Working as a media guru, I know that proving the value of paid media investment can sometimes be an uphill battle. As marketers, we understand that investment in paid media channels is essential to an omnichannel marketing mix, as it builds brand equity and awareness, and supports a healthy stream of pipeline revenue and sales over time.
So, when I attended the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo last month in Denver and saw a session titled “How to Waste Less Money on Advertising,” I knew it was a must-attend.
The session brought to the forefront something I often discuss with clients. ALL media plans are imperfect, and there’s always an opportunity to optimize and uncover those pockets of “waste” and create a game plan on increasing the outputs of media spend.
One key point that stood out to me was that while ad budgets continue to grow, marketing struggles to show value & measurement is inadequate.
So, how can we, as marketers, improve our ad expenditures, limit waste, and build trust with senior leadership to believe in the value of ad spend? Here’s the three-step process I recommend to my clients, inspired by Gartner’s framework:
Step 1: Acknowledge there is waste
Check! While it’s a tough pill to swallow, we can all agree there are likely some weak spots in our paid media strategy that we can review.
Step 2: Identify trouble spots
This is where we need to do the dirty work. There are four core pillars that make sense when thinking about weak spots: Media Spend, Tech & Data, Organization & Process, and most importantly, Media Strategy.
Now, each of these pillars could be a blog post in themselves (stay tuned for more) – here are some starter questions to think about across each of these areas:
Media Spend:
- Are we ensuring consistent campaign and channel optimizations? Don’t set it and forget it.
- Are we implementing solutions to combat ad fraud and ensuring we’re aligned with brand-safe inventory?
- Are we optimizing spend for seasonality and timing that makes the most sense for our audience? Your audience is likely not doing valuable research at 1 AM.
Tech & Data:
- Are we tapping into the strength of our own 1st party data? Leverage opportunities to target your known data and create lookalike audiences to enhance.
- Are we leveraging integrations from our martech stack to ad platforms for enhanced targeting and optimization?
Org & Process:
- Does our internal workflow allow for streamlined paid media activation & management?
- Does our marketing team understand general best practices & capabilities of key paid media channels? Spend the time to educate your team. It will allow them to feel more invested & even spark new ideas.
Media Strategy:
- Are we clearly defining our target audiences & segmenting campaigns appropriately to align with the power that each media channel can offer?
- Are we spreading our budgets too thin across too many channels & campaigns? While a platform like Reddit may be a hot topic, if you can only spend a few thousand dollars here, it's best to wait until budgets can fully support reaching your audience.
- Do we have a test-and-learn strategy? Don’t assume you know what works best!
Step 3: Take Action to Limit the Waste
Now the rubber hits the road. Create a plan based on what you’ve gathered from your identified trouble spots. Prioritize your list around what will make the most impact based on your business goals. And most importantly, make sure your team is bought in so you can progress and create a meaningful impact on your future paid media approach.
That wraps it up! Hopefully, these steps can help you start thinking about where you have some ad waste and how you can make a difference at your organization. Get in touch if you would like help applying this framework to your media strategy.
