Traditional marketing plans do not work anymore

By Andrew Fischer

The data-driven reality of today’s business environment requires the modern marketer to take an agile approach to media planning and optimization.

With partners and competitors leveraging instantly available information, quarterly and annual plans have been rendered obsolete. And while it was previously the converse, this rapid feedback loop now dictates that the ongoing media actually informs campaign strategy.

The endless stream of real-time information is an opportunity to incrementally improve campaigns every day.

As ad-tech continues to evolve, marketers now have powerful, flexible and affordable tools to capitalize on the increased availability and pace of actionable data.

Nowhere is this more applicable than platform-driven programmatic advertising.

Leveraging a simple, single interface, an operator can simultaneously build, run and optimize multiple campaigns while maximizing overall return-on-ad-spend.

Visibility
Know what is working and what is not.

Many programmatic advertising platforms provide instant, measurable results that offer a full view into the functioning of digital ad campaigns.

You know where your money is going, you can test and recalibrate campaigns quickly, and make your team more fluid and responsive.

With instant access to mounds of data and performance metrics, marketers can make better decisions. What used to take weeks to analyze can be done in a matter of minutes.

Control
Things do not always go according to plan.

Trends can change, campaigns might not produce the desired results, or higher-value projects may turn away our focus.

We cannot possibly forecast what will happen next week or six months from now.

Here is how quickly things can shift in a digital marketing campaign.

Let us say you have two ads. A report shows customers are responding to one ad over the other, but you have allocated more money to the underperforming ad.

A traditional media campaign would involve a series of laborious tasks to make even the simplest changes. The nimble technology of programmatic advertising platforms allows you to optimize budgets and make changes to campaigns on the fly.

There is greater room for externalities so you can avoid entering a rapid fire-drill mode.

Performance
Now you can run a campaign for 24 hours and have a decent read on its performance.

A programmatic advertising platform can report back real, usable information. We are no longer going on assumptions, opinions and attitudes.

The days of “the CEO thinks blue will be better” are over. Does the blue ad perform better than the red ad? Let the users dictate the color to drive a data-driven digital advertising campaign.

Knowledge not only can be used to improve the campaign, but the feedback can also inform everything from sales performance to scaling your audience.

Value capture
Emerging ad technologies are highly intuitive, thus reducing the need for continuous training and support, which lowers operating costs.

Furthermore, with an agile/programmatic approach, media teams can be much more efficient, spending less time managing vendors and more time on strategy, client relationships and expanding the overall volume of business.

The innovation and simplicity of these platforms will help your team save time and money while delivering greater value.

But what about the downsides to an agile approach?
There is really only one: You cannot let your attention slip, even for a second.

While the influx of data can be hard to handle, it is important to keep analyzing the flow of information that you are getting back on a campaign.

Data can help you plan, think of fresh ideas, and show you unexpected insights. All of which can move a campaign stuck in the weeds forward.

FIND A PLATFORM that makes gathering and grasping the meaning of data manageable.

In the past, the nature of media buying did not allow the flexibility that programmatic advertising platforms do now.

The media itself is now one of the richest sources of information, and it will continue to redefine the plan and strategy.

Andrew Fischer is CEO of Choozle, Denver, CO. Reach him at andrew@choozle.com.