Digital Advertising: The Best Medium for a Modest Budget?

It’s no secret that launching a brand requires significant investment, from product development and manufacturing to brand development and promotion. And while both consumer and B2B brands can benefit from a healthy media mix, digital marketing endures as one of the most cost-efficient ways to reach the audiences who are best served by your product or service.

While a healthy mix of media is typically preferred, spreading a modest budget across too many mediums can have a negative effect on the potential success of each. Here are four reasons why digital advertising efforts can help you make the most of your ad spend.

1. Cost-Effective Engagement

Few things in life cost less than a dollar: a (less popular) song on iTunes, a banana, and, in many cases, a digital ad engagement. Whether on Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Google, clicks to a website for a consumer brand audience can cost as little as $0.20-$0.50 each. Engagement ads—those seeking a Like, comment, or share—can be as low as a penny per engagement.

There are several factors that go into the cost-per-engagement (whether click, Like, share, comment, or reaction), such as: authority on the platform, relevance of content, target audience, the user experience on the website the consumer is clicking through to, etc. and each platform has a different algorithm weighting each of these attributes independently. And while there are several ad formats and strategies a brand can implement, most require a lower total budget compared to traditional media spends.

2. Tailored Targeting

Even with Facebook’s recent changes to ad targeting capabilities, digital platforms provide an opportunity to reach a more targeted audience than that of traditional ad buys like TV, outdoor, shared mail programs, and other marketing initiatives.

The Facebook attribute “engaged shoppers,” for instance, comprises users who have clicked a call to action on a shopping ad within the last week. Similarly, Google’s affinity audiences, like “cooking enthusiasts” or “health and fitness buffs,” can help to narrow and refine an audience to signify purchase intent. These segments only scratch the surface of targeting capabilities and are critical to help focus your spend on likely purchasers of a digitally advertised product or service.

Where many traditional platforms provide demographic targeting options, digital platforms offer additional, more finely honed targeting parameters around behaviors and interests. So, if a pet product launch strategy includes reaching dog owners of shedding breeds, instead of spending on a shared mail program to reach every household on a carrier route—including those who don’t own a dog—you could digitally target pet parents who are interested in breeds known to be heavy shedders.

3. Trackable, Measurable Results

Whether you seek to increase sales of top volume-drivers, launch a new project with specific sales targets, capture share from a competitor, or increase average cart value with a seasonal offering, we KPIs to align with business goals.
In many cases, digital marketing efforts can be tracked from initial touchpoint to sales conversion. Even if your product or service isn’t sold in an ecommerce setting, a CRM tool like Salesforce can help capture relationship tracking data, as well as provide engagement scores and calculate conversion rates.

While conversion in the form of ecommerce sales is perhaps the most common objective associated with digital campaigns, digital marketing has reach well beyond the web. Digital efforts can also be useful in selling services, building awareness and engagement, lead generation and nurturing, and purchase within brick-and-mortar establishments.

4. Ongoing Optimization

Because many KPIs can be tracked in real-time, digital marketing also provides the opportunity to pivot at a moment’s notice. Ad spend can be shifted toward higher performing ads for a greater engagement rate and lower cost-per-engagement. If you sell out of a SKU more quickly than anticipated, you can pause or redirect that ad spend to another product or pack size. Gaining distribution in a new region can be supported with additional geotargeting.
Reviewed on a continual basis, performance can be optimized for a greater return on each ad dollar. Big budget or small, a strategic digital media spend is one of the most effective ways to make every cent matter.
 
To learn more about how digital marketing can help make your product, service, or brand top-of-mind among your audience—and promote sales conversion—get in touch and let’s chat.