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Win Over Audiences with Effective Finance Content Marketing

Posted on by Maggie Gotszling

Financial literacy is in short supply. Brands who lean into an education-first finance content marketing strategy can build lasting customer relationships, when done right. 

Consumers are making a substantial investment when they choose to work with your financial institution. Outside of the financial commitment, the decision of which company to work with also requires a significant amount of time and research. This is true whether selecting an institution for banking, loans, or retirement funds. 

As a marketer, it’s important to be proactive in answering key consumer questions to win their trust and business. Some questions our financial services clients are regularly addressing include:

  • Which business offers the best rates? 
  • Can I solve all my financial needs in one place? 
  • What accounts and funds are best for me? 

But, these questions are truly just scratching the surface. To win over audiences, you must build a robust, flexible finance content marketing strategy that:

  • Simplifies communication between the business and consumers 
  • Delivers useful content in the most opportune areas  
  • Leans into innovation, fearlessly breaking the mold 

Building a line of communication with finance content marketing

To persuade consumers to trust and invest in your financial services, you must understand their motivations, financial literacy and relationship with your brand. But don’t stop there. 

Go more in-depth to find out what their research process looks like, understanding what and who impacts their financial decisions. Additionally, discover what channels they use to formulate an opinion about your financial brand. Are they watching financial channels on YouTube? Searching on Google to see if you’re on a list of top local banks? Reading brochures on the benefits of opening certain accounts? 

47% of consumers worldwide turn to their wealth manager or investment adviser when making important financial decisions, followed by educational resources from financial institutions (41%), whereas friends and family as well as social media are only at 25%. Yet, when it comes to making overall financial decisions, Gen-Z is turning to video while Millennials and Gen-X continue to first turn to search engines.

Financial Education Sources by Generation

Figure out which channels your target demographics are turning to, create a unique communications strategy by product, and meet them where they are. Formulate a financial customer journey with your marketing to help answer their questions and ultimately persuade them to call, email, or fill out a contact form.

Leading with quality content

Depending on the risk of the financial decision, consumers may need a lot of time in the consideration phase. They’re weighing their options, researching and consulting with trusted sources. Regardless of the product or service line, sharing high quality educational content is your opportunity to show up early in the consumer journey.

Even if you’re just trying to get a consumer to open a checking account, taking the time to produce a high quality digital brochure or a video ad explaining your value creates an opportunity to build high lifetime value. The average consumer retains the same checking account for an average of 17 years.

Establish yourself as a helpful guide throughout the financial decision-making process, featuring your organization’s subject matter experts as authorities in the financial industry. Also, use consumer intel as the foundation for your content marketing strategy. Then create informative, empowering content personalized for your target audiences that addresses those top of mind questions and helps them feel in control of their finances. 

Educating financial advisors vs end users

The process of creating and distributing content becomes slightly more complicated in a B2B2C marketing model. If a third-party business or individual is responsible for the final sale, you must arm them with information to best represent your value. With B2B content, you can be more technical and include common industry jargon. However, your B2C consumers need different materials. Lean into high-level content, providing enough information where the consumer understands the benefits without being overwhelmed or intimidated. 

Link these two paths by creating a series of content around the most important topics for explaining your product and service value. This allows the consumer to interact with multiple, digestible pieces of content that guide their research and discovery process.

Then, create a two-pronged advertising strategy to amplify content in key channels that make sense to each respective audience. With financial advisers, perhaps it’s serving amplified content alongside well-known financial journals, television programs, and LinkedIn, whereas content amplified for consumers could appear on YouTube, Google, or even TikTok. Either way, it’s critical to create an omnichannel experience with multiple touchpoints that keep your brand top of mind. 

Identifying the greatest opportunities

Even though you should be implementing an omnichannel experience, that doesn’t mean your strategy should be throwing dollars at the wall hoping something sticks. That’s especially true in terms of marketing channels and tactics. Use measurement tools, such as media mix modeling, to understand the channels driving the highest return in your campaigns. Then, align your most valuable, informative content with highly trusted channels. And finally, determine unique KPIs to define success and keep your marketing accountable. 

Breaking the mold

It’s easy to get into a rhythm of what’s comfortable and familiar in your marketing. But, it’s important to consistently keep a pulse on what’s happening across the finance spectrum.

  • What trends are impacting marketing execution?
  • What matters to your customers today? 

Based on these learnings, test a variety of content marketing executions. This can vary from your standard display banners to custom articles, podcast placements, email marketing – you name it. Begin building reach with expanded target audiences (achieving sufficient scale is key!) by using adjacent topics to your typical content. This will position your brand as a helpful thought leader.

Financial literacy is still lacking across much of the population, especially younger generations. Brands have a major opportunity to drive finance consumer leads through education – a pivotal, but often overlooked, part of the consumer journey. 

For tips on how to incorporate a financial content strategy into a full-funnel digital marketing, view our Ultimate Guide to Financial Marketing.

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.

The Ultimate Guide to Financial Services Marketing

Posted on by Coegi

How Financial Institutions Can Adapt to a Digital-First Marketplace 

Consumers are making a substantial investment when they choose to work with your financial institution. Outside of the financial commitment itself, the decision of which company to work with also requires a significant amount of time and research. This is true whether selecting an institution for banking, loans, or retirement funds. 

To win over finance customers, you must build a robust, flexible strategy that establishes trust, provides an open line of communication on preferred platforms, and simplifies the finance decision-making journey. Keep reading for Coegi’s how-to guide on financial services marketing. 

In this guide you’ll learn how to: 

  • Capitalize on market opportunities 
  • Target and motivate financial consumers with personalized messaging
  • Create an effective omnichannel financial marketing strategy
  • Track, measure, and improve advertising performance 

A strong audience strategy backed by a robust understanding of their behaviors, motivations, preferences, and media consumption will drive reduced media waste by ensuring your ads are being shown in the ideal places and with an effective message.

-Maggie Gotszling, Account Strategy Director

Key Digital Channels for Financial Marketing 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone – even late adopters – began exploring ways to  conduct finances online. We saw a surge in usage of online bill pay, Apple Wallet, Venmo/PayPal, digital check deposits, investment apps, and more. 

With this shift in behavior, the volume of physical banks is shrinking. From 2012-2021 there was a 16% decrease in US branches. On the other hand, there will be over 3.6B online banking users globally by 2024. 

Changes in digital adoption are prevalent among both financial professionals and consumers across age groups. As a result, 87% of financial marketers increased their digital marketing budget in 2022.

Use the following digital channels to focus your dollars on the most cost-efficient and effective channels that align with a digital-minded consumer.

Video

Finance brands are realizing the value of video in driving awareness through storytelling, which is important for major financial decisions. Consumers are shifting more and more to video content. In fact, around 84% of consumer internet traffic is on video content. So use quality video content to educate your audiences, show your brand personality, and bring your message to life.

YouTube 

YouTube is the preferred source of finance-related video content among Gen-Z. Additionally, one in three Millennials cited YouTube as their preferred source of investing and personal finance guidance.

Connected TV

Streaming TV received the highest investment of any digital channels by consumer banking and consumer finances brands in the past year, according to Pathmatics data. 

Why are finance marketers leaning so heavily into CTV? 

  • High-impact video content on the largest screen in households
  • Addressability with contextual and behavioral targeting
  • More flexibility and affordability versus traditional TV

Social Video

Short-form videos on social media platforms typically receive higher engagement and promote better brand recall. This is why video ads are expected to account for 35% of social media ad spend in 2023. Use quick, straightforward video content to efficiently convey your brand message.

Paid Search

Search engines drive nearly all website traffic and are the third most popular source for consumer financial education behind families and banks themselves. It’s critical to show up as a top-ranking site on Google. Pair effective keyword bidding with strong website SEO to ensure your brand is visible at key points in the consumer journey. 

Display

Display ads are a cost-effective option for building brand awareness. They can also drive consideration and lead generation through specific CTAs. We recommend using dynamic creative for personalized offers which drive measurable actions. 

Native display ads are especially useful for targeting finance buyers when they are reading contextually relevant content. It can position your brand as an additional resource to the topic they are reading about without being intrusive.

Paid Social

59% of financial marketers expect to increase their social media marketing budget in 2022.

Why? Four out of five financial marketers gain new leads through social media. 

Social media is useful in bringing your brand to life and building trust and authenticity with followers in an environment where they are active daily. It also goes a long way in driving new prospects and increasing customer lifetime value. 

High Performing Social Channels for Financial Marketing: 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has millions of active professionals with detailed targeting capabilities for reaching a business-focused target audience. On LinkedIn, individuals are more likely to engage in business activities. You can also use tactics like job title targeting to ensure you are reaching the right individuals.

Facebook and Instagram

Instagram is the most highly invested-in social channel for consumer banking, followed closely by Facebook. Together, these channels make up nearly half of all digital consumer banking ad spend. Lead generation ads on both platforms offer a reliable way to collect first-party data in exchange for educational content. 

TikTok

No other social platform enables the potential virality or mass reach as quickly and easily as TikTok. Plus, there’s a huge niche on TikTok for financial content. Younger audiences looking to increase their financial literacy follow creators who post relatable and digestible finance content. There is a great opportunity for banks and finance brands to educate consumers and build awareness via influencer partnerships and paid advertising on TikTok. 

Twitter

Twitter is especially effective for targeting financially-minded individuals. 41% of users report that financial and business content on Twitter can impact their investment decisions. The platform has a very active crypto and fintech community. Members are consistently discussing the latest news and trends in the space. Align your brand with this content, trending hashtags or popular creators to capitalize on the opportunity Twitter offers. 

Reddit

Reddit often referred to as the “first page of the Internet,” is a discussion-based platform that allows advertisers to reach a very niche audience at a cost-efficient rate. It is most popular among the 18-34-year-old age group. This makes it a great option to reach younger generations with a financial interest. Look for relevant subreddits where your brand can show up as a helpful resource. 

Local Partnerships

Regional finance brands need to be active in their communities. Local partnerships are a great way to establish that presence and boost brand affinity. For example, a regional bank could sponsor a professional sports team or non-profit. Even for national brands, it’s important to identify the key regions where you have the greatest traction and find partnerships to help amplify your brand.

Content Marketing and Publisher Partnerships

Less human interaction with advisors and representatives means your online content has to work harder. Thought leadership content can humanize your brand and help guide your customers through their financial journey. Through publisher partnerships, brands can establish authority in particular industry niches.

Digital-First, Not Digital-Only, Engagements 

Despite the strengths of all these channels, digital tactics shouldn’t stand alone. Accounts opened in person have up to 10x higher balances after four months than those opened digitally. A positive physical onboarding is ideal to enhance customer lifetime value. 

PWC reports, “Most consumers do still want to work with real bankers along with technology — especially during initial acquisition and onboarding activities — as long as it’s on their own terms”. So explore ways to create immersive experiences that blend physical and digital worlds for both customer service and advertising. 

Creating an Omnichannel Financial Marketing Plan

Only 9% of customers say their bank offers an excellent digital customer experience. The top way you can improve the banking customer journey, according to BAI, is to improve the omnichannel experience. It’s easy to get absorbed in individual channels. However, this causes campaigns to turn from strategic to tactical quickly. 

Instead, leverage a consumer-focused approach that determines who your most valuable audiences are and how you can best reach them.

Forward-thinking finance brands have an exciting opportunity to leverage the digital marketplace to their advantage. With a digital-first approach, audience personalization, and strategic targeting, you can reach your highest potential buyers with maximum efficiency. 

As you continue to navigate these challenges, Coegi is here to guide you. Reach out to us at info@coegipartners.com for a strategy consultation to enhance your customers’ digital journey. 

The Countdown to Zero-Party Data

Posted on by Coegi

The Countdown to Zero-Party Data

If you’ve been paying attention to marketing news lately, you have no doubt seen the terms first-party, second-party, third-party, and zero-party data. These terms are critical in almost every targeting strategy conversation. 

With Google’s impending deprecation of third-party cookies, it is vital that you understand the differences between these data types. In this blog, you’ll learn how they can help or hurt your advertising strategies. Plus, we’ll outline how to collect and leverage each data source from third to zero-party data. 

Third-Party Data

What is Third-Party Data?

Third-party data is any information collected on consumers from an entity with no relationship to that consumer. In marketing, data aggregators commonly gather data from web browsers that are bundled and sold to advertisers. 

How to Collect Third-Party Data:

  • To collect third-party data, marketers purchase curated data packages from aggregators. This data is the primary target of data and privacy protection laws because it is usually collected and shared without the explicit consent of consumers. 

How to Use Third-Party Data:

  • How do you use this data? The short answer: due to changes in privacy laws/policies and the cookieless future, you should use third-party data sparingly. Additionally, this data collection can be inaccurate and lead to budget waste by serving ads to the wrong audiences.
  • Start shifting toward collecting more effective forms of consumer data, like first-, second-, and zero-party data, for your targeting needs.  

Second-Party Data

What is Second-Party Data?

Second-party data is consumer information collected directly by another organization that your brand has purchased or gained access to through partnerships. Unlike third-party data, the collecting organization has a direct relationship with the consumer. This leads to more accurate and actionable information. 

How to Collect Second-Party Data:

  • One of the more common forms of second-party data collection is through walled gardens, such as social media and retail media platforms. For example, social media account users on each platform are required to login prior to the use of the app. You may also gain access to this type of data through quality publisher partnerships. 
  • Like third-party data, you have to purchase or negotiate access to this data from the collection source. Coegi partners with providers like OwnerIQ, US Farm Data, and other reputable sources to ensure our clients have access to quality second-party data. 

How to Use Second-Party Data:

  • As mentioned above, you will likely use this kind of data while running ads on walled garden platforms or when activating direct partnerships with publishers. If you partner with a company to access this data, they will typically send anonymized email lists or require you to serve ads through them to gain access to their audiences. 
  • It is important to thoroughly vet any partnership in this space. Be sure you are in accordance with any privacy laws or policies put in place. 

First-Party Data

What is First-Party Data?

First-party data is information your brand collects directly from your audience. If you analyze it effectively, this will be one of the most important elements for digital advertising strategies in a cookieless future. 

How to Collect First-Party Data:

  • Place gated content on your website to collect emails and other information.
  • Generate email newsletter sign-ups in exchange for discount codes or special offers.
  • Store relevant information from customer purchases in your CRM platform for future segmentation and activation.

How to Use First-Party Data:

  • After collecting first-party data, you can use it to reach individuals who have already engaged in your brand through features like email-match targeting.
  • Develop modeled audiences to target people who have similar data points or behaviors to your existing customer base. Personalize advertising messages and other communications based on the most valuable and influential data points.

Zero-Party Data

What is Zero-Party Data? 

Coined by Forrester, zero-party data is collected when “a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. It can include preference center data, purchase intentions, personal context, and how the individual wants the brand to recognize [them].” This data is technically a subcategory of first-party data. It is, however, worth giving this information its own terminology because it has the potential to go beyond first-party data snapshots and provide advanced profiles of your customer base. 

How to Collect Zero-Party Data:

  • Design and distribute short strategic surveys, quizzes, and polls for your audiences. 
  • Include interactive tools on your website that allow users to self-identify for a more personalized website experience.
  • Require free or subscription-based website account set-ups and logins to view the most valuable content to create a value exchange. 
  • Build product or service ratings into your website listings.

Tip: Motivate the customer by offering them something of value from your brand. For example, you could offer a discount or special access to an event in exchange for providing the data. 

How to Use Zero-Party Data:

  • Add zero-party data to your CRM and use it to curate customized communications and offers that build brand loyalty.
  • Act on user feedback to align your marketing strategy and customer touchpoints with the desires of your target audience.
  • Deliver custom suggestions to your users’ account home page based on information collected in their account set-up. 

Tip: Be conscientious about how often you are asking for this information and be sure to include variety between each ask. You don’t want to fatigue the customer and create a bad user experience. 

Bringing it All Together

The key distinction to make between each data type is the source.  As you move from third to zero-party data, you move closer to a more accurate understanding of your audience. These direct-from-the-source insights will help you make smarter strategy decisions and more effectively motivate your audience to convert. 

To learn more about how to use this data, read our Cookieless Targeting and Identity Solutions blog by Coegi’s Director of Innovation, Savannah Westbrock. 

3 Myths of Influencer Marketing: Debunked | Webinar

Posted on by Coegi

 

Are you falling victim to one of these common myths of influencer marketing? 

  • Influencer marketing is an awareness-only tactic
  • Influencer marketing is too expensive 
  • Influencer marketing is only for CPG brands 

If this is you, it’s time to change your mindset! 

Hear from Coegi and our guests from TikTok, Tagger and @BakerBanter as we reframe these three major biases around influencer marketing. 

What you’ll learn:

  • How to influence your bottom line using influencers
  • Innovative strategies to maximize your influencer budget
  • Why nearly all brands should be using influencers

Watch Now: 

Why should brands use influencer marketing?

Nearly ⅔ of US brands worked with influencers, often called creators, in the last year, and for good reason. Brands are seeking solutions to build brand authenticity, especially among younger generations who value genuineness over polish. 

Consumers tend to trust creators’ recommendations more readily. So adding the weight of an influencer’s opinion has a myriad of benefits: 

  • Adding relatable faces to represent your brand 
  • Reaching highly engaged, diverse audiences 
  • Improving customer acquisition, retention, and loyalty 

Despite these benefits, brands often believe influencers are not a viable option due to their particular industry, budget, or goals. So we brought together experts to shed light on the three key myths of influencer marketing.

Three Common Influencer Marketing Myths

Myth #1: Influencer is an awareness-only tactic

Whether your goal is top of the funnel, bottom-funnel, or somewhere in between, social media creators can influence buying decisions and drive measurable impact. Yes – influencer marketing originated as an upper-funnel, awareness tactic. But the creatorverse, and social media at large, have expanded and evolved since its beginnings. 

The recent proliferation of influencer-driven social commerce is further indicating this down-funnel shift.  With trackable coupon codes, UTMs, shoppable posts, and more now being incorporated into influencer marketing tactics, brands are able to more easily tie business results to this content. 

Myth #2: Influencer marketing is expensive

The cost of a sponsored influencer post can range anywhere from $10-10K+, making it a viable option for ANY marketing budget. Nano and micro-influencers with smaller, but highly attentive, follower bases are a lower-cost option for growing brands looking to build a reputation, whereas macro-influencers come with a heftier price tag but can make a significant splash. Additionally, the barriers to entry for influencer marketing are much lower than many other digital channels with the right reach out and process. 

Myth #3: Influencer marketing is only for CPG brands

Sure, having a physical, consumable product an influencer can hold up, wear or demonstrate is visually effective. But service-based brands, non-profits, and B2Bs, among other brands across a wide variety of industries, have also established strong influencer relationships that pay dividends. Some prolific examples of this are Audible.com, BetterHelp, and Robinhood. 

Best Practices of Influencer Marketing

Ready to get started? 

Here are three key influencer marketing tips to launch a successful strategy: 

  • #1 Incorporate influencer into your broader media strategy

Influencer should be woven into a holistic marketing strategy, not treated as a one-off tactic. Consolidate your paid media and influencer within one agency so budgets and channel activation can be handled fluidly and with greater agility. 

  • #2 Be strategic with your influencer selection

Find influencers that authentically match your brand values, have a following that overlaps with your target audience, and use photography and video that complement your brand aesthetics. 

  • #3 Build accountability through measurement

Take a blended approach of measurement tactics to tie influencer spending back to meaningful metrics. For more clearly attributable sales, use discount codes or affiliate links that allow backend tracking. 

For help capitalizing on the true ROI of influencer marketing, reach out to Coegi for a strategy consultation today.

To continue learning more, download The Practitioner’s Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Cookieless Attribution and Measurement Solutions

Posted on by Coegi

Cookieless Attribution and Measurement Solutions

Cookies have been the underpinning for most digital marketing performance measurement for over twenty years, which has allowed advertisers to measure post-click conversions and attribution for sales impact. As a result, channels like paid search and display retargeting typically stand out as ‘performance channels’. Simply put, cookie deprecation takes away the easy button of using off-the-self audiences and straightforward conversion tracking.  However, without third-party pixels, determining clear return on ad spend will become more challenging, especially for marketers who continue to rely on click-based attribution models.

Without cookies, it is imperative that you develop more meaningful ways of understanding how customers make decisions and how it impacts business results, a topic we recently covered on The Loop Marketing Podcast.

How to calculate marketing ROI in the cookieless future

In this new paradigm, marketers will need to rely more heavily on strategy to get the greatest and most accurate ROI. 

The ability to calculate marketing ROI starts with having a strong measurement strategy in place prior to campaign launch. Smart marketers know to look beyond online conversion data and search for correlations with business performance to determine true directional success. Advertising campaigns need to be set-up to achieve business goals rather than just vanity metrics. It’s important to know when to incorporate more robust analytical solutions to understand what’s impacting your bottom line. 

Cookieless measurement solutions

Some methods for measuring media campaigns in the cookieless future include: 

  • Media mix modeling (MMM): MMM works by isolating one variable at a time to see the impact of removing or adding a tactic. It allows deeper understanding of how omnichannel campaigns work together and incrementally impact key outcomes. 
  • Advanced measurement studies: Exposed vs. control consumer studies track brand lift, sales lift or foot traffic lift to provide greater insights into the real impact of advertising on difficult-to-measure business goals. 
  • Overlaying multiple data sources: Brands can match up Google Analytics conversion data, or sales data, with paid media data. While more time and knowledge intensive in terms of the analysis needed, this is effective to look beyond media data alone and instead looking holistically at the brand to understand marketing’s impact. 

Place less emphasis on media efficiency metrics and more emphasis on effectiveness. Look at correlations between business and media data to identify incremental conversions compared to your company baseline. 

To achieve this, marketers will need to identify leading indicators of success by channel and tactic and optimize towards those metrics.  

Will the cookieless future impact walled gardens?

Walled gardens, such as Facebook and Amazon, leverage their own first-party user data. As a result, cookie deprecation will affect them less in terms of targeting. 

Within platform confines, advertisers will still be able to track individual users, though the windows of attribution can vary. Due to this, walled gardens allow for brands to conduct some closed-loop measurement. That being said, there will be limitations on attribution, and less deterministic targeting as privacy laws continue to become stricter.

Walled garden pixels will have limited ability to pass back data to the platform once cookies are gone. We can expect front end marketing performance metrics to decline, even if backend business performance remains the same. Plan for shifts in attribution, using strategies like those laid out above, as we get closer to cookie deprecation.

Cookieless attribution tips

Begin testing and learning today to proactively understand what will and will not be effective in the cookieless future. 

  1. Begin benchmarking current performance ASAP: compare performance of cookie-based vs. cookieless tactics. Then, analyze backend data to determine the effect on business results and set expectations accordingly.
  2. Consolidate to fewer platforms, or find a way to ID map: Platforms are developing their own internal ID tracking frameworks. The more platforms you execute your media through, the more disparate measurement systems you have to consider. This will also minimize duplication across platforms. 

The deprecation of third-party cookies will undoubtedly impact the way marketers approach digital media. But a data-driven media plan tied into a holistic cookieless attribution and measurement solution will ensure your business continues to grow by reaching the audience in the right place at the right time.

How to Uncover Insights in Marketing Research

Posted on by Savannah Westbrock

The tools we use to conduct marketing research and understand our target audiences and industries are constantly evolving. Traditionally, syndicated research tools have been the go-to resources to understand media consumption and behaviors.

But brand challenges require much more than knowing how many hours a day consumers watch TV to put together a successful marketing strategy. 

How to Find Meaningful Marketing Research Insights

Use both qualitative research and quantitative research to unveil unique marketing trends and audience learnings for brands. From social listening tools to focus groups to macro-level industry reports, you need multiple sources to achieve a 360 degree view with your marketing research. Instead of always turning to the same default tools and platforms, take on a journalistic mentality and get creative to discover unique insights that will differentiate your strategy from competitors. 

Lean into your creative side. Use out of the box tactics to search for answers to questions such as: 

  • What’s the press coverage on this topic? 
  • What changes are happening in the vertical? 
  • What’s happening in adjacent industries? 

From this type of information sourcing, you can then better contextualize the second or third party data embedded in syndicated research and build custom insights for your brand.

It’s also important to look at your own historical first party data, when available. Evaluate what’s been successful and not in order to provide a starting point to build baseline learnings.   

Balancing the Art and Science of Market Research

Marketing research is both an art and a science. You need some specific numbers to justify assumptions and hypotheses. But there’s also an element of simply trusting your intuition. A lot of times it’s right and a lot cheaper than running complex, time consuming studies. Your team’s instinct and experience is going to become increasingly valuable in finding insights and closing the gaps. 

Sometimes, simply putting yourself in your audience’s shoes and mimicking their behaviors reveals more than any survey could tell you. As an example, if your audience are heavy Twitter users and the data indicates they use certain hashtags – actually read through that content. Go to the subreddits they might frequent. Watch the Hulu shows they’re watching. Use this time of exploration to see if you can unveil something new about how your audience is living day to day.  

Avoiding Research Pitfalls

With so much data available, you can use research to essentially prove any point you want. This makes it easy for bias to creep into statistics, intentional or not. If you think the audience is Millennial Moms, there will undoubtedly be evidence somewhere pointing to confirm this assumption.

To avoid this, be transparent when your data does not back up your hypothesis. This is one of the more powerful things you can do to form trusting relationships with your colleagues and clients. It’s okay to admit if the research is refuting your initial assumption. Use this as an opportunity to build a bridge with this learning and adjust your strategy to continue making your marketing smarter.  

Additionally, when using third-party studies, it’s important to remember that people answering surveys aren’t always going to be completely truthful about their media consumption or lifestyle. Take a step back before blindly trusting what you’re reading and hearing.

Watch this video for more tips on avoiding common research mistakes:

Finding the Big Idea

Strategists are always digging for the ‘big idea’. The groundbreaking tactic, message, or plan the world has never seen before and will make you millions. If you have a predestined big idea in your head, don’t let that blind you from finding something even better. You need to ground yourself by exploring a variety of research sources without forcing anything. Allow the data to weave together a story rather than reverse engineering your predetermined story to create a successful path forward for your brand. 

Key Takeaways

In the impending privacy-first marketing landscape, there will be more emphasis on planning and finding the right research. Decision making is coming back to the hands of marketers, rather than left to platform algorithms.

Take a balanced, creative approach to the market research process and unlock the most meaningful insights to improve your bottom line and build customer loyalty. 

To hear more about Coegi’s approach to marketing research, contact us for a discovery call today.

3 Ways to Improve Marketing Campaigns Using AI

Posted on by Jacob Amann

Are you using artificial intelligence for your marketing? 

If not, you’re likely spending unnecessary time and effort launching and optimizing advertising campaigns.

Which creative assets are best for this audience? How much should I bid for a particular ad placement? Who is my target audience? 

AI can help you answer all of these questions, minimizing guesswork and assumptions. 

How does AI boost marketing campaign performance?

To distill it down, AI uses algorithms to sort through data using a set of rules to complete automated tasks. To function optimally, the algorithm needs a goal to optimize towards. So it’s up to humans to tell the machine what that goal is and if the campaign is succeeding or not. These guardrails are necessary to ensure actions aren’t taken that create cost reductions, but are actually detrimental to marketing goals. 

With this strategic foundation in place, artificial intelligence can significantly improve campaign performance, save time, and increase efficiency.

Here are the top three ways you can use AI to improve marketing campaigns:

1) Campaign Optimization

The most prolific use for AI in marketing campaigns is for media buying automation and optimization. 

Automatic bidding allows media buyers to place appropriate bids for each ad placement in the open market. This ensures you are reaching your target spend levels and pacing evenly across campaign durations. 

Artificial intelligence tools can also optimize pre and post bid to improve campaign performance and learnings: 

  • Pre-Bid Optimization: Analyze site visitation patterns and social media following before a campaign launches for faster learnings and more accurate targeting.
  • Post-Bid Optimization: Pull insights from millions of data points to understand what worked and what didn’t. These learnings provide a roadmap for improving future campaigns and identify tweaks throughout the campaign. 

These automations allow you to focus on meaningful data and strategic thinking. Use them to repurpose your time to more strategic tasks while platforms manage the day to day operations. Look for anomalies and trends in the data, but let the AI do the heavy lifting. Then you can take a more inquisitive approach to determining the “why” behind the data points.

2) Audience Targeting 

The second way you can use AI to improve marketing campaigns is by expanding and refining audience targeting. Using AI, you are able to expand your first party and/or pixel data to find more people who look like your existing customers. Whether it be similar media consumption behaviors, demographics, or other behavioral attributes, this technology can find people most likely to convert. 

In a post-cookie world, AI-assisted targeting will be particularly important. Many brands will have less complete customer profiles due to less availability of consumer data. There will be an increasing need for AI to rapidly test various targeting tactics to find your best audiences in a way that’s both measurable and efficient. 

3) Creative Optimization

Finally, creative optimization is another impactful way to leverage artificial intelligence. Consumers are demanding more personalized, exciting moments from brands. To drive action, ads need to be hyper relevant to your niche audiences’ motivations, but also break through the clutter of other “personalized” ads. 

Dynamic creative optimization is an AI feature that delivers the optimal combinations of creative imagery and headlines to individuals in real-time. This takes the guesswork out of the creative process while improving ad personalization. By letting computers sit on top of the data, you can gain valuable insights into what creatives drive the most impact among core audiences. 

Here are a few tips to make the process of exploring AI go a little smoother:

Bonus AI Marketing Tips

  • Build a strategic foundation: AI saves time and resources, but there’s no point in capturing data if you don’t know your key business objectives.
  • Test and learn: The digital world changes fast. Use data in real-time to make decisions and see if things are working – and if they’re not, to make smart pivots.  
  • Remember the human element: We can’t forget feelings, relationships and human interaction. Make sure human insights from your team and your audience are still part of planning and optimization processes. 

If you’re a marketer, start getting more familiar with AI. Don’t expect to get it all right at first. Ask questions and talk with experts in this space. Start learning and move forward from there.

To work with Coegi and leverage our Data & Technology experts for your brand, contact us today. 

Paid Search Advertising 101

Posted on by Coegi

Do you ever wish you could wave a magic wand to drive your customers through the sales funnel faster? Something that cuts the time needed to build awareness and pushes them straight through to consideration? Good news – one of the most tried and true digital marketing tactics can do just that. Enter: paid search advertising. 

Organic Search vs Paid Search

When looking at search engines as a marketing opportunity, it is important to know the distinction between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising, also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising. 

SEO is the process of optimizing your website to be more appealing to search engines. This increases the chances that your site will show up organically in search results. SEM is a marketing channel where you create search ads to show when specific keyword queries are searched and then pay when your ad is clicked. 

While you can implement some aspects of SEO in a SEM campaign setup, SEO primarily requires time and human resources to optimize website content and performance whereas SEM requires that plus financial investment in search networks such as Google and Bing. The best results occur when SEO and SEM are integrated and seamlessly optimize toward your overarching business goals.

Broad Match, Exact Match and Phrase Match: Keyword Targeting Options

Exact match keywords are what they sound like: targeting searches that match exactly to your target keywords. Broad match expands your reach to show your ads in searches related to your terms. An example of a broad match targeting is if a brand targets the phrase “low carb diet plan” and then has their ad show up when “Mediterranean diet book” is searched. 

Phrase match provides a middle ground between in between exact match and broad match. With phrase match, your ad will show up for searches that include your targeted terms but can include other relevant words. These other relevant words are often adjectives and additional descriptors helping the user narrow their search, but your ad will still show.

Use a strategic combination of these keyword targeting options to show up in the highest opportunity searches for your brand. 

Responsive Search Ads vs Dynamic Search Ads 

Responsive search ads are the most common ad type within Google Ads. This format allows marketers to add up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. The search algorithm then cycles through and tests, optimizing towards the combinations driving the greatest amount of desired actions based on your campaign objective. Responsive search ads are great for those looking to create flexible ads that can be tailored to reach and influence multiple audiences. 

Dynamic search ads pull headlines and other ad content directly from a brand’s website. These are excellent for targeting people who know exactly what they want and are using intent-based search terms. Google’s algorithm can pick up on things from your website that you may not think to add manually. If you are looking for an ad format that constantly updates with your website, dynamic search is a great choice.

Best Practices for Paid Search Campaigns

Building a search campaign differs from programmatic or social campaigns. Audience data targeting is of lesser importance. Instead, targeting keywords in your search campaign that are most relevant to your audience’s queries is of the utmost importance. Conduct in-depth keyword research to understand what people are searching, how the target audience speaks, and what information is most valuable to them. Then, further the reach of those terms using both broad match and exact match search terms. 

To maintain high-performing search campaigns, it’s important to consistently monitor search terms. With broad and phrase match keywords, it’s possible to show up for terms that do not align with your brand or campaign goals. Monitor your Google Ads or preferred SEM platform for terms your ads appeared for, and regularly update your exclusion list for words and phrases you no longer want to appear alongside. This process helps ensure all campaign traffic is relevant, thus minimizing marketing budget waste on low potential terms. Keyword blacklists also help optimize for cost per click (CPC), driving greater efficiency towards terms that are more likely to produce results for your brand.

Why You Should Incorporate Paid Search Into Your Marketing Strategy

Paid search marketing is a must-have advertising channel for most any brand. There’s a multitude of reasons why, but the primary benefits are:

  1. Cost efficiency: Only pay for ad clicks rather than impressions, which may or may not provide any value. 
  2. Competitive advantage: Ability to strategically target and bid on competitor search terms to place yourself as the alternative or preferred brand. It’s an excellent tool to level the playing field among businesses, assuming your budget is able to compete.
  3. Conversion-driving: Paid search is a strong driver for site traffic. Highlight your most high value landing pages or educational content by showing up for common search queries. 

Implementing paid search in your marketing mix is highly influential, especially for driving lower down-funnel results. It presents a unique avenue to reach audiences with high intent. If a user is searching for terms that demonstrate interest in the product or service, they are immediately exhibiting more value than a user who simply sees a banner ad. In the latter case, you are hoping to pique their interest. With search, they are already interested or in-market for products or services similar to yours, and are that much closer to selecting your brand. 

Everyone uses search engines, make sure your brand does too. Test out various keyword tactics and ad formats using both organic and paid search to find your competitive edge. Then, use these tips to fast track your company growth. 

Need a strategic partner to manage your digital marketing advertising campaigns?

Contact Coegi for a discovery call today. 

How to Level Up Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

Posted on by Julia Read

Instagram is a social media powerhouse which nearly all brands should be using in some way. With 1.4 billion users available to target and a wealth of commerce-focused tools, there are endless opportunities for brands to grow through the platform. 

Instagram has a multitude of capabilities to help businesses grow: Instagram Shops, full-funnel campaign options, integrated commerce websites through Shopify, BigCommerce, Magneto and WooCommerce, as well as multiple ad formats to connect with your brand’s audience.

However, if you’re only leveraging static images in your advertising, and not incorporating new media formats and interactive tools, you may be missing the mark. 

Keep reading to learn what Instagram’s new algorithm changes mean for marketers and key ways to drive your brand goals using Instagram marketing.

What You Need to Know About Instagram’s Algorithm Changes

Instagram recently made two major updates. First, they altered their algorithm to focus on video and reels. Seeing the vast opportunity with the rise of video on platforms like TikTok, the goal of this change was to drive greater interaction with content users interact with rather than content from personal connections and followers. Another change made was regarding the length of video content. Instagram Reels used to be restricted to a 30 second maximum. That has now been extended to 90 seconds. 

After backlash from very popular influencers (The Kardashian-Jenners in particular), Adam Moseri, CEO of Instagram, paused the company’s test of a full-screen video/photo feed layout. They also began decreasing the volume of recommended posts in feed, once again showing more follower content instead. Although the video-heavy test is on hold, the main goal of social platforms is to keep users on the apps for longer. And video content proves time and again to be the most engaging type of media.

The algorithm heavily impacts both users and brands. How can you use these changes to your advantage? We have four tips you can use to lean into these updates and maximize the effect of your Instagram ads on business goals. 

4 Tips to Level Up Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

  1. Lean into video: Although Instagram reverted their video heavy update, 91% of Instagram users watch videos on a weekly basis. Also, Reels now make up over 22% of all posts and receive higher engagement than any other post format. The longer your audience views or interacts with your content, the more likely they are to remember your brand when preparing to make a purchase. 
  2. Understand your audience: Instagram users are looking for quick, emotionally-compelling content. You don’t necessarily need high production value to do this – in fact, authentic marketing is exactly what people want to see. Find what your audience values and speak to their motivations through your ads.
  3. Complement with other marketing channels: Build a strong omni-channel experience for your audience. One of the best ways to improve your Instagram marketing is by supporting it with other channels. Make your brand consistent across multiple social and digital platforms, as well as in-person, to connect the dots in the customer journey. 
  4. Test new tactics: Regularly experiment and test new ad formats such as Instant Experience to increase engagement or a Collection Ad to drive conversions. Or, test first and third-party data segments other than Meta’s demographics and interests to reach a different audience. Find what works best for your brand and use these learnings to your advantage.

As the second largest social media platform in the US, Instagram offers boundless opportunities for advertisers. To take advantage of this, it’s important to stay in tune with platform updates and changes in user behavior. Use these four steps to future-proof your Instagram marketing strategy and start connecting with your customers.

As marketers, it is our responsibility to understand trends and algorithm updates to help grow your business. For help kickstarting your social media strategy, contact Coegi for a discovery call today. 

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