Media Matters - MEN Article
Article posted in the Manchester Evening News - 24/06/08
IT won't surprise you to hear that digital has become mainstream.
The darling of the media and advertising worlds, marketing budgets continue to shift towards online channels.
It is predominantly influenced by the proliferation of platforms such as Google Adwords, affiliate marketing and cost per acquisition advertising networks.
This in turn has redefined the way marketers think of marketing accountability.
Marketers now have more visibility and control over the performance of every marketing pound.
This has lead to increasing investments into the medium, often pulling budgets away from traditional sources of advertising.
In some cases, advertisers have ploughed all their budgets into the new medium and withdrawn all traditional placements as they cannot necessarily see the same directly attributable tangible evidence. This is where caution is required.
Traditional marketing sources such as Press, TV, radio and other 'offline' channels have a 'halo effect' on the internet. Often the sites consumers navigate to are influenced by your traditional offline media campaigns.
The impact of this 'halo effect' varies dramatically from advertiser to campaign and there are numerous studies confirming the trend.
One of our prospective clients came to us having recently pulled the plug on all their offline marketing initiatives with the view of investing wholly in the online medium. Unfortunately, after a week, they had witnessed a dramatic decrease in brand impressions with a corresponding decline in site traffic and sales.
This crippled their online campaign with every acquisition online costing much more and resulted in massive under delivery against an optimistic increased forecast.
This is a classic example which details why the 21st Century marketer needs to understand how their consumers interact with an increasing and highly-cluttered media environment.
Finding the ideal combination of media channels which will influence the customer and move them from research to action is becoming more important. Ploughing your budgets in the most effective areas is definitely the right thing to do.
However, caution is required when managing the transition as this may have a much larger effect across the board
A controlled test-learn-refine strategy is the only approach to delivering the optimal media mix.
IT won't surprise you to hear that digital has become mainstream.
The darling of the media and advertising worlds, marketing budgets continue to shift towards online channels.
It is predominantly influenced by the proliferation of platforms such as Google Adwords, affiliate marketing and cost per acquisition advertising networks.
This in turn has redefined the way marketers think of marketing accountability.
Marketers now have more visibility and control over the performance of every marketing pound.
This has lead to increasing investments into the medium, often pulling budgets away from traditional sources of advertising.
In some cases, advertisers have ploughed all their budgets into the new medium and withdrawn all traditional placements as they cannot necessarily see the same directly attributable tangible evidence. This is where caution is required.
Traditional marketing sources such as Press, TV, radio and other 'offline' channels have a 'halo effect' on the internet. Often the sites consumers navigate to are influenced by your traditional offline media campaigns.
The impact of this 'halo effect' varies dramatically from advertiser to campaign and there are numerous studies confirming the trend.
One of our prospective clients came to us having recently pulled the plug on all their offline marketing initiatives with the view of investing wholly in the online medium. Unfortunately, after a week, they had witnessed a dramatic decrease in brand impressions with a corresponding decline in site traffic and sales.
This crippled their online campaign with every acquisition online costing much more and resulted in massive under delivery against an optimistic increased forecast.
This is a classic example which details why the 21st Century marketer needs to understand how their consumers interact with an increasing and highly-cluttered media environment.
Finding the ideal combination of media channels which will influence the customer and move them from research to action is becoming more important. Ploughing your budgets in the most effective areas is definitely the right thing to do.
However, caution is required when managing the transition as this may have a much larger effect across the board
A controlled test-learn-refine strategy is the only approach to delivering the optimal media mix.
