There are many media buyers out there that are devouring as much information as they can about digital advertising, given that the marketing landscape has changed so drastically. A media mix used to include placing a television, radio, direct mail, newspaper, phone book, or a billboard buy. Now with the introduction of a countless number of digital products that are literally changing daily, the buying landscape has become much more confusing. Luckily, if you know what has worked offline for you in the past, there is an online counterpart that mirrors traditional mediums.
If you buy television, buy pre-roll or social video. Television promotes a visual story to a captive audience who indexes high for your target demographic based on the types of shows you are watching. Video pre-roll (commercials that play prior to the content a target customer is consuming) does the same thing, but instead of targeting shows, you target the keywords people are typing in online, their previous online behavior, or even the types of websites they are visiting. If you place a video buy on social, instead of the ad running before content, it actually auto plays within the users native newsfeed. Facebook also recently introduced “mid-stream” video that pauses the content someone is viewing to show your short commercial. The best part is you don’t have to worry about people DVRing past your commercial. You only pay once the viewer has seen at least 25% of your ad.
If you buy radio, buy ad networks. Radio is a high frequency medium that targets listeners based on the content they are listening to. Radio stations promote their content to buyers by matching audiences with a high demographic index (like Adult Contemporary stations and moms) to brands seeking those audiences. Digital ad networks work the same way. An ad network is showing your display or video ads on groups of websites targeted to the type of audience you want to reach. Instead of buying a radio station, you can instead buy hundreds of websites all geared to targeting that mom. It’s a broad reach with a high frequency depending on your geographic targeting area.
If you buy direct mail, buy Household IP Targeting. The best thing about direct mail is its hyper targeting capability. The worst thing about direct mail is how expensive it is to get a high frequency to help promote your message, and the fear someone is taking your marketing piece straight from the mailbox to the trashcan without reading it. Household IP Targeting takes the direct mail marketing approach and gives it frequency. This patented technology matches individual household IP addresses to a database of names and physical addresses, displaying your display or video ad only to those people in those specific households on your list. By using your direct mail data list, you can target one-on-one to a specific household or business, and figure out your marketing return on investment after each campaign by matching who came through as a customer with who you were IP Targeting from your list.
If you buy newspapers, buy news and information digital ad networks. Your goal with buying newspapers is to reach an informed audience, possibly even business owners, who are consuming the news daily. You can target people looking at news content on their mobile phones, on both national and local news websites across all devices, or even target people who are business owners based on their previous online behavior. And remember the old newspaper term “buying above or below the fold?” The same is true for digital buying, with above the fold ads at the top of the website being amongst the most valuable inventory.
If you buy the phonebook, consider SEO with a focus on directory listings. Buyers valued the phonebook in the past because it was the last place a customer looked up information before they made a buying decision. Today, people use the internet and website directory listings as their phonebook. A good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy will not only put your phone number in major search engines as a business listing and update your Google Knowledge Graph (which is the information on the right-hand column of a search engine results page where Google displays your business information), but lists your business information on directories like the Yellow Pages, Yelp, FourSquare, Yellow Book and more.
If you buy billboards, buy Mobile Conquesting or Facebook Local Awareness Ads. It’s all about location for you if you are buying billboards. You’re already ahead of the game with billboard marketing because it works very similarly to banner ad creation: you want as few words as you can on the ad to get your marketing message across to the end customer. Your digital match for location buying is Mobile Conquesting, which uses location based targeting combined with demographic and behavioral targeting to reach consumers with display ads on their mobile devices. Another strategy for targeting people in a given location are Facebook’s Local Awareness Ads which is drawing a radius around a location you want to target and only displaying your ads to a specific age or gender. Billboard buying oftentimes is about driving traffic to a given location. Both of the products mentioned above have “get directions” or “click to call” buttons that guide a customer on their smartphone to your location or to call you directly.
