Category: Marketing Publications

Search: It’s Google’s world. We’re just living in it.

This may have been true in the past, but not anymore.

Google is still the dominant traditional search engine, but AI advances and shifting consumer behaviors have changed the world of search as we know it. Social media and ecommerce have become mechanisms for consumers to discover and purchase new items, without leaving their preferred apps and platforms.

Marketers need to understand and adapt to the new ecosystem of search and brand discovery.

Let’s unpack these three key aspects of Search 2.0.

• • Search is social.

• • Search is ecommerce.

• • Search is omnichannel.

Last night, I saw a streaming TV ad for my local Chicago news station. Except I don’t live in Chicago; I reside 400 miles away in the Twin Cities. As someone who makes her living in digital media buying, I felt that cringe moment. Someone, somewhere, screwed up. Marketing dollars aren’t endless, and as a marketer, I pride myself on being a good steward of my client’s media budgets.

While data on my geographic location might not feel invasive, it’s one of the many touch points available for consumer targeting. But this data-based performance is only as strong as its data-based audience inputs.

This is why it’s critical to consider the three universal truths of personalization when planning and executing campaigns: transparency, relevance, and compliance.

Agencyland is always looking for the next digital rockstar. That one person who will solve an agency’s problems with one powerful chord. But is hiring a rockstar the most effective way to level up your agency, or is building a solid “rock band” team the way to go? We turn a magnifying glass on the reality of hiring shining stars, and how to harmonize uniquely diverse marketers to create a solid team greater than the sum of its parts.

Listen to Coegi’s CEO Sean Cotton and other guests on The Drum’s CEO Matters podcast below:

Oh, the humanity! You’ve lost a potential lead because your only attempt to reach out was a message buried in a pile of unopened LinkedIn In-Mail.

That person might get around to clearing those out on a rainy day and responding. But even then, you’ve likely missed the window when your marketing efforts would be credited for the result.

Thankfully, there is a better way to reach B2B audiences: Stop limiting yourself to traditional “B2B” strategies.

Fully 83% of business buyers say that you must treat them like a human, rather than just a sale, to win their business. Your audiences live full lives outside of the workplace. You have ample opportunity to humanize B2B marketing strategies with cost-effective digital media.

Use these five tips to improve your B2B marketing strategy:

You couldn’t run a successful business without a diverse team with unique skill sets. So, why would you attempt to launch a global marketing campaign without the same care; without assembling a team of experts to help you navigate the complexities of cultural nuances and regional platforms and publications?

Continue reading to learn how to build your own ecosystem for international marketing success.

Hybrid agency models allow brands to gain the best of both worlds, with in-house marketing capabilities being supplemented by agency specialists. Taking a hybrid approach to agency contracts can be a win-win for both parties, leading to healthier, longer-lasting partnerships.

Here are four key reasons why brands should consider a hybrid agency model…

A marketing campaign is nothing without a strong measurement strategy. Each channel and tactic you are investing in needs to be held accountable to business results. Confirmation bias creeps in when you consider a KPI that is easily manipulated but isn’t a true reflection of business results.

Here are three ways confirmation bias may be hurting your campaigns…

Retail media networks are having a historic year, with projected ad spend growing by $10 million YoY from 2020 to present in the U.S. alone. Even with the delay of cookie deprecation, CPG brands are flocking to these partners to gain access to end-to-end solutions including robust customer data sets, category and competitive insights, and sales attribution. It’s very appealing, especially for CPG marketers who do not have large customer databases.

Here’s how to use retail media in the marketing mix at each stage of your CPG brand’s growth…

It’s time to challenge the status quo for audience targeting and measurement.

Many marketers have become highly dependent on the comfort of retargeting and the convenience of cookie-based ‘deterministic’ audiences. As a result, they readily accept the standard reports that claim that their ads are being served in the proper places (and not to bots).

But vanity metrics will be exposed, requiring marketers to abandon the ‘easy’ option and put in the work to determine what strategic changes must occur to drive growth for their brands.

Marketers need new ways to effectively reach audiences and drive results. That means testing new measurement partners, activating more private marketplaces and direct buys, and using technology to expand measurement capabilities beyond historical defaults. Brands must test and learn, benchmarking performance with cookies versus cookieless, to stay ahead of the competition.

Things are moving at top speed, and clients’ 2022 goals are no exception. It can feel like a rat race as you re-evaluate budget, implement new tactics, reconstruct messages, tweak creative – doing ‘all the things.’

Being agile and pivoting for every single client whim will keep you on the roster today, but is that the partnership you anticipated when you first began? Coegi’s account strategy director Danielle Wesolowski has four tools to help you build the relationships you envisioned.