegi’s going to be a beta tester for that.

Pete: A hundred percent. I mean, there are certain agencies that are thought leaders and you guys are ahead of the curve with most of this stuff. So obviously we always look for partnerships with you guys to help us drive that product development. That’s really where our product development happens, is with you guys, it’s like, what do you guys need? What are you guys thinking about how the market’s going and how can we build based on those needs?

Ryan: Well, we’re excited to see what that looks like both, with the quick wins and those longer ones that’s fresh off the press. I’m really excited to continue to partner with you. 

Pete: Amazing. Thanks, Ryan.

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5 Social Advertising Trends for 2024

Advancements in technology and evolving consumer behavior are continuously shaping the social media landscape, presenting brands with an opportunity to evolve alongside the consumer to meet brand goals.

Users are no longer looking to social platforms as only a way to connect with friends, but rather as a mechanism for shopping, searching, and enjoying entertainment.

So what should your brand focus their social media strategy on? Keep reading to discover our top five social media trends for 2024 and tips on how to effectively incorporate them into your strategy.

Social Media Trend #1: Growth of Influencer Marketing

Investment in influencer marketing is expected to see strong growth in the next few years due to its effectiveness in building trust and authenticity for your brand. In 2024, there will be an increased focus on leveraging short-form UGC videos, testing out generative AI, and mindfully selecting creators that foster a diverse and representative social media community. 

What You Need to Know:

Influencer Marketing Tips:

  • Establish clear goals and measurable KPIs before selecting a content creator. For example, if your influencer marketing goal is to drive increased engagement, select a creator that has a loyal and highly engaged audience.
  • Collaborate with content creators that align with your brand’s tone and have a follower community with interests that match your product or service offering.

To learn more about tap into creators for your marketing strategy, check out Coegi’s guide to influencer marketing

Social Media Trend #2: Paid Subscription Models

Global governments are continuing to hold social platforms accountable for adhering to user privacy regulations. With the increased regulations, social platforms are looking for solutions to maintain an optimal user experience, including offering paid monthly subscriptions for users to opt out of ads. 

What You Need to Know:

Paid Subscription Model Tips:

  • Influencer marketing is going to become important in a paid subscription model since the content will not be categorized as an ad. Use this time to start honing your influencer marketing strategy to learn what works best for your brand.
  • Organic social will be another effective way to reach users in an ad-free environment. Focus your efforts on building your brand’s following across social media platforms and learning what content resonates well with your core audience.
  • While the development of paid subscription models is currently focused on the EU market, other markets may follow. Be sure to keep up-to-date on the latest platform releases.

Social Media Trend #3: Generative AI

AI had a large impact on the marketing industry in 2023 and is expected to continue with increased momentum in 2024 as social platforms continue rolling out AI features. From AI chatbots directly integrated within the platforms to audio generation tools, the way users and marketers engage with social media will be in a constant state of change.

What You Need to Know:

  • Due to strong user engagement with Snapchat’s My AI, the platform is looking for ways to leverage the chatbot to boost advertising.
  • Meta released two Generative AI tools for audio creation – AudioCraft to create audio and music from a text prompt, and Voicebox to assist with editing audio.
  • Meta AI is a virtual assistant – including 28 familiar individuals, such as Snoop Dog and Kendall Jenner, that users can interact with across Meta platforms.

Generative AI Tips:

  • Generative AI is going to elevate the importance of brand’s maintaining authenticity. As deepfakes and AI assistants circulate across social platforms, users will look to brands to be a source of truth and familiarity.
  • Create internal guidelines and policies for the usage of AI to ensure it is being used ethically and responsibly.
  • Read our article – Do’s and Don’ts of Using Generative AI for Creative – for more information on how to effectively use AI.

Social Media Trend #4: Social Platforms Utilized as a Search Engine

Social media platforms continue to serve a dual purpose, namely among younger users, to connect and engage with friends and to utilize as a search engine for finding products and services. This shift in consumer behavior should be accounted for when planning your marketing strategy.

What You Need to Know:

Social Search Tips:

Social Media Trend #5: AR/VR Advancements

Gone are the days of one-dimensional internet usage as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology advancements are spurring an “immersive internet.” Users are seeking a more engaging experience across the web and social platforms, giving brands an opportunity to better meet their audiences’ needs and preferences.

What You Need to Know: 

AR/VR Tips:

  • Leverage Pinterest Try on product pins to enable users to virtually try on products wherever they are, increasing engagement and attention.
  • Meta augmented reality ads create an engaging and unique experience where users test out products and interact with your brand.
  • It’s important to keep your brand’s product catalog on social platforms updated so users can virtually engage with your brand and build affinity.

If you want to discuss how to apply these trends and tips to your marketing strategy in 2024, reach out to schedule a discovery call with the team at Coegi.

Using Multicultural Influencers to Drive Vaccine Consideration

Brief

A pharmaceutical technology company was seeking to drive preference for their COVID-19 booster with multicultural consumers by using authentic, relevant creator-driven storytelling. 

Highlights

28%
lift in vaccine consideration


88%
lift in vaccine discussion intent


7.56%
paid engagement rate compared to 1.86% industry benchmark

Challenge

The brand’s marketing goal was to drive preference for COVID-19 bivalent booster by leveraging the company’s positioning as the disruptive innovation leader in the space. They wanted to establish an enduring preference for their branded products by: 

  • Educating multicultural consumers
  • Growing urgency and 
  • Increasing uptake of the new COVID-19 booster vaccination

To establish this trust, the brand needed to provide authenticity in its delivery when communicating with its multicultural audiences. We felt this would be best accomplished through influencer marketing

Solution

A key opportunity identified by the Coegi team was that 15.1M people within target DMAs primarily spoke Spanish. To deliver an authentic message, our aim was to support Spanish speakers’ health journeys while driving business impact for the pharmaceutical tech brand. We focused on utilizing booster messaging that was not only in Spanish, but content that was more culturally relevant. 

In order to speak to a Spanish speaking audience, we needed to learn about them in more detail. We started this process by leveraging data technology and intelligence platform, Resonate. Coegi placed an audience learning pixel across digital placements to learn about the Spanish speaking audience and their online behaviors. 

We collaborated with the brand to identify the top US DMAs by vaccine data in combination with the highest indexing DMAs for Spanish speakers. In doing so, we were able to blend a demographic and geographic targeting strategy in an effort to build trust and affinity with a Spanish speaking audience. 

Coegi carried out a rigorous process to identify a varied mix of macro to micro influencers to generate authentic stories. These influencers were diverse – ranging from health content focused, healthcare workers to the average, lifestyle influencer.  But all were unified by sharing a value of preventative health and translating why vaccination against Covid-19 is important to them. Throughout the campaign, our team partnered with 13 influencers and delivered content to 15M Spanish-speaking individuals across the country.

We asked each creator to generate three pieces of content that authentically communicated the power and benefits of the brand’s COVID-19 bivalent vaccine booster. Focusing on compliance while building the highest level of interest, relatability, and trust, we requested that the messaging of each piece answered these three questions:

  • Why is COVID-19 still relevant?
  • Why get vaccinated or boosted?
  • Why trust this brand’s product?

Results

Our influencer content performed well through multiple measurement perspectives. The content outperformed influencer benchmarks with some of our influencer content going viral – one piece of content earned a total reach of 414,000 which exceeded the influencer’s follower count by 2,000%. 

Coegi also leveraged a post-campaign brand lift study to measure more advanced impact learnings. According to the study, our influencer content delivered a 28% lift in vaccine consideration and a 88% lift in discussion intent, outperforming the Kantar benchmark by 4x. 

Organic Influencer Content

  • 1,447,404 Impressions
  • 732,297 Reach
  • 13,686 Engagements 
  • 6.36% Engagement Rate

Paid Influencer Content

  • 16,942,764 Impressions
  • 13,185,622 Reach 
  • 1,617,533 Post Engagements
  • 7.56% Engagement Rate vs 1.86% industry benchmark 
  • 2.28% Estimated Ad Recall Lift 
  • $5.25 Average CPM vs $8.75 industry benchmark

Key Learnings

We attribute a lot of our success to the authentic and real content created by our partnered influencers. The healthcare and pharmaceutical vertical poses many challenges. But with our focus on producing genuine, authentic messages for the Spanish speaking audience in the United States, we were able to provide engaging content in a form this audience could relate with.  

To learn more, check out Coegi’s guide to influencer marketing

Growing Scale and Efficiency Reaching Financial Services Professionals with Search Marketing

Brief

Coegi works closely with a financial services company whose advertising focuses on establishing themselves as a marketplace leader by growing brand presence alongside a competitive landscape and providing value to financial professionals and consumers through retirement planning content that educates, supports, and inspires action. 

This financial services firm partnered with Coegi to reach financial professionals and retirement aged consumers through a B2B2C omnichannel strategy. One component of this strategy included search engine marketing, which presented robust opportunities though with initially limited scale. 

Highlights

-92%
Cost per Click and Cost per Action


2,504%
Increase in Impressions Served Against 1st Party Audiences


$4
Cost per Action Compared $49 Before Optimizations

Challenge

The financial services company wanted to drive sales growth opportunities by engaging with prospective advisors through relevant content, utilizing first party CRM lists across a variety of channels to ensure media was reaching their specific audiences. The pull nature of the search channel resulted in minimal scale and high costs, impeding the impact of this channel within the media ecosystem.

Solution

In order to continue to reach these niche first party audiences while maximizing exposure across all possible channels, the team incorporated discovery ads. Adding this placement provided a higher volume of page visits at a lower CPA while maintaining tight control on users exposed to the ads.

Results

By expanding inventory to include discovery ads, the team was able to lower CPA and CPC by 92%, while increasing impressions served against the first-party audiences by 2,504%. This shows the importance of utilizing all inventory options to maximize platform results.

The Impact of Content Marketing on Your Brand

Now more than ever, consumers desire a more meaningful connection with the brands they follow. Your audiences crave behind the scenes videos covering meaningful origin and philanthropic stories, the colorful, entertaining brand voice on social media, and highly personalized written content that feels truly authentic. There is no better way to do that than investing in a content marketing strategy. From everyday people to celebrities to brands both large and small, everyone is realizing the power that content has over driving action along the customer journey. If your brand is not investing in thoughtful content today, read on to learn more about why every brand should be incorporating this into their marketing strategies.  

Why Content Marketing?

Whether you yourself are the brand or your business is the brand, content marketing is important to invest in – especially in the digital era where content is constantly consumed across multiple platforms for both personal and professional reasons. 

Here are some of the key reasons to believe in content marketing:

It’s lucrative

Content marketing can boost conversions leading to higher sales or traffic to your website, all the while signaling to google that the domain has high authority and increasing your rank in search engines. More content + more exposure = higher ROI. Invest in high quality content and your audience will invest in you.  

It’s a relationship builder

While content marketing may ultimately lead to higher sales, it shouldn’t be  about selling, but rather helping. By taking this approach, content marketing can help you increase loyalty thus building trust and creating a sense of community surrounding your brand. Make sure you are tailoring your content to your audience’s biggest questions and what they value. 

Your competitors are using it

97% of businesses use content marketing, and that includes 73% of marketers.. Don’t fall behind and let your competitors get the upper hand. Use multiple different types of content to be seen as a thought leader among similar brands and meet business goals at each stage of the customer journey. 

Choosing Your Content

The process of choosing which content types to lean towards looks a little different for every brand. There are a vast number of content types like social media posts, infographics, blogs, podcasts, videos, and paid content marketing with reputable publishers. It’s important to start by assessing what makes the most sense for your brand.

Take a look at the infographic below to begin aligning your content marketing goals with your overarching brand goals.

Defining Your audience

Your audience should play a large role in determining your content. Start by narrowing down your audience’s potential topics of interest and looking at which platforms your audience is conducting the most research or spending the most time engaging with. 

Developing your message strategy

It’s important to set content goals to measure how well your content is performing. This can help you decide which pieces of content or messaging themes are performing well to refine your strategic approach moving forward. 

Aligning brand goals with content formats

As you pinpoint your target audience and set content goals to develop a sound messaging strategy, you need to identify your brand goals. Pinpoint the primary KPIs you’re looking to measure to determine which types of content best serve your purpose. 

Overcoming Tricky Hurdles

While there are many reasons for brands to invest in content marketing, it is important to understand that there are a few hurdles to overcome to see the ROI brands desire. 

Benefits aren’t immediate

If you’re thinking about tapping into content marketing with expectations of immediate success such as high engagement and conversions, you need to temper your expectations. Building a content strategy is a time consuming period marked by trial and error. It takes great time and resources to discover what makes sense for your brand and for your audience in particular. Don’t rush the process. 

Maintaining originality

With 97% of businesses already using content marketing, it’s clear that the industry is highly competitive. This can make it difficult to differentiate your brand from your competitors. Your competitors are often creating similar types of content on the same platforms and channels, trying to capture the attention of the same types of consumers. Make sure you aren’t spending too much time trying to “keep up with the Joneses” and are instead focusing on creating content that creatively showcases how your brand can make the consumers’ lives better. Tap into your creative juices based on consumer insights to find ways to make your content standout.

A shortage of ideas

Constantly coming up with new content ideas can leave marketers feeling burned out. But while the instinct may be that new content is better and more exciting to your audience, it’s important to think smarter not harder. Find ways to revamp your existing content, and find ways to make it more valuable – both to your audience and Google.  

Overall, content marketing is a great investment for your brand. It’s lucrative, builds that connection you’re looking for with your audience, and allows you the space and opportunity to grow your brand like never before. So begin exploring content marketing efforts today – whether you’re handling in-house or outsourcing through a trusted partner.To learn more about content marketing, be sure to check out:

3 Ways AI is Shifting the Search Marketing Landscape

With the rise of AI-powered technology, user search behavior is in a constant state of change. Voice assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, have transformed search queries into colloquial conversations. Google Lens has made visual searches a reality. ChatGPT has emerged as a new prompt-based search engine. All of these developments create new ways of searching and present a challenge to marketers to determine how to navigate the search landscape as user needs and preferences evolve.

The Continuous Evolution of Search Behavior

Voice Search

Speaking to technology as if we are conversing with a friend has become a natural instinct in this new tech age. Picture it. You’re driving to your parents’ house for dinner and notice you’re low on gas. What do you do? *raises phone to speak* “Hey Google, can you tell me where the nearest gas station is?” Voice assistants have created an easier, frictionless, and in this case, safer option for getting the information you’re seeking in lieu of physically typing your query into a search bar. More than 1 billion voice searches occur each month globally, which is predicted to continue to grow. 

How should marketers adapt?

In response to the longer, question-based queries that voice assistants have introduced, search teams must modify their approach to keep pace with changing search behavior. Since 27% of voice searches take place on mobile devices, it’s critical that marketers either maintain the mobile-friendliness of their brand’s site or create a microsite that is optimized for mobile devices. A mobile-optimized site will create a more seamless search experience for users who start their quest for information using a voice assistant. It’s also important to develop a content strategy on your brand’s site based on keywords related to your product and/or service offerings in order to rank higher on search results pages. Quality content increases the likelihood of being the trusted source selected to answer a user’s voice question.

The gas station example also alludes to the fact that voice searches are used frequently in a local context. Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) teams need to collaborate together to develop a local search strategy to ensure your brand is at the fingertips of a user’s inquiries regarding surrounding businesses and services. If applicable to your brand, maintaining a local-friendly site as well, including store locations and hours of operation, will help place your brand at the forefront of a local-based search. 

Visual Search

Advances in technology have made visual search another avenue for information seekers. Google Lens, which launched in 2017, is the predominant platform leading the way for visual search. To visually search, a user can either upload an image directly from their camera roll or capture a new picture in the Google app, and Google will analyze the image to provide relevant image and content results. For example, if you come across a plant on your morning walk that you want to know more about, you can take a photo and Google will provide relevant search results, such as the plant’s name, care instructions, or a shopping ad of a local nursery where you can purchase said plant.

Google shared that people use Lens for 12 billion visual searches per month, which is a 4x increase in just two years. With this kind of YoY growth, visual search most certainly needs to be a consideration when planning a brand’s search strategy.

How should marketers adapt?

Visual search makes product images the hero of the ad, so it’s key for marketers to focus on creative. Maintain your brand’s product catalogs, ensuring all offerings are up-to-date and highlighted with high-quality imagery. For example, if you’re promoting travel coffee mugs, having all color options available in the product catalog will provide a seamless search experience. If a user visually searches for a pink mug, the product ad will provide a link to purchase the pink mug that best fits their interests.

It’s also imperative to understand which visuals drive your audience to make that all important click to navigate to your brand’s website. Creative A/B tests should be a core component of your search strategy in order to nimbly optimize toward the highest performing images.

Generative AI

Let’s not forget about the elephant in the room – Generative AI. AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, have emerged as a supplementary search engine. Currently, ChatGPT generates responses for 10 million searches per day compared to Google at 8.5 billion searches. While Google firmly maintains first position in the search volume leaderboard, ChatGPT search volume continues to grow, and therefore, must be proactively accounted for.

How should marketers adapt?

Generative AI chatbots are creating a rise in colloquial, prompt-based search queries which will flow over into conventional search engines. As a result, marketers should deploy new long-tail keywords to keep pace with these new search queries. In addition, these longer phrases will require a marketer to distill intent and provide relevant, concise information within the ad or evergreen website content to help keep engagement high. 

Generative AI can also be utilized as a research tool to inform your brand’s content strategy. Monitoring chat bot inquiries can help you understand what consumers are frequently searching for before purchasing a product or selecting a service. As general themes are identified, create content that proactively answers those questions and update it regularly based on changing inquiries.

AI is igniting rapid changes in the search landscape. The key to navigating these uncharted waters will be understanding the impacts to search behavior and the changes in consumers needs and preferences. Maintaining a nimble, test-and-learn approach will help marketers find the secret sauce to their ever-evolving search strategy.

The Ultimate TikTok Advertising Strategy Guide

Interested in TikTok advertising campaigns? That’s no surprise to us. When you consider the massive influence it has on purchasing decisions and behaviors or the incredible time spent on the platform each day, most brands should at least consider having some presence on TikTok.

After reigning as the most downloaded app globally for multiple years, TikTok’s global ad revenue is expected to reach $15 billion in 2023, per a WARC Media report – despite the legal privacy battles and active bans taking place. 

So, What Type of Brands Should Advertise on TikTok?

Beauty, clothing, and food and beverage brands are natural fits for TikTok. Users are able to directly see these products in use, in real time. This reduces the risk of physically investing in and trying out a new product, and builds consumer excitement around new offerings. 

Other industries – from healthcare to travel to sports to finance and technology – can also thrive on TikTok. Why? Because short-form video allows the user to go on a journey. They can visually see travel destinations first hand, view highlights from a sporting event, or hear directly how a product or service changed someone’s life for the better. That can be very persuasive.

At Coegi, we’ve also seen unprecedented success with higher education brands using TikTok to reach college students. You can view one of our case studies here.

Ultimately, TikTok advertising should be considered for nearly every brand. But be sure to check platform guidelines and restrictions, especially for regulated industries and sensitive audience groups.

The 8 Most Important Elements for a Successful TikTok Advertising Strategy

TikTok advertising provides a unique opportunity to engage with potential customers in a highly authentic way. However, strategies that have proven successful on other social platforms won’t necessarily shine on TikTok. It’s important to understand how to adapt your approach to messaging and content to cater to the platform. 

Use these eight key elements to craft a successful TikTok advertising strategy:

#1 – Define your purpose for advertising on TikTok

Enter TikTok with a clear understanding of why your brand is there. 

  • Know what you want to tell consumers
  • Understand what they value and are interested in
  • Learn what kind of messaging they are receptive to 

Without these things in mind, your message may be miscommunicated or lost (the TikTok algorithm can be unforgiving). 

#2 – Partner with relevant creators to build trust

Creators are a priceless resource when it comes to reaching your audience authentically on TikTok. Also, contrary to popular belief, influencer marketing can also drive lower-funnel results, be accessible for all budgets, and be useful for any industry vertical. Micro and nano influencers are especially important on TikTok to boost your brand affinity within niche sub-cultures. 

Some of the core benefits of partnering with TikTok creators include: 

  • Finding engaged followers in specific interest groups
  • Extending organic reach 
  • Learning from their individual platform expertise and trend knowledge
  • Highlighting native-appearing content creation

Check out Coegi’s influencer marketing guide for tips on finding the best creator partners for your brand. 

#3 – Keep creative content casual

Nothing turns users away from a TikTok ad quicker than disruptive ads that feel out of place and display a blatant lack of understanding of trends. The brands driving positive engagement on TikTok are creating sponsored content that looks and feels organic. This is why, per Statista, “Almost 15% of TikTok users struggle to distinguish between advertising and other content.” 

Following these tips from TikTok on  creating authentic branded content

  • Go lo-fi (avoid glossiness)
  • Shoot vertical and hi-res
  • Feature real people 
  • Use sound
  • Use TikTok-specific editing techniques
  • Have a narrative
  • Adopt category and vertical norms

In summary, design creatives to seamlessly fit into the ‘For You’ page – don’t be afraid to embrace trends, use humor, or insert your brand into the latest trending sounds or challenges

#4 – Encourage audience participation to build community

Authentic community participation is mandatory on TikTok. Brands that only post ads and are not effectively engaging with their audience are missing out on a key benefit of the platform. 

TikTok actively promotes the use of user-generated content (UGC) for brand/creator collaborations. In 2023, they added the ‘Branded Mission’ crowdsourcing platform which enables brands to request UGC submissions from creators to then select and use for TikTok ad campaigns. 

Lean into community-building on TikTok by: 

  • Devoting time to stay in touch with the platform and observe patterns and trends
  • Crafting genuine, on-brand replies to user comments, even looking to these comments to inspire future content 
  • Being approachable as possible to establish a brand rapport 

#5 – Test and learn to refine your TikTok advertising strategy

Dive into TikTok Business Analytics to track which type of content performs best. This is especially useful when trying new tactics or A/B testing messaging to determine what works and what doesn’t. Play around with the style, format, and timing of posts to see which combinations gain the most engagement. 

You should also use audience analytics to understand who your content is reaching. TikTok’s targeting parameters are relatively broad, so this data can provide a better view of who is actually seeing and engaging with your brand. 

#6 – Find your TikTok niche

TikTok’s algorithm is an infamous and mysterious formula that serves content to a user based on their interests and previous engagements. If an individual likes, shares and comments on videos about parenting and gardening, for instance, they’ll continue to see content around those topics of interest. 

TikTok suggests, “Embrace communities and their subcultures—that’s where true inspiration lives. 76% of users say they like it when brands are a part of special interest groups on TikTok.” There are endless sub-cultures such as “book tok”, “mom tok” and “gym tok” which brands can tap into. 

Tailor your content to the niche interests of your target audience, down to the captions, sounds and hashtags.

#7 – Optimize for TikTok search

The ability to find quick, useful information through video, paired with TikTok’s algorithmic power to keep users in-app creates, makes TikTok the perfect search engine for the next generation. 

40% of Gen-Z uses TikTok as a visual search engine.”

Leaning into the social search trend, TikTok expanded the description field to 2,000 characters to allow more in-depth, keyword-rich content. They are also linking keywords from user comments to search results for greater relevance. 

To find relevant keywords and in-app trends, explore the TikTok Keyword Insights Tool. Then, optimize your video descriptions, brand page, and hashtags around key search terms and queries.

Lean into TikTok Shops

E-commerce is booming on TikTok (just look at the top keywords from the insights tool). The #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt trend sold out countless products through over 21B video views. 92% of global users take action after watching a video on the platform. Plus, users are 1.5x more likely to immediately buy a product after discovering it on TikTok versus other platforms.  

Explore three of TikTok’s primary ecommerce capabilities: 

  • Product Showcase – Shop directly from a brand or creator account and get access to products within the app
    • Collection Ads: Create a carousel of product cards for your In-Feed Ads featuring your top items. When a user taps, they’ll be brought to a more expansive shopping gallery to browse.
    • Product Links: Make organic videos shoppable with a link driving users to a checkout page of the featured product.
  • Shoppable Videos  – Shop directly from a shoppable in-feed video by tapping the product link & basket icon
    • Dynamic Showcase Ads: Tap into your audience’s interests based on their TikTok activity with dynamically generated video ads.
  • Live Shopping: Show off products in real-time during a TikTok Live and highlight the path to purchase.

Time to Create Your TikTok Advertising Strategy

Successful TikTok advertising can mean different things to each brand. Whether the goal is increased engagement, social buzz, or sales, following these tips will help you move in the right direction. Embrace creativity and innovation to reach your audience in a way that makes a lasting positive impression on the fastest growing social platform. 

Lastly, keep in mind that TikTok is continuously evolving and creating new revenue building opportunities for creators and brands. So, it is vital to keep up with new developments and tools as they are released.  

Looking for a social media agency partner to help set up your next TikTok campaign? Contact Coegi today for a discovery call. 

Understanding Audio Advertising

Audio advertising – through podcasts, streaming platforms, and various radio formats – is in vogue. It’s essentially the mom jeans of digital media. But this time, it’s less about catchy jingles and more about authentic, engaging content. 

Coegi is enthusiastically leaning into this space, adding new programmatic audio capabilities and publisher-direct relationships to our repository of digital solutions., We connected Coegi’s Director of Innovation, Savannah Westbrock, to answer some key questions about the latest trends and technologies within audio advertising. 

What are the primary benefits of audio advertising?

The biggest advantage I see with audio advertising is the ability to meaningfully reach engaged audiences anywhere. Consumers spend an astonishing one-third of their media time with audio content. Over 424M individuals tune into podcasts worldwide – that’s over 20% of all internet users! And with 85% of audio listening being done on mobile devices, it’s a great way to reach users on the go and feed into a mobile-first marketing strategy. 

Podcast advertising becomes increasingly relevant for brands aiming to reach Gen Z. A 2023 report found that Gen Z listens to podcasts nearly as much as they watch streaming TV. Yet, audio advertising is still a largely untapped white space in the market for many brands. 

No matter your industry, marketing goals, or budget, explore how your brand can leverage the influencer status of podcasters to gain brand awareness and build authentic audience connections. Even if you are opting for programmatic audio, aligning your branded content with contextually relevant and interactive audio advertising content will increase authority and brand affinity. 

How has the world of audio advertising changed over the last 5 years? Did the pandemic impact audiences’ listening behaviors?

Despite expectations that audio would decline with the rise of hybrid office work and fewer commutes, time spent with audio during the lockdown stage of the pandemic seems to have grown at-home streaming audio listenership to levels not seen previously. 

In 2021, at-home audio streaming grew to surpass 90 minutes per day, with expectations to continue rising. Podcasts have been a major factor driving this growth, which could be related to the increase in individuals creating new podcasts from home.  

Podcasts are a unique audio advertising opportunity. How can brands do podcast advertising “right?”

This advice is going to be true of all media, but especially with podcasts: know your audience. Heavy podcast listeners usually have tight bonds with their favorites, especially those who subscribe to support their favorite creators. Ensure your audience matches the show, and then ensure the inventory itself is a strong fit for your strategy. 

What is the value of doing host-read audio advertising versus dynamic ad insertions (DAI)? Are there noticeable differences in use-case or performance expectations?

Host-read podcast ads have been the mainstay for many years due to historically limited programmatic audio ad formats as well as the benefits of a more organic ad experience. Programmatically inserting audio ads may turn listeners off of your brand if they feel irrelevant and disruptive. 

Collaborating with creators may be a better choice if your product or service has a very specific audience. In this case, the process will work much like influencer marketing. (For a full step-by-step process, view our Influencer Marketing Guide.)

However, if your product has broad enough audience appeal that the content of the show itself is less of a strategic concern, dynamic ad insertion remains a doable tactic. With programmatic audio and DAI, you also gain greater flexibility. You can swap out outdated ads with new ones, versus host-read ads which live in the podcast archives forever. Take timeliness into consideration as you weigh the pros and cons of these options. 

In what ways are host-read podcast ads similar to or different from influencer marketing?

The relationship between podcast marketing and influencer marketing is quickly becoming a squares-and-rectangles situation. Generally speaking, you can expect a strong recommendation from a podcaster to carry a perception of greater authenticity for your brand. 

The core difference is the content itself. With influencers, influencing purchases is the content, whereas podcasts cover every topic under the sun. A relevant recommendation from a trusted host is more akin to a testimonial than an influencer’s #sponsored post. 

How do you measure the impact of audio advertising?

Depending on your strategy, measurement will look very different. Programmatically-bought audio spots allow for most standard digital metrics like clicks (via companion banners) and inferred view-through conversions. 

But increasingly, strategists are viewing podcasts as a similar opportunity to influencer marketing. With this approach, pairing awareness KPIs, such as reach and lift, with referral codes or unique landing pages can be a stronger play.

For more benefits and tips, check out our 3 Reasons to Use Podcast Advertising blog

If you’re interested in running audio advertising campaigns with Coegi, contact us for a discovery call

Paid Search Strategy: Fundamentals Before AI

In 2023, paid search strategy conversations are being peppered with never-ending buzz around GPT and advanced automation. With the possibility of Google losing its lion’s share of the search market, along with rapid tech evolution taking center stage and reshaping SERPs, search marketers need to be diving in to understand and apply these trends headfirst. 

Right?

Well…yes and no. Being at the forefront of digital transformation is a must. However, this cannot be at the expense of abandoning tried and true best practices. 

We must embrace AI and emerging technology, while maintaining fundamental marketing tactics, in order to create a sophisticated, yet flexible paid search strategy that supports the business goals.

The Value of Going Back to Basics

Truth: AI algorithms will drive efficiency and conversions for your goals.

False: AI algorithm will drive the RIGHT efficiencies and conversions for your goals. 

If your efficiency is producing lower cost per clicks but lower quality website traffic, it’s no longer efficiency at all. Without proper inputs and guardrails, AI can begin optimizing to a keyword that is not driving results or the wrong conversion metric for your key business objective. This is why I encourage all performance media practitioners to be cautious about over relying on automation in your paid search strategy. 

So before you begin exploring the latest tech advances, make sure you master the three key fundamentals of paid search advertising:

  1. Measurement
  2. Research
  3. Optimization 

Paid Search Advertising Fundamentals

#1 – Measurement: What’s Working and Why?

Testing new paid search strategies and ad formats is all well and good, but those tests need to be strategically set up and measured to ensure they are feeding into your broader marketing strategy and business goals. Identify the leading indicators of success for your search campaign using both front-end and back-end tracking.  

The prevalence of zero-click search makes tracking front-end metrics more complicated, but also more important than ever. Find creative ways to monitor if your content is adding value and optimized to show up in featured snippets or other rich results? Complementing paid search efforts with organic SEO is key to success here. 

On the back-end, look at meaningful signals, such as time on site, path to purchase, and exposure-to-conversion frequency requirements. These insights will help you improve campaign effectiveness and refine the customer journey. 

Lastly, use search volume tools and in-platform forecasting to identify the budget required to reach your share of voice, impression and reach targets. 

Client Application: We consulted a large swimwear brand on their search strategy. With a list of over 46K target keywords, they faced a nearly impossible task to understand share of voice and make smart optimizations. We made these recommendations to streamline their search strategy: 

  • Consolidate spend to hours when people are most likely to be searching for swimwear
  • Group themed keywords together to better understand intentionality and select the best keyword + ad option to serve 
  • Create larger ad groups to allow machine-learning to learn faster and deliver better performance 

#2 – Research: Aligning the brand and the user

Now, with a strong foundation of measurement beneath our feet, we can craft a sound strategy by knowing the business inside and out. 

First, analyze the brand’s position in the marketplace. 

  • How much share of voice do you have for branded vs non-branded terms? 
  • How intensely is the competition spending in your core markets? 
  • What pricing/brand power exists for the category? 

Tip: If you already own the category, don’t waste money by overinvesting in branded search. 

Second, evaluate opportunities and highlight the unique value proposition for the brand’s products or services. Keyword research, competitive analysis and audience understanding should all play a role in the search ad copy and creative content. 

Tip: Incorporate your audience’s language in your search copy – use their lingo, not your own.

Third, support conversion-based ads with more educational content. Highlight thought leadership articles, how-to videos, landing pages and downloadables to prime your audience. Even within the shortened conversion window of performance media, relevant, high-authority content can play a large role in the user decision-making process (and your SERP ranking). 

Tip: Create your organic and paid search strategy in tandem to make this process seamless.

#3 – Optimization: Fueling the improvement loop

Searching for a surefire way to continually improve your paid search strategy? Look no further than an iterative test and lean process. There are numerous things you can test, just be sure to manipulate one variable at a time so you can understand which actions are impacting your outcomes. 

Here are a few common things we regularly test in our paid search strategies: 

  • Broad vs exact vs phrase match keyword targeting (in-market audiences vs new users) 
  • Google vs Bing
  • Various audience groups and layered targeting
  • Ad group and keyword variations 
  • Copy and creative pairings using dynamic ad insertion

Start by testing the most basic elements of your campaign. Make sure you’ve established statistical relevance, then adjust and refine as you go. This will establish a sound SEO taxonomy to expand upon. 

Timing also comes into play with paid search optimization. Consider the following tactics to stretch your search budget: 

  • Dayparting: Create a time window to run paid search campaigns based on when users are most likely to be searching. For example, your local Starbucks may only run search ads in the morning. Google Ad Scheduling offers insights into peak search hours. 
  • Day of Week: Select particular days to serve search ads based on audience behavior.  For instance, B2B brands commonly only run search on weekdays. 
  • Seasonality: If your business is impacted by seasons, holidays or major events, ebb and flow your budget accordingly to maximize efficiency. Read how Coegi leveraged seasonal search to drive year-end giving for a cryptocurrency brand

Next Steps: Amplify Your Performance With Technology

Technological advances will only continue to enhance the discovery experience. Creating a fundamentally sound search strategy with flexible options will allow for opportunities to scale and take advantage of these newer search trends and capabilities

Remember: AI won’t work for you unless you set it up for success with the right fundamentals of measurement (to the conversions that matter), research, and data-driven optimizations. 

For more best practices view our Paid Search 101 article.

5 Ways to Level Up Your Programmatic Marketing Strategy

The programmatic advertising marketplace is busier than ever, with several factors coalescing at once. Publishers are increasing available auctions, the ad tech landscape is shrinking, and more advertisers are interested in programmatic buying’s relative cost efficiency as they monitor risk for economic downturn. 

Automated Buying Doesn’t Mean Simple Buying

Increasingly, marketers are realizing that automated buying doesn’t mean simple buying. Advertisers looking for a “set it and forget it” approach are going to find their campaigns outbid and underperforming with low engagement rates and high bounce rates. 

How to Level Up Your Programmatic Marketing Strategy

Follow these five tips to ensure your programmatic buys are set up for success from the start: 

#1 – Know your audience and be choosy with your targeting data

Kickstart your media plans with a robust understanding of the key consumers you’re looking to reach. That means going beyond basic demographics and understanding their behaviors, interests, values, and motivations. You can accomplish this through data-driven research tools, existing customer analysis, and/or using pixel-based data combined with Google Analytics to understand website visitors and how they engaging with your content. Together, these learnings should impact the data you use.

Whether working within walled gardens or full-fledged DSPs, it’s never been more important to understand the ins and outs of your data segments. Challenge partners to explain how their data sourcing methods, how it’s been manipulated since, and how likely it is to be affected by larger industry changes. Higher quality data yields better long-term results than quick clicks from half-interested parties. Save your bids for the audience most likely to spark genuine engagement. 

Things to be aware of:

  • Over reliance on retargeting: Retargeting does tend to drive strong media metrics. However, overinvesting in this tactic means you are likely wasting media dollars on people who were already planning to convert. 
  • Cookie deprecation: When third-party cookies eventually go away, any audience data that relied on them will be null and void. Work to build up your first party data now so you can use AI to build smarter audiences for your display campaigns.

#2 – Stay vigilant with brand safety and quality in the open markets

The open marketplace allows you to reach your audience where they are, but not every stop in their browsing journey is a good fit for your brand. Marketers solely looking for display ad inventory with the lowest CPMs are chasing after the wrong goals (and are facing a massive waste of money). Platform-offered brand safety features and integrations will assist, but ultimately, it takes knowing a brand inside and out to know what content is suitable for their messaging. 

Pre-bid filtering controversial topics is the bare minimum. Complement it with custom blacklists, strategic use of contextual categories, and continuous monitoring of the sites and apps in your strategy. Private auctions can minimize the open market’s quality risk, but have a high probability of carrying higher costs or struggling to scale with effective reach. Balancing platform tools with dedicated human oversight is the best approach for ensuring quality while taking advantage of the open market’s cost savings and reach. 

Be sure to:

  • Regularly audit display campaigns to ensure they are meeting your standards
  • Continuously update site lists based on inventory performance 

#3 – Build an omni-channel and omni-device plan

Programmatic buying has historically boasted the streamlined view of your channels’ or campaigns’ performance compared to direct or ad network buying. However, with the rise of walled gardens and second-party providers, it’s important to plan for all of your potential audience touchpoints. 

First, research which environments and devices index with your audience’s behavior. Then discuss how each piece of your plan levels up to your overall marketing and brand goals. Rather than using the “programmatic” label as a stand-in to mean a singular display-banner channel, realize how programmatic technology can power your buying strategy across all digital media. 

As marketers face a cookieless future, contextual targeting is going to be increasingly critical. Having a display ad, for example, show up alongside relevant content helps build interest and trust since the consumer is already engaging with pertinent information.

Consider:

  • Leveraging direct buys, private marketplace deals, and content partnerships to feel confident knowing where, when and to whom your ads were served. 
  • Aligning your creative messaging and calls-to-action to the category to improve user experience.

#4 – Find your frequency balance

Frequency is often an afterthought in performance marketing due to its association with reach. But, it’s imperative to monitor when reaching your audience across channels and devices. Every brand’s consumer journey is unique, and each media goal will require a unique “sweet spot” for effective frequency. 

Discuss what you know upfront about your audience’s journey to set realistic expectations. Then, monitor your frequency against performance to find that optimal peak for your specific media plan to avoid diminishing returns. 

#5 – Remove artificial silos between media and creative

It’s a curse programmatic buyers know well: even the most thoroughly-researched, audience-conscious, “big idea” media plan will fall flat without creative alignment. Rather than retro-fitting your creative to your media or vice-versa, plan in tandem to personalize messaging for higher impact across all channels. Once live, commit to monitoring performance and optimizing your messaging alongside platform settings. 

Display ads don’t have to be boring. The first, and most cost effective, way to capture attention is by adding small animations to your banner ads. But to really make a splash with your display advertising campaign, test out high impact units. This could be in-read units, site takeovers, site anchors, in-banner videos, interactive units, etc. 

However, even showing up on premium publishers without the investment in “fancy” display ads will often do the trick. Associating your brands with high authority publishers automatically builds a level of credibility for your brand. 

Don’t forget to:

  • Establish accountability through clearly identified KPIs
  • Select units and publishers from an audience-first mentality

Use these key tips to step up your programmatic advertising strategy and drive meaningful results for your brand.

To see some of these principles in action, view our case study, Driving 12K Leads for a Luxury Home Appliance Brand

 

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