In 2018, programmatic advertising has come to dominate the digital marketing field. Programmatic ads — which target consumers through a range of signals, including demographic information, internet usage behavior, and their geographic location — are so effective and so popular that other, traditional forms of online advertising risk extinction.
Yet, as popular as programmatic marketing is right now, it will be even more popular in the coming year. That will only make the programmatic market even more competitive than it already is. So, as you plan your brand’s digital marketing game plan for 2019, here are four tips to help you develop an effective (and cost-effective) programmatic strategy.
Keys to Programmatic Marketing for National Brands
Consider Every Consumer Touchpoint. Programmatic ads have reshaped the average consumer’s decision journey. Brands can target consumers more accurately at every stage of this journey, including instances where their decision-making journey is disrupted or delayed.
As programmatic ads have become more advanced, with ever-more accurate methods of targeting, it’s become more and more important that brands consider every touchpoint in the purchasing journey.
Display ads can build brand awareness with users who share similar traits and interests as your customer base. Social media posts can target users who’ve visited your website (or your competitors’). And if a customer abandons their journey just before purchase, you can give them a nudge with a retargeted ad.
Leverage Mobile Opportunities. Mobile devices now make up nearly 2/3 of all internet traffic. What’s more, mobile ads also outperform desktop ads, posting strong click-through rates, conversion rates, and on-the-dollar ROI.
While a handful of industries still perform better on desktop, mobile is where the money’s at for most brands in 2019. Needless to say, most brands should focus on mobile first-and-foremost when developing their programmatic strategy for the upcoming year.
But before you go all-out on mobile, a word of caution: Desktop still plays a crucial role in many purchasing journeys. In many cases, users will first become aware of and interested in a brand via mobile, but they will make their final purchase through a desktop device. In these cases, your programmatic strategy should move with users from one platform to the next.
Take Advantage of Local Targeting. For brick-and-mortar businesses, geo-targeting is one of the most effective tools in the programmatic marketing toolbox. Geo-targeting makes it easy to show ads to users within a specific geographic area, targeting users in a specific town or city, within a geo-fenced area, or within a certain radius of a particular location.
Location targeting has proven particularly popular with franchise brands, offering an easy and effective way to market individual franchise locations. Brands can operate programmatic local campaigns on a franchisee-to-franchisee basis. Alternatively, they can program and segment a national campaign to direct users to their nearest location.
When targeting users based on their location, remember to tailor your method of targeting to your business. If you operate a franchise network of coffee shops, you’ll want to target specific, smaller-footprint locations. A maid services franchise network, on the other hand, will likely target a much broader overall area, but may focus its spending on specific neighborhoods.
Track, Segment, and Measure Results. Accurate data is the foundation of any successful digital campaign. Nowhere is this truer than the field of programmatic marketing. Small tweaks to targeting can make a massive difference in the performance of programmatic campaigns, and it’s only through accurate data that these tweaks can be made.
The sheer volume of data on programmatic campaigns can make it difficult to track, segment, and measure this data. This can be particularly troublesome for franchise brands with multiple locations. The more locations involved with your campaign, the more data you have to manage, and the harder it is to sort important signals from insignificant noise.
One of the best ways to avoid this problem is to hire a digital marketing agency that specializes in programmatic marketing for larger, national brands. These agencies have the experience, expertise, and infrastructure you need when running programmatic campaigns across multiple franchise locations. This allows them to not only assess data more accurately, but also to run these campaigns more cost-effectively.
Learn more about the benefits of integrating Programmatic into your marketing strategy here.
