Category: Expert Q&A

Why PMP-Certified Project Managers are Invaluable for Marketing Campaign Success

Posted on by Coegi

The marketing landscape is highly dynamic and fast-paced, and ensuring that projects are delivered on time, within scope, and with high-quality outcomes is no small feat. Project managers are at the heart of those marketing organizations that handle these complexities most seamlessly, and those with a Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification bring a unique edge. The PMP certification, offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI), is a globally recognized credential that signifies expertise in managing projects using industry-standard methodologies and tools.

We sat down with four of our PMP-certified leaders at Coegi—Patricia Branson, SVP of Business Operations; Ali Zadel, Senior Director of Business Operations; Michelle Lugria, Project Manager Supervisor; and Gabrielle Bretz, Project Management Supervisor—to discuss the tangible value their certification brings to our client work. In this Q&A, they share their insights into how structured project management elevates client satisfaction, team collaboration, and campaign outcomes.

Q: How has PMP certification helped you manage marketing projects more effectively?

Patricia Branson: The PMP framework encourages a proactive mindset. It ensures we’re asking the right questions at every stage of a project—from defining what “completion” means for both the internal team and the client to addressing risks before they escalate. While we already had strong processes, PMP certification gave us a refined structure for planning, monitoring, and closing projects. Beyond campaigns, it has even improved how we handle internal initiatives, like rolling out new technologies or working with large-scale vendors.

Q: What project management methodologies do you find most effective for marketing, and how does PMP training influence your approach?

Gabrielle Bretz: The methodology we use depends entirely on the project. For example, traditional approaches work well for campaigns with clear timelines and deliverables, while agile or hybrid methods are better for projects with a lot of unknowns. The PMP certification has given us the ability to customize these methodologies, tailoring them to the specific needs of each client and campaign.

Q: How does structured project management improve client relationships and campaign success?

Michelle Lugria: Structure allows us to focus on the details that might otherwise be overlooked, freeing up the rest of the team to concentrate on other areas of expertise like strategy and client relationships. PMP principles help us outline all tasks, ensuring every stakeholder knows their role and expectations. This structure minimizes miscommunication and keeps everything running smoothly, resulting in higher client satisfaction.

Q: Can you share a specific example where PMP certification helped you overcome a major challenge?

Ali Zadel: We were vetting a new tech vendor for a project in a new discipline for our agency. Instead of diving into endless calls, my PMP training prompted me to create a scope statement first. This clarified our goals and saved countless hours by eliminating vendors that didn’t align with our needs. It streamlined the entire process and ensured we stayed focused on what mattered most.

Michelle Lugria: For a large client project with many moving parts, I relied heavily on the PMP framework to keep details organized. The project management plan served as a “guiding light,” allowing the team to stay aligned and address any new developments efficiently.

Q: How do you balance the creative aspects of marketing with the structure PMP emphasizes?

Ali Zadel: One misconception about PMP is that it prioritizes rigidity over flexibility. In reality, the certification emphasizes tools like agile project management, which focuses on delivering what’s most valuable to the client first. Additionally, it encourages teams to document lessons learned, creating a repository of insights we can draw on to improve future campaigns.

Q: How has PMP certification improved collaboration and communication?

Gabrielle Bretz: PMP training has introduced us to tools like the stakeholder register, which centralizes information about everyone involved in a project—their influence, communication preferences, and expectations. This ensures that communication is tailored and efficient. It also empowers teams to align internally and externally, reducing confusion and improving outcomes.

Q: How do PMP principles help with risk management?

Patricia Branson: Risk management is an integral part of our approach. PMP training sharpened our ability to identify potential risks early and create contingency plans. For example, our extensive QA process ensures human error and technical glitches are minimized. The certification has taken our risk mitigation strategies to a new level of precision and detail.

Q: What’s the biggest professional benefit you’ve gained from PMP certification?

Ali Zadel: For me, it was learning to embrace servant leadership. As a project manager, my job is to clear obstacles so my team can focus on doing their best work. PMP reinforced the importance of relying on the expertise of those actually executing the tasks.

Gabrielle Bretz: It gave us a shared language and framework across the organization. Now, we’re more aligned in how we approach projects, and I feel more confident in my ability to manage complex initiatives.

Final Thoughts

Having PMP-certified project managers on your marketing team isn’t just a “nice-to-have”—it’s a strategic advantage. From improving communication and collaboration to enhancing risk management and client satisfaction, PMP training equips our team to deliver exceptional results consistently. If you’re looking for a partner who takes marketing campaign management to the next level, you’ve found it.

 

Marketing Data Strategy Q&A – Why Most Marketers Get It Wrong

Posted on by Coegi

A strong marketing data strategy is the foundation of any digital media plan, but most marketers miss the mark when developing an effective one for their brand. In this episode of The Loop Marketing Podcast, you’ll hear from Coegi’s Executive Vice President of Operations and Analytics, Katie Kluba, and Director of Digital Operations, Julia Wold, as they discuss data strategy, and why most marketers get it wrong. 

You’ll learn:

  • How to apply upfront data-driven work to inform marketing strategies
  • The importance of data restraint and why “more” is not better and 
  • The keys to giving the client the data story they need to hear

The following is an edited transcript of the podcast. Click here to listen to the full episode on your favorite streaming platform.

—

Q: What are some things that marketers should be doing in the upfront work to make their marketing strategy have stronger buy-in and have a better opportunity to truly be successful?

Katie: Yes, for sure. This is such a good topic to be discussing. I want to start at the beginning. So, first and foremost, it is really important to find a true digital partner. A true digital partner is a partner who’s going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, and then you need to find a digital partner that is also comprehensive.

What I mean by that is they need to have a proven track record of success, but they also need to possess the technical prowess, if you will, to support data collection methodologies and the media tracking requirements that will be needed to create data decisioning. So once you call Coegi – we do all of that – so once you find your digital partner, what marketers should do to set themselves up for success is first and foremost, be crystal clear on what they are trying to accomplish with the campaign initiatives.

From there, you can start creating a measurement plan or framework, if you will, and the objective here is to tie the digital media performance back to what the marketer is trying to accomplish. I’m going to give you just a few tips about this measurement plan. Keep it simple and straightforward. Over complicating measurement is not a recipe for success. 

And then I would say, remember that the power of data decisioning is based on the reliability of the data. So junk in, junk out, meaning make it meaningful. 

And I would say lastly, and this is very important, you should separate the media optimizations or performance from any larger picture media effectiveness that you’re trying to measure. Measurement is not a one size fits all approach and campaign performance should be separated from the measuring the impact of the media to the brand objectives, business objectives that may be offline.

Q: Can you talk about what it takes to define campaign performance and where the waters sometimes get muddied for marketers in evaluating success?

Katie: Absolutely. You will see that a brand will be running an awareness campaign to drive awareness of potentially a new product or service that they have brought to market. And what ends up happening is the brand marketer and the digital partner will often come up with some media performance metric. So something that’s attainable in the platform, a click-through rate, an impression, a reach, a cost per click, and they will use that as a proxy, if you will, to the brand loyalty, the brand effectiveness. 

Was the media that was put in the market, did it hit the mark? Did the audience resonate with that brand? 

Do they remember or recall what the brand message was all about? 

Those two things are very different. So your media effectiveness should be a separate study. You can do branding surveys, there are many, many things that you can do, market research and other things. But you should not confuse performance based metrics to business initiatives. All can be measured, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to happen in one study.

Q: What are some ways that you have gone about figuring out the right methodology to evaluate campaign performance and business objectives for our brands, especially when there are so many measurement partners to consider?

Julia: Yeah, so going off of what Katie said, it’s first imperative to identify what you’re trying to achieve, identify the best methodology that’s going to get you there. So if you are trying to have an impact on perception, thinking through that, likely a survey based perception. A panel-based study is going to be your best bet in terms of proving out performance beyond media metrics with reach, completion rate, all that. Once you can identify the methodology that best fits your client’s end goals, then you can align to a provider that’s going to meet those goals. Like we said, there are so many providers out there that tout similar capabilities. So it’s really important to compare vendors and get a holistic view of the entire ecosystem because some vendors could be piggybacking off of other vendors’ data to improve and fuel their own methodology.

So getting a holistic view of the ecosystem is important. And then when you are pitching that solution to your client and you’ve come up with your provider that you’re looking to leverage, you have more of a talk track to show the work behind your recommendation. Also, forging meaningful relationships with these different partners, it really helps to solidify your approach and show the client that your recommendation carries some weight. 

And then lastly, like Katie said, too, success of a campaign is a multifactor approach. You’re looking at success from a media perspective, looking at its success from a business perspective, and then also making sure that you and the client really align all the way down from initial planning to a final readout that this was the plan that we chose all along the way. There are instances where sometimes clients can say, well, I wish we were measuring that. Unfortunately, switching measurement mid campaign is very difficult. And then you’re never going to be able to prove your success because you’re constantly chasing another lead and not focusing on what your core set was. So having a solidified approach early on is really going to help you prove out your value.

Q: What are some ways that marketers can avoid confirmation bias and use truly data-driven processes to ensure they’re collectively moving toward the brand’s goals?

Julia: So, there’s a couple things that you can do. It really starts with the strategy upfront. I know once media is up and running, you are going to get more of those media-based metrics in terms of performance. But you can also leverage tools along the way. So, perhaps prior to setting up your campaign, you launched a study to understand, “okay, this is who we think we’re going to target. What are they saying from a respondent perspective? And is the focus of how we approach targeting going to measure up?” There’s also ways that you could think to tag your media to get a readout from an audience perspective. So we have tools like The Trade Desk where we can put in an audience profile and then see other audiences that index highly with that. And so that can confirm or deny what you’re looking at. But like you said, bias exists everywhere and it can be really challenging. So as a marketer, you really need to put yourself in the shoes of all of these different individuals and of who you’re trying to reach and think holistically, but then also you as a test and learn approach to say, “okay, I thought it was going to go this way, maybe it didn’t.” And you know, being wrong isn’t bad either. it’s just now you understand what you’re not gonna do in the future and how to pivot.

Katie: Julia, you’re spot on. Test and learn is the way to go. Test and learn is the way to go, whether you’re pivoting mid-flight or you’re creating a test design for measurement pre-campaign launch. But what you want to be careful of is when you set up any test that you are not putting your thumb on the read or the test design to support what you think the test is going to read out. So I would say bias is really easy to avoid, but it is often not avoided. I have found that the most successful marketers are the ones that listen to the experts, which is their digital partner and put some faith that the digital partner has the expertise in the measurement of the ecosystem, that a well thought out test design will tease out without any bias, without any type one or type two errors, whether or not your hypothesis proves true or false.

Julia: That’s a really good point, Katie. I just want to interject too, when you do work with a smaller independent agency like Coegi, we are a little bit more agile and more flexible in the relationship standing and you know, we’re not held to the silos of some of the holding companies that they put in place just for their job function. So what we’re really looking to do is to give you the best approach rather than what’s the easiest approach or what’s the approach that fits into the job function that I’m currently doing.

Q: A large number of marketers have that tendency to overcomplicate data, especially when we’re translating that into reporting for brands. What steps should we be taking as marketers to get the most out of our data and truly and intelligently inform marketing strategies in business goals at large?

Julia:  I feel like maybe a broken record at this point because I’m always like, “think about it up front, think about it upfront,” but it definitely needs to be thought of upfront. So the way that we approach setting up campaigns is really thinking through what is the end goal that you have in mind and then working backwards. So, establishing that groundwork. If you know, for instance, your client is really interested in understanding how different geographies within their media buy are performing, then let’s focus on that and really drive that in. And focus less on – who cares about device type, who cares about you know, time of day? Those are all important and those all happen in the background, but you don’t need to pull out every single insight in the hopes that something sticks.

So, really focus on the one element that you know your client bought into and that you know you can set up a campaign where it flows from the DSP or the platform directly into analytics and then ties to maybe your advanced measurement goals. Something that I was just working on for a client recently and we were really focused as an agency on the audience. It was for a client that sold a product and we thought that the audience was so important to say this audience engaged more than this audience, but at the end of the day, all the end client cared about was like, what product of my product lines should I promote more of? Where do I need the people in store to start pushing more of based on what the consumer demand is? So if we had maybe just listened a little bit more to our client we could have helped to really craft our reporting insights to be based on what product is really driving and all of that audience stuff that we find so important is still important. But we’re just trying to complement what they’re looking for versus trying to recreate the wheel.

Katie: We, as marketers, have a lot of information about advanced measurement that includes bridging the gap between the online and offline point of sale world. There are measurement providers out there that are very powerful. The point Julia was making about listening to our clients is critical because you might have someone saying “well, what about that clickthrough rate? What about that time on site? Or what about the cost per acquisition in this particular case?” It may have been some sort of online event, right? So all of that is interesting when you’re trying to maximize and squeeze every penny out of your online marketing dollar to get your brand in front of the relevant audience, consumer base that you’re trying to reach. Very important. But at the end of the day, what the client wanted to understand is, of all of the products that I have, what are the ones that the offline world should be pushing, right? The display should be set up such that, that’s the product that is eye level. So that is a perfect example of how bias comes into a measurement framework. What you’re saying versus what you really need are two different things. So it is important to continue to have conversations, to tease all these things out. Open mind, come to it with an open mind, blank slate.

Julia: Yeah, and I don’t think many clients are going to be super black and white on what they’re looking for. So it is an evolution of like really listening intently to off the cuff comments that they might make when you’re doing reporting. And then that’s where you have the opportunity to pivot. And maybe it’s not even a pivot of your strategy, it’s just a pivot of the way that you’re going to read out your strategy and speak to the client.

Q: What are some steps that we should be taking to ensure that the data that we are translating back to the client is truly speaking the same language and helping the brand be empowered, not just causing greater confusion or going down a rabbit hole leading to nowhere?

Katie: You recall I said at the top of this podcast to keep it simple, be clear and keep it simple. That resonates with measurement, period. If you do nothing else but do that, you’ll be miles ahead of what is too often just checking the box scenario. In our industry, if you were good at Excel, you became an analyst. But that doesn’t mean that you can tie business objectives back to media optimizations and media buying. So I would say first and foremost, do not overcomplicate your performance story.

Remember, more is not better necessarily, it’s just more. 

Secondly, observations are observations. You should be able to read, interpret, the data in front of you. Then, based off of what you’re looking at, your recommendation should be what you’re going to do or what you have done, so the result of what you have done or what you’re going to do based on what you’re looking at to get the media buy – the performance – which is different than the media impact, but to get the performance to where it needs to be. So we’re effective and efficient driving every penny, nickel, squeezing that out, driving the KPI for the client. It sounds redundant, it’s literally foundational to any measurement strategies. Do not overcomplicate it, keep it simple. That’s what I would say.

Q: What predictions do you all have in terms of what changes are going to be needed to keep measurement as informative as it is today, going into two or three or even 10 years down the line?

Katie: So first of all, everyone’s in the same boat. No one should panic. We’re all in the same boat, so we will not really know the true impact until the deprecation of the cookie occurs. We can project what we think is going to happen, and what we think is going to happen is that there’s going to be less focused targeting. Right now the industry is such, we collect so much information about users who engage with the media and also engage on brands’ websites that we can create segments of how they consume that media and actions they take thereof. So there will be less ability to create those segments. However, as I said, we’re all in the same boat, so there will not be really one advantage for one marketer versus another. Outside of a few things that are going on that I think marketers should be doing immediately – and if they’re not, they need to start – there are a few identity grids that have been developed when the news came out that the cookie was going to be deleted. These identity grids are going to allow the marketers to continue to target and create segments of audiences just as they do today. So, they need to speak with their digital partner and make sure they’re opting into these identity grids.

Julia: Yeah, and I’ll just kind of piggyback off of that. Something that we’ve done as an operations department here at Coegi to help prepare these marketers for this is just to get a better understanding of the fact there are a ton of data providers out there in the ecosystem, and while we’re not talking about the marketer’s first party data they do likely want to tap into somebody else’s third party data because as we know, first-party data and zero-party data is finite. In order to scale you’re going to need other opportunities, so it’s really important for us to know who our data providers are, what their collection methodology is, how they are planning for a cookie list future, how they’re already overcoming the privacy laws of GDPR, CCPA the Pepitas of Canada.

And just getting that foundational knowledge – I feel like foundation is another key word for this podcast – but getting that knowledge of how things are being collected there. It’ll give you a lot more peace of mind in understanding that you’re reaching people with ethical third-party data sources. Additionally from our approach too is to think about using your first-party data as it is now, you have the opportunity still with cookies to layer on and see where your audience indexes with other third-party sources so you can start to create a persona of who your current customer is and make sure that you just start to collect that stuff now so that it’s useful for the future. So for instance, say you don’t have a first-party list, but now you know, I can create a persona based on people and maybe they like to engage on this type of content, including a contextual element to your next media buy is going to be a great way to test out how it performs. That way you can still have what a cookie is able to give you today and you have that comparative tool.

Additionally, a lot of what I’m seeing in the marketplace and where I’m seeing a lot of people are leaning, are toward more of those PMP and even programmatic guaranteed buys. And I almost feel like we as marketers are slightly going back to what things looked like 10 years ago from a buying standpoint because we know that we can trust that certain publisher and it’s all about kind of that relationship building again, whereas we got a little loosey goosey taking whatever was available to us. Now we’re just becoming more intentional with the way that we’re building our campaigns and really focusing on quality.

I will say that ever since I’ve been here at Coegi for six years, quality has always been something that we’ve focused on and it’s just being more and more elevated as we continue to evolve. So I feel like our company has been really set up well for navigating this new landscape.

Katie: Yeah, that’s a really good point, Julia. Extending your first-party and zero-party audiences leveraging third-party data providers is going to be key. The direct deals are going to be key. Contextually relevant buys are going to be key. I do want to add that we’re really talking more about the programmatic ecosystem and the impact is going to be felt primarily there. We still have a lot of user profile information within the social sphere, so your addressability there will still be pretty focused.

Q: Lastly, what do you feel is the most common mistake that marketers are making today in their use of data and how it is informing marketing strategies?

Katie: Well, I’m going to be honest, number one. The most common mistake I see is marketers just don’t use data. So there’s a couple reasons why they don’t, even if they think they’re using data, they’re probably not using it correctly. I’m not trying to upset my brand friends, but interpreting the data correctly is important to make data decisions, right? Data informed decisions. And I would say the other area or reason why most marketers do not use data, is they don’t know where to get the data. And so that’s where I would say the two areas are probably the biggest components of why we have bias. Can we go back to that question? Why do we have bias in our measurement and which leaks into our strategy? The digital ecosystem is so measurable and if there is some trust given to the integrity of the data, which has to be pur purposeful and the measurement plan that is tied to the strategy, if there’s some trust given there in connectivity, what you’re going to get out of that is a really solid circular feedback loop of data decisioning. And I think your campaigns are going to do very, very well for your brand.

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To improve your measurement and data strategies, check out Coegi’s 5 Step Guide to Successful Marketing Measurement.

Building a Roadmap to Your Best Customer: Customer Marketing Q&A

Posted on by Coegi

Marketers are tasked with the difficult exercise of creating meaningful consumer touchpoints that authentically connect an audience to your brand. To build a successful customer marketing strategy, you need to know who your best customers are and how to reach them. Being grounded with this knowledge also helps set your path to scale and discover your next best customers. However, it’s not always clear how to best define and cultivate these audiences to build sustained impact.  

To shed light on the topic, we sat down with Coegi’s CEO, Sean Cotton, and Director of Innovation, Savannah Westbrock, on The Loop Marketing Podcast. In this episode, they outline how to identify and reach your best customers and build long-lasting relationships. 

Continue reading to learn how to: 

  • Create and refine your ideal audience segments 
  • Collect and scale first-party data for cookieless targeting 
  • Test and measure the effectiveness of your audience strategy 
  • Tap into human nature to build long-term, loyal customers 

The following is an edited transcript of the podcast. Click here to listen to the full episode on your favorite streaming platform.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3b5hQAVpXL4SDMdNv6ObFV?si=f37e1c31141e4c9d
Spotify: The Roadmap to Your Best Customers

Q: To start us off, where should brands begin when building an audience targeting strategy?

Sean: It’s certainly a balancing act. You want to scale your marketing and reach as many potential customers as possible, but you don’t want to waste marketing dollars either. A great place to start is with the audience we already know – the most deterministic, valuable customers we have line of sight with. Engage them first, then model off of them. 

Then, expand your research with a focus on the human element. There is limited first-party or deterministic audience data. So we have to get to know our audience beyond those data points. What are their interest behaviors, attributes, and even psychographics? Start building upon your original data set with these insights. This can include social listening, focus group data, or other things of that nature. 

Q: In the midst of the cookieless future, what are some ways to build a futureproof audience strategy?  

Savannah: We’re in a really interesting transitional time. I’ve been referring to the period we kind of grew up in here at Coegi as the ‘programmatic Wild West’. We had so much data at our fingertips that we could skim through pre-built audiences and find a third-party data set we were really confident in. As we shift toward consumer privacy being more of a focus, we need to return to marketing basics. Social listening, as Sean said, is a huge one – especially with social media looking vastly different today than it did 10 years ago. 

Also, simply put yourself in your audience’s shoes. If something comes up in your research – blogs they read, shows they watch, subreddits they subscribe to – spend some time in those spaces. I think it will spark some interesting ideas of different touch points you can add to your overall strategy.  

Sean: I would also add that we are still maintaining a data-driven approach. Prior to the programmatic era, media decisions were often based on assumptions. Data-driven advertising helps us use quantitative data to inform who our audience really is. Now, we may be looking at a variety of other qualitative sources, but we want our assumptions to be backed by data. 

I think a good example was some campaigns we did with BODYARMOR for a number of years. Obviously, athletes are their target audience in the sports drink category. But, research found that moms were actually a primary purchaser in bulk at large retail stores. So that became an entirely new audience with a different messaging strategy. 

Q: How can brands best capitalize on first-party data to identify and reach potential new customers?

Savannah: First-party data collection was one of our first recommendations when Google made their announcement to deprecate third-party cookies. But there have been roadblocks along the way. Many brands are realizing that the way they set up their point of sale systems or their website was not ideal for aggregating all of their data. Especially if you have loyal consumers who use your products and are willing to give you their personal information, you want to gather all of that first-party data in one central location. 

So, whether it’s a CRM system or an ACP system, make sure your data is in an area where you can evaluate it. Then, let that high quality audience determine how you experiment as you broaden your strategies.  

Q: How can you apply audience data learnings across channels to bring the most value possible? 

Sean: Because we experience so many media touchpoints day-to-day, we want to take a broad, holistic view when we have valuable first-party data to gain audience insights. It could be the websites they visit, the influencers they follow, their location patterns, and even heat maps to the retail chains they frequently visit. By holistically researching how these customers spend time and where they devote their attention, we can get a full view of how to engage them throughout the day.  

Savannah: And that also helps us understand how our audience is responding to our messaging throughout the campaign lifetime. For example, Coegi media planners are beginning to implement a performance scoring model as a part of our measurement strategies. 

Let’s use the simple example of someone in-market for a car purchase. If they’re visiting our brand’s website and looking at different models, they might still be in the discovery phase. If we know they visited the lot too and spoke to salespeople, that’s a much more invested person who’s more likely to take the next step. So it helps us retroactively look at each touchpoint and the actions that grow out of them to understand the true effects of marketing.  

Q: How do you measure the effectiveness of an omnichannel audience strategy and build a test and learn approach to refine the process? 

Savannah: First, we empower the full team to come together: our in-platform specialists, strategists, research team, and even clients. Have a proactive conversation about what each step of the consumer journey really means and how each step needs to be measured against our media. 

Having this conversation upfront with all the correct people not only informs your setup strategy, it will also aid your optimization strategy. It can help you put together reports with really valuable insights. And overall, it leads to more successful start-to-finish campaigns that are replicable.  

Sean: This approach also powers our measurement strategy and learning agenda. As we are laying out the strategy, we make certain hypotheses. Then, throughout the campaign, we’re proving those suppositions either correct or incorrect and making pivots. The test and learn approach allows us to iterate on an ongoing basis to drive performance.  

Savannah: And there’s an added value of being honest and transparent – having those real conversations with teams and clients upfront. Often, our instinct is to want to always be the expert in every piece of our campaign. This gives us an opportunity to say, this is our expectation, these are our benchmarks, but let’s plan for what to do if this doesn’t work.  

Q: How do you balance human intuition with AI modeling to identify your next best customers and refine your marketing strategy? 

Sean: We have to understand our audience and be respectful to the sensitivities of their data. It really comes down to putting guardrails around AI machine learning – simple things such as frequency caps and sequential rotations of your creative messages to tell a story. 

Is cost-per-click or click-through-rate really driving growth for your brand? Or are you simply capitalizing on consumers that were going to purchase anyway? It’s a combination of understanding the human element, putting guardrails in place for machine learning to respect our customers, and then implementing a rigorous measurement strategy.  

Q: How do you avoid alienating customers with ad oversaturation and build a roadmap to long-lasting customer relationships that grow over time?

Savannah: Well, I love what Sean said about making sure your audience is seen as a human. One of the easiest ways to do that is to think, “what annoys me?” For example, when I get the same connected TV ad 400 times. What turns my view of a brand off and what can we avoid in our strategy? As you’re putting together tactics, think of the things that personally rub you the wrong way and be sure to avoid them.  

Sean: I think it’s also important to regularly refresh our customer database so we don’t forget about lapsed customers. We’re going to approach them differently than our most loyal customers. Understanding the nature of our first-party audience is another way to communicate with them effectively.  

Live Listener Q&A

Q: How do you build a customized user journey without feeling invasive or creepy? 

Savannah: Creepiness is obviously subjective, but for me, where I have felt that line was crossed is when I am getting a super personalized message from a brand I’m unfamiliar with. This speaks back to maintaining and nurturing your CRM list. 

I may have bought a product from this company years ago and they slipped my mind. So when I get that really hyper-targeted search banner ad or those t-shirts on Facebook with my name on them for some reason – those things are typically when the red flag goes up. They feel more invasive than a personalized email from a company who I’ve purchased from several times. 

Q: For a brand in the startup phase, how do you begin to build an audience strategy? 

Sean: I think a good place to start is simply your website analytics. If you’re a startup, you’re likely going to do some sort of press release. You’re going to try to get your name out there, and you may be doing some things to engage customers face-to-face. Take each of these opportunities to gather as much data as possible. 

From an online standpoint, there’s always your website analytics. You can drill down to the city level or even the DMA level to find where qualified traffic is coming from. If you have multiple pages, which are visitors most engaged with? What time of day are they coming to your site?

There’s a number of signals there that can be a starting point for audience learning. If you are able to engage face-to-face with a few people, you’ll gain insights about what the consumer response may be at a larger scale. So record and leverage that critical feedback. 

Savannah: There’s also an opportunity in the early days to think about creative ways to incentivize your initial customers. A common tactic is offering a discount if people sign up for your newsletter. 

Q: What are some creative ways for brands to jumpstart their first-party data collection when starting from scratch? 

Savannah: This is where partnerships can really come into play. Second-party data is a great place to start. If you don’t have a robust CRM list of your own, look for other businesses with high-quality data and do your due diligence to evaluate it. 

You can also look at things like retail media partnerships. If you’ve done on-the-ground research of where your consumers shop and what they’re interested in – you could go to Target’s Roundel, for example. Maybe you know your audience is in-market for parenting items. Look at those retailer audiences and see if there’s a unique way to reach them there.  

Sean: You can also tap into your creative executions in some cases. For instance, on Meta, someone who watches a video all the way through can be put into a remarketing bucket. Then you can perform lookalike modeling off of that group. You can do the same thing with programmatic video and there are other types of creative formats that allow you to gather first-party data. 

Q: What is your number one tip for audience segmentation and relationship building?

Savannah: Simply don’t forget that your audience is made up of people. Each member of your audience has a unique relationship and journey with your brand. Any opportunity you have to segment your audience and deliver different messaging at different stages of their journey is a great way to strategically build meaningful relationships. 

From there, it can inform the channels you execute on. It can inform your creative messaging. Overall, it lays a really solid foundation from people who are new to your brand to the loyal customers you’re working to build.  

Read Savannah’s Cookieless Targeting 101 article here. For more tips on consumer research, listen to our podcast episode, Research Done Right. 

CTV Advertising Best Practices: Q&A with The Trade Desk 

Posted on by Coegi

Your CTV advertising questions answered.

If you’re interested in streaming television advertising but have never run a campaign, you likely have many questions. How do I create an effective campaign? Is it worth the time and money? How will I know if it’s working? 

In this Q&A article, we sat down with two CTV experts – Jake Richardson, Director of TV Partnerships at The Trade Desk, and Hannah Schatz, Director of Programmatic Operations at Coegi. They answered common questions about connected TV so you can feel confident using this high-impact channel to reach your brand goals. 

What is something most marketers don’t know about connected TV advertising?

Jake: One of the biggest unlocks we hear from clients is that certain TV shows or events are not available for programmatic purchasing. While that was once true, we’ve made great strides with our TV partners. They have realized the value of having programmatic inventory. Now, anything available on linear can be reached via streaming or connected TV. That even includes things like live sports.

Hannah: Connected TV is not bought, sold, or delivered the same way as traditional TV advertising. With CTV, ad slots are not determined by certain air times or channels. Rather, CTV ads are shown one at a time to a specific target audience/viewer.

What’s the biggest misconception among advertisers about CTV?

Jake: Pricing – many believe connected TV is less ‘efficient’ than linear TV on a household reach basis. However, the true power of CTV advertising is that marketers can tap into consumers on a more precise data-driven basis, with individual households. This makes that inventory substantially more appealing than traditional TV where targeting can be limited to a DMA or age and gender at best. What’s a better use of budget: spending it on households that are not interested in your product or spending it on audiences that have shown interest or even purchased previously?

Hannah: The idea that premium TV content is only available on one platform. For example, a brand wanting to reach Bravo viewers can access them on Hulu, but also on other streaming platforms such as SlingTV, DirectTV Stream, and FuboTV.

How can brands ensure they are running ads on high-quality CTV inventory?

Hannah: Look at what you are buying before launching your campaign. DSPs, like The Trade Desk, package their premium CTV inventory into private marketplaces (PMPs) of different categories (News, Live Sports, Entertainment, etc). Without executing through PMPs, the buy is open to all inventory coming through as “CTV” in the bid stream. This can result in buying less desirable ad slots.

For more tips on selecting CTV inventory to maximize your budget, view the video below:

What targeting approaches should marketers consider to reach their audiences on CTV?

Jake: One of the most important pieces of advice we give to our clients and brands is to start with an audience-first approach. With linear TV, we use contextual parameters to help narrow our audience. However, with CTV we have incredible user data that allows more granular targeting. Relying on contextual parameters in an audience-first world hinders your ability to unlock CTV’s full potential.

Hannah: Consider what is more important to you: the platforms your brand appears on or the audience you want to reach. If you want to target a niche audience AND only be on 2-3 streaming platforms, you will likely lack scale. Instead, be open to casting a wider net in terms of inventory if targeting a small audience. On the other hand, be open to targeting a broader audience if you only want to appear on a few streaming platforms. 

How can brands control CTV ad frequency?

Jake: Ad oversaturation isn’t just wasting money. It diminishes the consumer experience with your brand. The benefit of buying CTV via platforms like The Trade Desk is that it allows for holistic frequency capping. This means you can control and leverage frequency across not just CTV buys, but across the entire media mix. 

How can marketers measure the impact of CTV advertising on business results?

Jake: Traditionally, we don’t think of CTV as a direct response channel. By combining CTV buys with your omnichannel digital approach, marketers can track traditional digital KPIs – even on CTV inventory. Leveraging the power of multiple digital channels working together gives advertisers the most out of their CTV buys. 

Brands and advertisers can also evaluate campaign efficacy in real-time and shift accordingly when marketing goals change. Also, you can add in data from retail media partners like Albertson’s, Target, or Walgreens for greater performance insights and, in some cases, to measure tangible sales results.

Hannah: CTV advertising success is not just measurable by front-end metrics like video completion rates or cost per completed view. I often recommend running a brand lift study. This provides insight into how your video ads impacted an audience’s awareness or consideration of your brand. CTV also allows for offline conversion tracking. This records how many times a viewer was exposed to your ads before taking a key action. 

What strategies can brands use to connect measurement results from omnichannel campaigns?

Jake: Omnichannel measurement is one of the key differentiators of platform-based buying, as compared to buying television in siloes. We counsel clients to bring as much of their existing digital buys into the platform. Then, they can measure campaigns across all of the publishers and channels. By leveraging linear TV audience data via our Audience Accelerator product, advertisers are also able to understand their linear TV footprint and adjust their digital channel strategies to ensure these buys complement one another.

Hannah: It’s important to take advantage of real-time measurement and optimization. CTV advertising offers more flexibility than linear TV. For example, CTV can measure which creative message worked best, as well as what audience responded the most with the final action, such as a product purchase. Those converted users can then be suppressed from targeting on other channels running in tandem. This ultimately leads to less media waste.

How is CTV advertising evolving to drive lower-funnel conversions?

Jake: Much of this shift is being driven by the addressability of CTV measurement; but also by emerging channels. More and more, we are seeing interactive creative that evokes a response. This comes through both third-party vendors and publishers themselves. We’ve found that new creative formats are increasingly able to drive toward brands’ KPIs thanks to technological innovation in the space.

Hannah: Pixels, site visits, and site activity can be tracked on any programmatic campaign, including CTV. As a result, you can measure CTV by the number of lower-funnel activities such as: 

  • Number of site visits driven
  • Cost per site visit 
  • Conversion rate of on-site actions. 

This allows us to refine TV campaign objectives beyond broad awareness and reach. 

What should marketers consider when balancing cost and effectiveness on CTV?

Jake: Since marketers can now activate in real-time on an individual household level, they can better determine which impressions are worth their dollars. Instead of spending money on ‘cheap reach’, media buyers can make every impression count. While CPMs may be more costly on a per-unit basis, omitting out-of-demo impressions results in biddable CTV with much greater inherent value.

Hannah: Consider what placements are going to elevate your brand’s position. Some are more costly but have powerful engagement. For example, supplementing your buy on a large live sporting event to reach many users on multiple streaming platforms can have a major impact worth the premium. 

What should marketers consider when putting together their CTV creative strategy?

Jake: Marketers should treat CTV creative much like they do traditional television creative. This is a chance to tell a story. It’s also an opportunity to engage closely with your customer on the largest screen in the room. 

Also, keep in mind that you can target a very specific set of viewers. For example, a food delivery service using the offerings at The Trade Desk could activate real-time weather data to target streamers with warm dinner options in Kansas City when it’s raining. I cannot understate the effectiveness of this kind of real-time pivot.

Hannah: As you tell your story, keep a cohesive narrative, whether you have 15 seconds or a full minute. Also, ensure your video is of the highest quality possible as premium publishers have thresholds on things like bitrate. Finally, run A/B tests to determine which creatives resonate best with your audience. 

How can brands be more innovative with CTV advertising?

Jake: One of the best things about CTV is the speed and agility and the ability to test and learn more quickly. You can improve campaign relevance and effectiveness in ways that can be challenging to achieve on linear. 

Hannah: Consider incorporating emerging ad formats and tactics to increase overall ad relevance and engagement. For example: 

  • Interactive ad elements such as map functionality or QR codes 
  • Dynamic creative optimization to deliver personalized ads to target audience groups
  • Real-time geographic data to deliver CTV ads to your target audience based on their location/environment 

Finally, what are your best tips for running a successful CTV campaign?

Jake: Iterate, iterate: iterate! The power of CTV is real-time feedback. Taking the data and measurement that comes part and parcel with a CTV buy will allow you to quickly adjust buying behavior. The end result is higher return on ad spend and less waste.

Hannah: To maximize CTV campaign success, focus on three key areas: audience, context, and measurement. 

  • Audience: Avoid wasting media dollars by taking advantage of addressable CTV targeting. Activate first-party audiences by purchasing data from partners like Catalina, retail media providers, or exposure data from Samba TV.  
  • Context: Make sure your ads are running around high-quality programming that is relevant to your audience. 
  • Measurement: Establish CTV campaign KPIs that are clear, meaningful, and trackable. This will enable you to attribute success and see its value in your overall strategy. 

Download our CTV Ecosystem Infographic here to understand the key terms and players in the streaming landscape. 

For more strategic tips and information, access our Connected TV Advertising Guide.

Q&A on Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Marketing Best Practices

Posted on by Coegi

Building business solutions for regulated industries is complex. At Coegi, we fearlessly take on clients across many regulated industries, and are well-known for expertise in healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing. Clients come to us regularly to build their knowledge in the space.

This Q&A blog shares our learnings over the years. Coegi’s subject matter expert, Account Strategy Director Colin Duft, and our technology partner PulsePoint’s Head of Strategic Accounts, Malcolm Halle, answer questions regarding healthcare and pharmaceutical digital marketing best practices. 

 

Q: What should healthcare and pharma marketers do to ensure they are being compliant in their digital advertising?

A: PulsePoint – The foundation of all digital advertising is the data behind it. While data sounds like something objective, in reality not all data is created equal. Do the homework and look under the hood to understand the data informing campaigns. From a compliance perspective, two things are crucial: 

1) Consent: guarantee healthcare audiences reached provide the brand permission to market to them

2) Deterministic data: the patient or physician information so marketers know they’re actually reaching person who consented to marketing 

Building on this, it’s also important to consider the data in totality. The goal is to aggregate enough pieces of data about an individual compliantly to create a complete picture. Then you can meet the patient’s needs accurately. However, this process needs to happen in a privacy-preserving way. Lastly, the freshness of data will affect its usefulness and accuracy. 

A: Coegi – Similar to other verticals, it’s important to keep a pulse on the regulatory committee guidelines. Compliance isn’t a black and white map. HIPAA allows room for multiple interpretations, so committees such as the NAI help provide greater clarity. Additionally, it’s important to always be transparent with the client. If something feels off, have a conversation to explain your compliance recommendation and hear their point of view.

Q: The ecosystem of healthcare provider (HCP) marketing is shifting, with the acceleration toward digital. What are the latest trends in healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing for targeting HCPs?

A: Coegi – No matter the strategy, measurement should always be the nucleus of a campaign. Companies like IQVIA and Veeva-Crossix provide marketing measurement products that tell a story and tie back success to a Rx. Use these solutions to complement and build on the brand’s sales team as they start to enter the doctors’ offices once again. 

A: PulsePoint – As digital becomes the dominant vehicle to reach HCPs, marketing to them doesn’t need to be restricted to office hours. Instead, understand and seamlessly align with HCPs’ shifting mindset as they go through their day. We can reach them with unique messaging during white coat moments as well as blue jeans moments. We see on our platform that HCPs are visiting work-related websites around the clock. But, we can also coordinate these marketing campaigns on other channels such as Hulu after dinner or on Spotify during a workout. These personalized touchpoints provide a more human experience.

Building on Colin’s point, PulsePoint offers an HCP measurement solution called HCP365. It enables healthcare companies to understand HCP brand actions across digital channels, including website, search and media, at the individual NPI level, in real time. This means brands can now know, with a very high level of certainty, that Dr. Susan interacted with a brand ad, or Dr. Patrick visited the web site. This kind of individual level analytics allows brands to understand, and therefore optimize, media performance with their specific target HCPs. 

Q: What outdated advertising strategies do healthcare and pharmaceutical marketers need to leave behind?

A: Coegi  – On the healthcare provider side, marketers need to come to terms with the fact that doctors don’t just read medical journals all day. HCPs are people too. Even with a smaller audience, you can hyper target the doctor and scale simultaneously. For consumer campaigns, patients also don’t just read endemic articles on a particular condition all day. Use media to reach them throughout their day across various touchpoints. 

A: PulsePoint – Marketers definitely need to break their ties with old school geographic and demographic targeting. This is especially problematic with connected TV. More than half of all CTV buyers in healthcare still use geo/demo targeting. They’re reaching broad audiences with significant waste. CTV offers so many more targeting capabilities, for example, targeting specific HCPs based on clinical behavior or targeting likely patients who have recently researched specific condition content. Take advantage of these capabilities. It may slightly drive up costs, but will significantly improve impact and ROI.

From the patient perspective, we know advertising and content marketing works to drive consumers’ health decisions. But it’s not a simple ‘if X, then Y’ journey. All consumers start their journey at different points, so they react to different messages in different ways. Yet we serve them all the same content and expect to see the same performance. Instead, use predictive analytics and machine learning to identify patterns and recommend marketing actions based on the customer’s profile and previous behaviors. This will maximize downstream results.

Q: Building on this topic, how can marketers reach patients with sensitive health conditions?

A: PulsePoint – The most direct, privacy-safe and effective way to reach people living with sensitive conditions is with contextual media. But don’t think of contextual media from five plus years ago. Contextual is now quite sophisticated. We can serve ads alongside relevant content, of course. When setting up contextual campaigns, it’s also important to understand co-morbidities and correlating factors associated with each condition, and use these to extend reach.

A: Coegi – If a particular health condition is sensitive, there are two primary considerations: 

1) How did we collect this targeting data? and

2) if ISI is needed, can it work within the experience I’m trying to deliver an ad within? 

Marketers can’t just take data and enter into a platform. They need to do their homework on the company, how they’re collecting this data and the targeting pool. With ISI, some channels fall off when it comes to channel planning. Not all forms of media make sense when you have a long ISI. 

Q: Lastly, we know it’s important to lead with empathy. How can healthcare and pharma brands keep patients at the center of their marketing strategy?

A: PulsePoint – Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings and perspectives of another. We can use data to uncover customer perspectives in real time. And we can go one step further: to use these insights to drive marketing outreach, also in real time. 

A: Coegi – It’s important to lean into research tools, as well as patient panels/boards. These tools allow you to hear and feel for the individual affected by a particular condition. Translate these learnings into insights. They will then allow you to reach the patient/caregiver where they are in their journey in an empathetic way.

Colin’s final word of advice is to not fall into a rhythm of copy and paste strategies. It may be tempting to go that route as the “safe” choice given all the  regulations in healthcare and . But, we must be creative and break the mold with out-of-the box thinking to continue delivering the best strategies using these healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing best practices for your brands.

Want to learn more? Check out Coegi’s guide to healthcare and pharma marketing.

Download Coegi’s Healthcare Marketing Guide

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