Solving for Media Fragmentation
In a world of ever-changing technological developments and shifts in consumer behavior, what can brands do to maintain relevancy and impact?
In a world of ever-changing technological developments and shifts in consumer behavior, what can brands do to maintain relevancy and impact?
Media fragmentation, that pesky trend that keeps occurring, is making it increasingly more difficult for marketers and advertisers to keep up. In a world of ever-changing technological developments and shifts in consumer behavior, what can brands do to maintain relevancy and impact? The answer is integration.
No, I’m not talking about having similar creative messaging across paid search, display, and email to appear consistent in the minds of consumers. Though this is important, it alone does not solve the problem. I’m also not talking about retargeting to link behavior from one part of the funnel to the next. This is also important, but it too will not help solve the problem.
The best way to create an integrated campaign is to share data, and share it quickly. The teams that find a way to build integrated reports that can be reviewed regularly are the ones that will succeed best in this new world. Why? It’s simple. The easier it is to share data, the more insight the team has to work with when planning and optimizing a campaign. Nimbleness with data opens up the opportunity for cross-tactic optimization, cross-device optimization, and ultimately, the ability for advertisers to more easily find and be where their consumers are digitally.
Cross-Tactic Optimization
Knowing when to use paid search versus display versus social or email is important, but knowing how to optimize between them is even more important. When data is shared between each tactic and the team can look at the date holistically, better, more qualified decisions can be made to help allocate funds to what’s working and where there are gaps that need to be filled. It’s no longer effective to simply set a budget by tactic and leave it. Budgets now need to shift around based on how consumers are moving through the digital landscape.
Cross-Device Optimization
Just as important as looking across all the tactics is looking across all the digital devices that a consumer uses. Numerous studies show that consumers are now multi-screen and that their primary screen of interest changes by time of day. Being able to easily shift strategy and dollars by device will help marketers and advertisers stay with the consumers as they move through their new multi-screen lives.
So how can teams be more nimble with their data?
For starters, attribution modeling is the most accurate way to know how all tactics and devices are working together and what levers are best to pull when optimizing results. However, you do not necessarily need attribution modeling to begin building campaign integration. Regular meetings with the entire team will help begin the process because they will allow for:
It’s easy to get caught up in all the daily tasks associated with your part of the campaign, so you may never stop to see what the other teams are doing. It’s also easy to get siloed when competitive agencies handle different parts of the business. If you push to share data and more closely work together though, the overall benefits are well worth the effort. Being able to think through the nitty-gritty details of a campaign as well as through the larger picture that the client is wrestling with will help the team move toward integration, and ultimately, toward better allocation of funds to reach the consumer in her fragmented media world.
Fragmentation image on home page via Shutterstock.