Ask any non-marketer to explain advertising and chances are they’ll immediately mention one of the big three traditional advertising channels; television, radio, and billboards. These three traditional mediums are best known for their massive reach, their pervasive impact on society and culture, and their visibility in consumers’ everyday lives.
Ask those same consumers to explain digital marketing and digital media, and you’re likely receive blank stares in return. Digital media is the silent player in the advertising game. With the penetration of digital devices growing every day, reaching consumers through digital platforms has never been so important.
Here’s five reasons why you should incorporate digital media into your advertising mix:
1. Data Domination
Digital advertising allows marketers to target obscure audiences en masse. Gone are the days of buying media just to reach a large audience; the days when more advertising meant better advertising.
Data and ad technology have developed over time to allow advertisers to hone in on audiences and reach only a target audience—thus replacing the technique of buying as much ad inventory as possible to maximize reach. Layering data segments onto the delivery of digital ads makes advertising highly targeted and specific to the individual consumer.
2. Creative Flexibility
Television commercials are expensive and time consuming to produce. Digital ads require less time to produce and are less expensive to create. Furthermore, because of the time needed to execute television and billboard creatives; they’re difficult to change, edit, or replace due to the physical production and timelines needed to do so. In contrast, digital ads can be switched within minutes, allowing creative to be tested in a market with little risk.
If you’re unsure how a market may react to your creative message, a digital launch is a quick, cost effective way to elicit response and feedback. The online campaign will allow for simple adjustments if any tweaks or corrections to a creative need to be made. Digital campaigns can include several messages, time sensitive offers, or dynamically updated information. Digital ads are controlled by a media planner through an instantaneous platform that allows for quick and easy launching, testing, and optimizing creative messages.
3. Ease of Entry
In contrast to traditional media, digital advertising can be launched very rapidly. Because digital ads are served via the internet, the time to set up a campaign and begin delivering is much quicker than time to serve ads via television, radio, or billboards. In addition, self-service online platforms make it increasingly easy to launch and manage digital media. These self-service platforms include social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as Ad Network platforms. These platforms give advertisers or media planners access to endless amounts of online inventory and the ability to launch campaigns with little time investment. This quick process is a stark contrast to the long-winded process of planning and securing limited traditional media.
Furthermore, digital campaigns can be executed on smaller budgets that may not be high enough to execute a traditional media buy. Many digital campaigns, especially self-service campaigns, don’t need to meet minimum spend requirements. Most have much smaller minimum spend requirements compared to traditional mediums.
For advertisers with limited budgets or campaigns that come down the pipeline with little notice, digital mediums are a great solution to easily enter the ad market.
4. Efficiency
Television, billboards, and radio are king for reaching the masses. Digital is king for reaching consumers 1:1. If traditional advertising is meant to reach the whole haystack; digital ads will find the needle.
Consumers leave a trail of their digital identity through every single online interaction they take including browsing patterns, shopping trends, location data, and social sharing. These actions leave snippets of data about a user, which collectively creates an endless list of collectable and actionable data sources. Advertisers with the right sets of data and technology can find and interact with consumers on a one to one basis. At Zion & Zion we strive to reach consumers on a one to one basis, ensuring the most valuable impressions for our clients. Advanced, granular targeting allows the marketer to eliminate waste by reaching only the intended audiences, rather than a mass group of unrelated consumers.
Media planners utilize data segments to build layers of data that identify key traits of a target market, to hyper-target online behaviors and context, and to reach niche audience groups. The intended end-user can also be reached on several platforms (mobile, desktop, or tablet) throughout the course of a day, depending on where they’re consuming media. The strategy of cross-platform reach expands efficiencies at the consumer level by increasing frequency and ensuring the exact user is being reached on multiple touchpoints.
Using digital data to target specific audiences helps advertisers move from the “spray and pray” tactic, or in other words, move from trying to reach as many people as possible regardless of their preferences, consumptions, demographics, or behaviors. Utilizing the correct data and research ensures that marketers are efficient with their dollars and eliminate the waste of mass, non-specific saturation.
5. Instant Gratification
We’re all human. We love to see our investments result in significant ROI and we love to see it happen immediately. Serving and tracking digital ads happens in real time. Meaning, we’re able to see when, where, and to whom ads are being served, and how the end-user is reacting. Within minutes, advertisers can see impressions being delivered, and within hours, advertisers know whether people are clicking, watching, or interacting with the messaging.
Digital advertising gives marketers the power to deliver a message and garner actionable insights faster than ever before. For many advertisers, having immediate feedback helps to make decisions on placements, creative, and longevity of a campaign. Digital campaigns provide instantaneous and actionable business insights. Their ROI can be seen immediately—making digital a steadfast marketing platform for most businesses.
That’s a Wrap
Zion & Zion’s digital media experts work as an integrated part of our overall media team to understand clients’ needs and propose the proper media mix. The team understands the benefits of traditional media’s mass reach and digital media’s targeting capabilities. Our tactic-agnostic media department develops the blend of media tactics that is right for each client’s objectives and always keeps ROI at the forefront of all decision making.
Sources
https://yourstory.com/2016/11/2017-digital-media-marketing-budget/
https://www.adfresco.com/en/listings/109015-print-production-for-billboards-and-more