0cbf2f2Today’s marketers are involved in online advertising. Whether you are trying to create top of mind awareness and brand presence or just plain generate leads, online is probably the best way to reach prospects and start guiding them through thesales funnel.

Whenever I embark on the journey of online advertising, I always ask myself and the publisher two questions. Sometimes I am satisfied with the answer I get from them and sometimes I am not satisfied. What’s a marketer to do when we can’t get answers to our own questions? Do we not run the advertising? Or, do we run the advertising and not worry about it? — Neither one of those are great answers. However, it may be a common approach among marketers. After all, marketers like every other person in the business are juggling a-gazillion projects. Measurement and ROI can be difficult to quantify, especially when there are multiple campaigns running.

Think about these two questions before you advertise. Ask the publisher and/or yourself to provide deeper insight for your online advertising.

1. Are the people that I am going to reach with my advertising qualified or just eyeballs?

Publishers have a media kit that should tell you about their audience. Usually it is information that includes a basic demographic overview. For instance: Age range, where they live – general location, gender, household Income, married or single, kids or no kids. Sometimes you get all of this information and even more, and sometimes you may get less.

Question #1 begs for an answer to the question, are the people listed in the media kit really qualified? How do you know that the audience you are trying to reach through the advertising is really interested in your brand? — This can be extremely difficult to figure out without a sophisticated back-end technology platform and advanced analytics. However, it’s worth asking the publisher and it’s also worth thinking about yourself so you can try to figure out how to get the answer. It’s not easy and there is no perfect solution. However, the data is out there and with the right measurement tools, you will be far better off than just guessing.

2. How many touch points will it take to turn my prospect into a customer?

If you ask a publisher this question, they will probably laugh at you. Okay, maybe not, but they may not know the answer to this question. As a marketer, I honestly have to say, I don’t know either. I wish I did. If I did know, it would definitely help me to cater my process and content to be more effective. I can logically take an estimated guess by predicting the customer path from advertising touch point all the way through to potential conversion. Let’s say there are 5 critical points along the way. At least I know what they are and how I can create content for each one. It also helps if I know what part of the sales funnel my customer is in. That will definitely help me understand if they are just entering the funnel or halfway down and already informed and interested in the brand.

Yourbrandexposed.com is designed to look at digital with an eye into the future with a creative, innovative marketing angle. A digital-business perspective for today’s marketers.


 

Sources:

Sales Funnel – ChooseImpulse.com

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