Category: Marketing Strategy

5 Ways to Refresh Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Posted on by Jennifer Burleson

Looking to breathe new life into your marketing strategy? It’s easy to feel stuck using the same messaging or the same tactics over and over. But, there are subtle ways to reinvigorate your advertising without reinventing the wheel. 

Here are five easy ways you can refresh your digital marketing strategy and approach to better reach your audience and optimize campaign performance. 

Step 1: Adjust Your Audience Targeting

Digital media strategists need to place audiences at the cornerstone of their planning. As campaigns perform, evaluate if you are reaching your target audience in the most efficient ways. 

Continually review your target audiences through a combination of research, performance analysis, and product/service feedback to understand who your best customers are. Once this is established, your digital media agency or in-house operations team can build on these learnings by activating relevant first, second, and third party data sets available across platforms to reach their audiences on channels where they are known to engage and are available to target.

Note: Be vigilant about staying ahead of shifting policies and privacy laws that impact platform targeting capabilities. This will become more prevalent as cookies diminish. 

Step 2: Keep Your Creative Fresh

Everyday, consumers are bombarded with ads across every digital platform. To help break through the clutter, update creatives every three to six months and carefully monitor frequency. If your audience is constantly seeing the same creative, ad fatigue is likely to set in and even negatively impact your reach. By rotating in new creatives, you can keep engaging content in front of your target audience.

If you’re not using video ads, incorporating this medium is a perfect way to invigorate your advertising. 

Why? Because videos are: 

  • Attention-grabbing – the motion and sound of videos captures attention driving higher engagement 
  • Engaging – videos convey more information and drive higher engagement than static images
  • Versatile – video creative can be adapted for use across various channels such as YouTube, Connected TV, and social media 
  • Shareable – users are more likely to share entertaining or interesting videos on social media giving your brand greater exposure 

Step 3: Authenticate And Test Your Messaging

Make sure the message you are sharing is relatable to your audience. This doesn’t mean you have to constantly be coming up with new ad copy and creatives. Instead, use a test and learn strategy. You can use AI optimizations  to find the best combinations of existing creative and messaging for your core audience groups. 

A/B testing various creatives and headlines also allows you to utilize your top best performing ads to guide future collateral, bringing informed ideas to each marketing touchpoint. 

Step 4: Audit And Optimize Your Website User Experience

If you are sharing a different message in your advertising than on your website, you will quickly lose user interest or, at minimum, confuse your customers. Analyze your messaging as well as your customer’s journey. Make sure ads have cohesive messaging that aligns with the corresponding website landing pages. This not only allows for a positive user experience, it also helps with relevancy score to help martech platforms prioritize your ads. 

Additionally, with the ever-increasing number of users on mobile, prioritize design, targeting and optimizations for a mobile-first environment. Creating this seamless user experience will help guide your audience down the funnel towards conversion. You can use Google Analytics or other web analytics platforms to understand website behaviors and make adjustments based on where consumers are abandoning their journey with your brand

Step 5: Be Bold And Adopt Relevant, Emerging Channels Early

Set aside a portion of your budget for testing new channels and platforms. Run test campaigns to see your audience activity and engagement on new platforms. Once you find the top performing channels and tactics, you can meet your audience where they are most active. You can also keep an edge on your competitors by being a first-mover with new trends. 

Some emerging advertising channels to consider testing include:

  • Influencer marketing
  • Emerging social platforms: TikTok, Twitch, Reddit, Clubhouse, etc..
  • Podcast advertising
  • Digital-out-of-home
  • Connected TV/OTT advertising

This can also be as simple as testing a new ad format in a platform already included in your media mix. 

In the fast paced world of digital advertising, marketers cannot afford to be complacent. Always keep an eye on your marketing strategy and how it aligns with your company goals. Not all strategies need a full overhaul to stay competitive. Making a few small adjustments can make a big difference in staying relevant in the advertising space. Use these five steps to analyze, update and refresh your digital marketing strategy on an ongoing basis. 

To stay up to date with the latest marketing strategies and trends, subscribe to our bimonthly newsletter, The Loop.

Recommended Reading

How to Build an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

Targeting Tourism Audiences With CTV Advertising Campaigns

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

A state tourism client tapped Coegi to implement a CTV advertising campaign with the primary goal of driving awareness. We used a test-and-learn bidding strategy to identify optimal bid numbers across platforms. This allowed us to allocate the client’s budget across the most impactful CTV channels. Using this strategy, we achieved more even spend, higher unique views, and improved cost efficiency.

Highlights

2.75MM
Total Views

470,867
Unique Reach

$0.31
Cost per Unique Reach

Challenge

In programmatic CTV advertising campaigns, platforms will often optimize spend distribution towards total views. This oversimplification causes premium placements like Hulu to consume a disproportionate amount of the budget.

That risk was actualized when early reporting showed 99% of campaign spend going to Hulu and only 1% driving views on other high-indexing channels. As a high-impact platform, Hulu was important, but we wanted to ensure we were using other channels to expand the audience reach and maintain cost efficiency. 

Solution

Our specialists manually adjusted and optimized bids across different channels to create an even spend distribution. The goal was to identify the “sweet spot” that would give each strategic channel an appropriate amount of the budget.  Once the optimal channel mix was identified, the spend evened out to be 60% in Hulu and 40% distributed among other channels.

By serving ads to more niche channels such as Travel Channel, HGTV, and Discovery, we were able to reach key audience segments and boost overall ad performance. This generated 2,750,490 total completed video views, a cost-per-view of $0.05, a unique reach of 470,867 and a post-per-unique-reach of $0.31. 

Premium CTV channels can consume a disproportionate amount of budget. Correcting these standard optimizations with a manual test-and-learn strategy is necessary to find the ideal budget spend and maximize cost efficiency.

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Drive Travel Consideration by Leveraging Local Collaborations

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

A travel and tourism client proposed a collaboration with a local chef to boost traveler consideration for their location. Using a cross-channel social media strategy, our teams saw strong results across Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest with below benchmark CPAs for this co-branded campaign.

 

Highlights

126
Tour Guide Downloads

800K
Instagram Post Engagements

2.47%
Facebook CTR

Challenge

Our travel and tourism client tasked Coegi with executing a co-branded, mid-funnel campaign to boost website traffic as well as increase awareness. We were given high quality ‘how-to’ video creative from the popular chef. By presenting this to targeted audiences in mid-funnel campaigns, we were able to drive travel consideration among key audience groups.

Solution

We used a multi-channel paid social media strategy to target each platform’s specific audiences. Pinterest encapsulated the ‘foodie’ audience, while Facebook and Instagram’s goal was to drive the large travel audience to their site. Both platforms included look-a-like and retargeting segments to reach engaged users. Success was based on key website actions such as landing page views and post engagement.

This multifaceted strategy provided strong results. The Instagram and Facebook campaign achieved a CPLPV of $0.67 that came in well below our benchmark of $1.83. In addition, we also saw a 2.47% CTR, well above the 0.90% benchmark. The Pinterest campaign, despite having a smaller percentage of the budget, generated nearly 1.7MM impressions with a post engagement rate of 1.27% including 1,365 pin saves.

Key Learnings

  • Well-curated and professional creative catches eyes. This pushed our audience down the funnel quicker than most – generating 126 Tour Guide Downloads.
  • By partnering with an authentic, trusted figure such as a local chef or celebrity, travel brands can boost their image and drive audience engagement. 
  • Using “how-to” style Pinterest posts have a higher likelihood of being saved. This ultimately drives site traffic and brand awareness.

3 Ways to Prevent Ad Fraud

Posted on by Hannah Huedepohl

Ad fraud is an essential, but often overlooked, part of the advertising campaign building process. At times, marketers focus so heavily on optimizing for a specific conversion that they fail to analyze the quality of media they are purchasing. The absence of protective inventory selection can lower the quality of placement and negatively impact performance.

“Without paying close attention to the digital environment, the journey to achieving extensive reach and rapidly building awareness can have a lasting negative impact on perception and category growth.”

– Sean Cotton, President of Coegi 

How Can Ad Fraud Affect Campaign Performance?

Failing to put proper safety parameters in place creates vulnerability to online bots. This can project false conversions or views that skew performance data and cause media waste. Implementing a comprehensive quality assurance process is critical for minimizing fraud risk and creating results for your brand. 

3 Steps To Prevent Ad Fraud

1) Utilize Historical Data 

Leverage historical campaign data to identify domains with historical ad fraud issues. Also negatively target sites that have been deemed non-brand safe. Continually update this block list with low quality sites using tools such as MOAT to ensure you’re taking preventative measures. 

2) Apply Pre And Post-Bid Brand Safety Filters

Use bid exclusions for brand safety and suspicious activity filtering. Technology partners, such as IAS and HUMAN, provide bid verifications that block IP addresses that are known to be infected with malware and have bot activity.

3) Ensure You’re Compliant With Data Privacy Laws

While data privacy compliance is primarily in the hands of publishers, Coegi takes precautions and uses best practices to meet GDPR, CCPA, and PIPEDA compliance. Coegi has forged meaningful partnerships with a number of custom data providers in order to best accommodate our client’s needs, reach the right audience and keep ahead of industry trends.

By executing these strategies, brands can be confident their campaigns are safe from ad fraud and bid on the most effective ad placements. Ad fraud prevention is a top priority at Coegi and a focal point for every campaign build, which results in 80%+ average viewability and less than 1% ad fraud. This leads to better media performance and business results for our clients. 

Marketing in the Metaverse: Three Things to Know

Posted on by Elise Stieferman

If you’re reading recent marketing articles, or even watching the Super Bowl, then you are certainly familiar with the “metaverse.” But, do you understand what it means?

If the answer is no, don’t worry – you aren’t alone. The metaverse can be confusing. It isn’t tangible and it isn’t just one thing. It’s a collection of technologies, identities, philosophies, and experiences that all level up into a digital sphere, which in some way imitates real life. And consumers, especially digital natives, are quick to adopt AR/VR, social communities, and more. 

What Should Brands Do To Market To Their Target Audiences In The Metaverse?

  • Make digital experiences accessible and seamless
  • Select metaverse-related trends that are best suited for your customers and your brand
  • Drive innovation that’s focused on business outcomes

Making Digital Experiences Accessible And Seamless

There’s a reason why metaversal experiences are catching on: consumers are attracted to immersive environments. This is especially true when it comes to testing products, planning trips, and getting to know brands. Brands need to consider this as they explore their roadmap of digital development. Invest in ways to make your websites, social instances, and overall digital presence attractive for customers and drive affinity through positive virtual interactions. 

Selecting Metaverse Trends That Are Best Suited For Marketing To Your Customers

Brands are chasing after an impossible dream if they try to dive all at once into every new trend within the digital universe. Throwing everything at the wall just to see what sticks is expensive, time consuming, and likely to confuse the consumer rather than drive them to your brand. Instead, it’s important to have a deeper understanding of your customer and identify what will actually increase brand value and improve customer loyalty. Maybe you don’t need a purchasable NFT or gamified shopping experience. It’s important to not be distracted by the novelty and instead focus on creating the best solutions for your brand and its customers. 

Driving Innovation That’s Focused On Business Outcomes

Many brands are knee jerk reacting to what’s capturing headlines and straying away from an overarching media strategy. But, testing innovative ideas without the end business goal in mind, or simply out of fear of missing out, does not result in greater brand affinity or revenue. Innovation must be grounded in doing something new that will fulfill a need of the consumer in a way that either excites or delights them. That’s what builds word of mouth and keeps them coming back for more.

The metaverse is going to grow and evolve as emerging digital technologies gain traction and improve through AI. Marketers need to stay up to date with these changes, while not losing sight of their business goals. Before diving head first into the latest metaverse marketing tactic, evaluate:

  • Are your current metaversal experiences optimized? 
  • Will adopting this tactic benefit your customer?
  • Will these time and monetary investments improve your business’s bottom line?

For more insights, view our webinar on-demand: The Metaverse, Crypto, & NFTs: What Marketers Need to Know.

The Metaverse, Crypto and NFTs: How Marketers Can Prepare

Posted on by Coegi

Confused as to why The Metaverse, Crypto, and NFTs are dominating the marketing conversation? You are not alone – many marketers are struggling to define these topics and understand their impact on their brands and overarching marketing strategy.

While the future implications are uncertain, all brands should start paying attention now. These trends are no longer reserved for only high tech brands as the metaverse is entering the day-to-day consumer experience. Like early investors in crypto who are seeing massive payouts today, first-adopters of these new technologies into their advertising strategies are likely to have a major advantage over brands that do not.

View The Metaverse, Crypto and NFTs: Webinar on-Demand:

Coegi and our guests from Wachsman and Pop Marketer explore the impact of these changes and ways your brand can be on the forefront of these emerging trends.

How to Drive Job Applicants for Healthcare Recruiting Campaigns

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

A hospital client tasked Coegi with developing a digital healthcare recruiting campaign to drive interest and qualified website traffic for open job positions. Using a combination of social and display tactics, we were able to generate a significant increase in website visits and drive new job applications from a niche audience. 

Highlights

1,496
LinkedIn “Apply Now” conversions

10,000
page views from Display

0.63%
Facebook CTR

Challenge

The ultimate goal was to drive maximal website traffic. But Coegi understood it was critical to ensure the visitors were qualified potential applicants. Due to restrictions on employment-based ad campaigns, the team was creative with data usage across platforms, especially Facebook. Additionally, the client was recruiting for multiple positions, each with different qualifications. This resulted in separate creatives and messaging for each job position, adding a layer of complexity to campaign execution. 

 

Solution

We identified three primary channels for this healthcare recruiting campaign: LinkedIn, Facebook, and programmatic display. 

LinkedIn:

Linkedin was chosen to reach the job-seeking audiences while they were searching. Plus, because they could use job title targeting to be confident the intended audience was being reached. This tactic led to the highest number of “apply now” conversions.

Results: 1,496 application form submissions

Display:

Display was chosen to drive site traffic. Data segments allowed the team to reach niche job titles relevant to the target audience. Using custom data segments allowed for granular job title targeting, while also reaching a larger number of likely users. We ran all job titles in one campaign. Each ad set was targeting a specific job field driving users to unique landing pages. 

Display Results: Nearly 10,000 recruitment page views

Facebook: 

With Facebook, we navigated targeting limitations since employment is a special ad category. This forced a more general targeting strategy focused more on consideration, driving scale for the campaign. Like display, this was primarily used to drive site traffic and make job seekers aware of open positions. 

Facebook Results: 0.63% CTR, 5,650 interview page views, 8,783 career page views

This cross-channel strategy allowed us to target niche job titles and drive high site traffic, despite limitations. Healthcare and pharma brands often defer to brand awareness campaigns due to restrictions in targeting sensitive audiences and compliance laws. However, this campaign showed how health-focused brands can shake that mold and achieve out of the box, lower-funnel goals, such as recruitment, using strategic digital media plans.

How to Prove ROI for CPG Brands Using Loyalty & Purchase Data

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Bahlsen partnered with Coegi to relaunch their brand across six geographic locations in the United States. Partnering with Catalina, a consumer data company, the teams were able to target, measure, and optimize CTV and display campaign results in real-time across multiple platforms. This resulted in significant incremental sales lift and an increase in new buyers and repeat purchases. 

Highlights

28%
Sales Lift

38%
New Buyer Base

8%
New Buyer Repeat Purchase Rate

Challenge

Measuring marketing campaign ROI can be complicated for CPG brands. Data from online and in-store sales combined with the cyclical purchasing habits of consumers can significantly blur the lines of marketing attribution. It can also handicap a marketer’s ability to make informed optimizations throughout. Without these insights, a true understanding of campaign success can be out of reach for most brands without the assistance of advanced measurement. 

 

Solution

We knew the key to success for Bahlsen was gathering real-time sales data to inform quick optimizations and gain feedback on sales lift. It was also important to reach audiences across multiple channels to facilitate consideration and keep the brand top of mind. 

We looked to Catalina to assist with this challenge. With almost 40 years of consumer data and one of the largest in-store media networks, Catalina has built an activation, measurement and attribution model. This allows CPG marketers to build and target hyper-focused niche audience groups across multiple channels. 

Using Catalina’s measurement technology and data, we developed and activated highly segmented first-party data lists across CTV and digital display platforms. These audiences consisted of current customers, lost/lagged customers and potential consumers. These rich targeting segments were more likely to engage with and purchase the product than the broader U.S. population. This set the foundation for campaign success. 

However, the real key to driving results for our client was in the cross-channel targeting of these lists to keep the brand top of mind at point of purchase. To do this, our team activated CTV and display campaigns using Catalina’s in-house network. Simultaneously, we were targeting the same audiences on Facebook and Instagram. 

The seven week campaign resulted in an incremental sales lift of 28% (16% benchmark) with a 38% increase in new buyer base and a repeat purchase rate of 8% in those new users. For CPG brands looking to prove advertising ROI, prioritize collecting high quality customer sales data to accurately track and measure sales lift throughout campaigns. To amplify results, use segmented audience lists with a cross-channel strategy to increase reach and frequency among key consumer groups.

Retail Media Advertising Explained: Connected Commerce

Posted on by Coegi

What Is Retail Media Advertising?

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

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

Reach Your Customers Wherever They Are With Retail Media

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

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

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

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

Connected Commerce Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

How To Measure Retail Media Advertising Success

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

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

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

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

Key Takeaways

Retail media allows brands to: 

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

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

Recommended Reading:

Driving Leads Through Consumer Education for Finance Brands

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

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

Highlights

240,227
Impressions

0.079%
Conversion Rate

Challenge

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

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

Solution

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

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

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

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

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