As brands expand their digital presence, they eventually reach a point of saturation where it becomes difficult to grow an incremental business. The job of a digital marketer is to find ways to stretch this point and keep the business growing. This may involve finding new ways to reach potential customers or developing new strategies to keep existing customers engaged.
Before you can even begin to think about your media strategy, you need to take a step back and understand your consumer. Who is your target audience? What will trigger them to buy your product? And, perhaps most importantly, how will they behave on digital platforms? Once you have a firm understanding of your consumer, you can begin to craft a plan that will reach them where they’re at.
Mapping the digital journey for your target audience is essential to understanding how they interact with your product. By understanding their online behavior, you can determine which apps and websites are most relevant to them and make a list of apps and websites that they use throughout their day. This will help you better understand their needs and how you can reach them with your product.
As a digital marketer, we often get stuck using just Google and Facebook, but we need to remember that there are other platforms out there that can be just as useful, if not more so. Consumers use multiple platforms every day, and we need to take advantage of that. Instead of relying on just a couple of big players, we should be looking at all the different options available to us.
When we have a list of apps and websites, we need to understand the feasibility of advertising on these platforms. This includes understanding the potential of the platform in terms of:
1 – Audience size: DAU/MAU/daily visits
2 – Targeting abilities
3 – Inventories available
4 – Buying type of each inventory
5 – Benchmarks
After gathering all the details, it’s important to map the customer funnel with your benchmarks and learnings on traditional platforms like Google and Facebook. Once the funnel is mapped, gauge the cost metrics and how close it is to your expected CAC. Even if it’s not lower than your usual channels, don’t write them off immediately. Incremental business comes with a cost attached to it!
Constantly experimenting is the key to success on any new platform. This means trying new things with your audience, communications, creatives, and landing pages. Experimenting can be a daunting task, but it is essential to cracking a new platform. Remember this cycle and repeat it!
