5 Key Things Your Media Should Be Doing to Drive Your Business

It’s a common misconception that media planning and buying is a one-size-fits-all approach. Want to drive leads? Just pick a few main tactics and all of them will contribute directly to driving leads—or any other marketing objective. But let there be no mistake: This is simply not the case.

Media tactics are used to drive specific areas of the marketing funnel, and the right combination of tactics helps drive a campaign’s long-term success. No matter what industry you're in, from financial services and banking to education or technology, when done right, these different tactics and messages drive business response, build the marketing funnel and cultivate long-term growth.

Our philosophy is built on using intelligence and strategy to create successful amplification for our clients through the art and science of media planning and buying. To make the most of your media efforts, make sure your media does these five key things:

Connects to a business objective or outcome. Being successful in the media space requires a goal and ensuring measurement against it. Focus on the business objectives and define the media key performance indicators (KPIs) that ladder to these business outcomes.

Builds on a measurement plan with continuous improvement. While having well-defined KPIs is important, having a measurement plan and strategy carries just as much weight. Understanding which metrics can be measured and how is an important factor in determining the path to success. While a display campaign’s click-through rate might not be a KPI for a particular campaign, it could be a great measure to determine the target audiences’ interest in an offer. Knowing what this data is telling us allows us to successfully optimize creative delivery, audience delivery and tactical performance, making the most of your media budget.

Delivers messaging to a target audience, wherever they may be. The foundation of any strong media campaign is a deep understanding of the target audience. Gathering intelligence on the behavioral, demographic, psychographic and attitudinal level allows us to effectively message to and reach our target audience. Using media consumption data also helps us make effective recommendations for tactics to understand which media is consumed, the mindset of the audience while consuming and the types of responses the audience is likely to have.

Follows a foundational strategy. With the measurement and audience in mind, it’s important to build a media strategy that really outlines the ways media will deliver messaging. A media tactic alone can reach a target prospect, but it’s creative and messaging that drive them to action. So make sure your media plan and strategy are foundationally aligned with the creative and messaging strategy. Doing so allows you to ensure you’re truly providing the right message to the right people at the right time—all to drive your business objectives.

Continues to build a pipeline through the marketing funnel. A strong media campaign should focus on a tactical media mix that generates awareness, engagement, consideration and action regardless of the final KPI and measurement strategy. When a media campaign is running, it should be contributing to additional success drivers, like organic and direct website traffic, directly attributable actions on the website and increases in website traffic from media sources, among other success criteria. They may not have been the program’s main KPI, but they prove that marketing efforts are driving business growth. With the right media mix, you can ensure each touchpoint with your audience is properly pushing them through the marketing funnel.

If this has you wondering whether you’ve been maximizing your media campaigns within the financial industry (or any other for that matter) reach out to Malorie to dig a bit deeper.