Marlene Kruelle, Online Media Manager
Do you know what results you are getting from your advertising campaigns?
Perhaps you have had advertising in the local newspaper, magazines or on television or radio. Maybe you are unsure where your leads are coming from.
Would you like to be able to track your leads that convert to sales? Online media campaigns provide quantifiable campaign results with leads, conversions, cost per conversion and additional metrics.
Some of the different types of conversions are: an online sale, a lead, a registered visitor for your e-mail newsletter or a downloaded white paper. Before developing an online media plan, it is important
to determine the campaign goals first, so that your agencies can recommend strategies to achieve those goals.
GUIDELINES FOR INTEGRATION
To fully integrate an online media campaign with a traditional media campaign, follow these guidelines:
- Determine goals for your campaign; collaborate with your traditional agency and interactive agency teams
- Plan the online media campaign to run during the same time period that the traditional media campaign is running
- Include your website in all traditional media and marketing materials
- Use different website URL's in each medium to track results (for example, use www.yourwebsite.com/tv in television spots)
- Follow the brand guidelines when designing the creative (brand colors, font type, imagery, graphical treatment)
- Design and develop the creative based on campaign goals (increase brand awareness, generate leads, increase sales)
- Use rich media (video, expandable banners) to engage your online visitors and increase results Eyeblaster example, PointRoll example
- Use the appropriate landing page for online media
- Make sure that the product or service promoted in your traditional media advertising is easy to find on your website (on home page and in website's internal search results)
- Review online media campaign optimization and results on a regular basis with interactive agency
There are several advantages for integrating online media into your marketing mix: 1) the ability to track campaign results and ROI (return on investment), 2) engage your consumers by interacting
with your brand and 3) several targeting options.
ONLINE MEDIA TARGETING CAPABILITIES
There are several types of targeting: behavioral, contextual, geo-targeting, demographic, income and dayparting. Behavioral targeted ads are shown to online visitors whose interests are known through
website tracking software. For example, if you were on Yahoo.com and had either searched for a new car or navigated through content on new cars or had clicked a banner ad for a new car, the website tracking
software places you in the automotive category. You continue to read content on Yahoo and decide to read Yahoo News, a banner ad for new cars will be served to you because the website traffic software knows
that you are interested in new cars. The time frame that Yahoo serves behaviorally targeted ads to the online visitors is based on the purchase life cycle of the product. For example, the purchase life cycle
of buying womenıs apparel might be 7 days while the purchase life cycle of a car could have a 15-45 day cycle. Contextual targeting serves ads in editorial contexts that are related to the product being advertised.
For example, if your online media campaign promotes an upscale restaurant, contextual targeting serves online media ads for the upscale restaurant next to an article about restaurants.
Geo-targeting serves ads to the online visitors by country, state, region, area code or ZIP code. If your business has retail locations in ten states in the southeastern United States, online media (banner ads, online
video, etc.) can be geo-targeted to consumers who reside in those ten states.
Demographic targeting serves ads to online visitors based on demographics. If your online media campaign targets Men 35-54 and the online media is placed on websites that offer demographic targeting (AOL, yahoo, msn, etc.),
your online banner ads or online video would only be served to Men 35-54.
Targeting by household income serves ads to online visitors based on their household income. If your online media campaign is promoting a luxury car that costs $60,000 and its target market has a household income of
$150,000+, the online banner ads or online video would only be served to online visitors with a household income of $150,000+. The ads would need to be placed on websites that offer household income targeting (AOL, yahoo,
msn, etc.).
Dayparting targeting serves ads during specific times each day. If your online media campaign is promoting a new beer, your interactive agency can schedule the ads to run Thursday through Saturday from 3PM to 9PM.
These days and times represent when a consumer is more likely to plan on going out for the evening. Of course these ads would also need to use demographic targeting for adults who are 21 years or older.
INTEGRATED CAMPAIGN
An example of a very successful integrated campaign is the Dove Calming Night Bar and Body Wash. The campaign featured actress Felicity Huffman in webisodes where she was in a dream state where she talked with several
TV moms: Carol Brady of The Brady Bunch, Lily Munster of The Munsters and June Cleaver of Leave It To Beaver. The advertising drove online visitors to view the webisodes of Felicity Huffman in popular TV programs that
women can identify with. In each webisode, Felicity Huffman takes a nighttime shower, with the Dove products, to unwind before going to sleep. Felicity dreams that she is with each TV family to help take care of the
children when she discovers that the life is not as easy as the TV moms make it look. She asks each TV mom for advice on how to manage the home and the children. The Dove website includes a link for free samples, a poll
and tips for relaxing. The campaign was promoted with online media (banner ads), paid search, organic search, television and womenıs magazines. (Dovenight.com is no longer live since the campaign has ended.)
Did you know that 39% of media consumption is online media and only 7% of advertising dollars are spent on online media? This means that some businesses are overspending their advertising dollars in newspapers, magazines
and television and not spending enough in online media and radio. The bottom line is that these advertisers are not getting their message to potential customers through online media and radio which translates into lost revenue.
When planning for your next ad campaign, consider shifting some of your advertising budget to online media.
It is important to test and measure media mix to optimize the dollars you spend. When all of your channels are integrated, performance of each channel improves. www.iab.net
