Author: Stevie LoBosco

Real-time relevance: A playbook for dynamic marketing strategies

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date December 16, 2024

Just like a rainy day might force a football team to prioritize running plays over a passing game, or a dominant center on the opposing team might cause a basketball team to shift from man-to-man to zone defense, we adjust our attitudes and actions based on what’s happening around us. Why should marketing be any different?

Dynamic marketing is the ultimate playmaker in today’s fast-paced, consumer-driven landscape. It’s all about relevance—using customer information to run flexible and responsive marketing campaigns in real time based on customer behavior and needs. Instead of relying on static strategies that treat all customers the same, dynamic marketing embraces flexibility, using data to understand what your audience wants and when they want it. Just like a coach calling audibles during a game, dynamic marketing allows businesses to respond to shifting conditions and keep their strategies relevant and effective. In this blog, we’ll explore how dynamic marketing helps you stay on offense, adjust your playbook, and score big with your audience.

Straight from the playbook: Examples of dynamic marketing

Dynamic marketing takes many forms, each designed to be responsive to changing conditions, customer behaviors, or external factors. These strategies leverage data and automation to create highly relevant experiences. Here are some common types of dynamic marketing:

Time-sensitive campaigns: Marketing efforts that change based on time, such as countdowns to sales, events, or product launches, creating urgency and driving engagement.
Weather-triggered ads: Campaigns that adjust based on local weather conditions, like promoting cozy blankets during a cold spell or outdoor gear on sunny days.
Location-based marketing: Dynamic content tailored to where the customer is, such as promoting nearby stores or events based on their current location.
Behavior-driven messaging: Ads or emails that respond to customer actions, like retargeting someone who viewed a product with an offer or reminding them to complete a purchase.
Dynamic pricing: Pricing that adjusts based on external factors, like ride-sharing prices that adjust during peak hours or in high-demand areas or hotel room rates that adjust based on occupancy and demand.

These types of dynamic marketing strategies ensure that businesses deliver the right message at the right time, increasing engagement and improving outcomes.

Scoring big: The benefits of a dynamic marketing strategy

A dynamic marketing strategy offers businesses the flexibility to stay relevant and competitive in a constantly evolving marketplace. By leveraging real-time customer data and insights, companies can tailor their messaging, content, and offers to meet the immediate needs and preferences of their audience, resulting in:

Higher conversion rates: Targeted marketing efforts that adapt to customer behavior are more likely to resonate with the audience, resulting in increased conversions and sales.
Stronger customer loyalty: Dynamic strategies demonstrate an understanding of customer needs, fostering trust and long-term loyalty by delivering timely and relevant experiences.
Competitive advantage: By staying relevant and responsive to customer behavior, businesses can outpace competitors who rely on static, outdated strategies, positioning themselves as industry leaders.

Keeping your eye on the ball: The need for dynamic marketing

In today’s crowded and fast-paced marketplace, static marketing strategies often fail to resonate with audiences who expect timely, relevant experiences. Customers are inundated with messages across channels, making it essential for businesses to rise above the noise. Dynamic marketing meets this challenge by responding to real-time conditions and behaviors, ensuring messages are not only seen but are also meaningful in the moment. For instance, campaigns that adjust creative elements based on current trends, time-sensitive events, or shifting customer priorities can capture attention and drive action. By staying agile and contextually aware, dynamic marketing breaks through the clutter and delivers messaging that truly connects with audiences, fostering engagement and results.

Focusing on the fundamentals: Core elements of a dynamic marketing strategy

To execute a successful dynamic marketing strategy, you need a strong foundation built on key elements. These components ensure your strategy is agile, effective, and always ready to adapt to the changing game:

Real-time data collection: Dynamic marketing relies on up-to-the-minute data to understand customer behavior, trends, and external factors like weather or location. This data enables responsive campaigns.
Automation tools: Automation ensures swift responses to customer actions, triggering ads, updating creative, or sending communications based on predefined conditions for greater efficiency and relevance.
Creative resources: Effective dynamic marketing requires a variety of thoughtful creative assets. Develop multiple versions of your content to suit different scenarios, customer segments, or triggers.
Testing and optimization: Ongoing testing and optimization ensure your strategy remains effective. Regular A/B testing, creative updates, and performance reviews help refine and improve your campaigns.
Cross-channel integration: Dynamic marketing works best when it’s integrated across multiple channels, such as email, social media, and paid ads, to deliver a consistent, unified experience.
Clear metrics and KPIs: Define metrics and key performance indicators to evaluate your campaigns’ success, such as clicks, conversions, or engagement, and use these insights to continually improve your strategy.

By building your strategy around these core elements, you’ll have a gameplan designed to adapt, engage, and win.

Don’t get blindsided: Common challenges

Implementing a dynamic marketing strategy comes with several challenges that businesses must anticipate and address in order to succeed:

High-quality, real-time data: Robust tools and systems are required to collect, analyze, and act on insights quickly. Without this, marketing efforts may fall short of their potential.
Significant creative resources: Dynamic marketing strategies require multiple versions of content tailored to various scenarios or triggers, placing increased demand on creative teams.
Seamless integration across multiple channels: Inconsistent messaging can confuse customers and dilute the impact of campaigns. A full-funnel, integrated approach is essential for dynamic marketing campaign development, execution, measurement, and continuous improvement. This can be difficult for brands whose marketing teams and partners consist of mostly channel-specific specialists and point solution providers.

Game day ready: Tips for implementing dynamic marketing

Implementing a dynamic marketing strategy can be complex, but these tips can help ensure success:

Invest in the right tools and partners: Use automation platforms, real-time analytics, and customer data management systems to enable efficient and responsive marketing efforts, or find a good partner who specializes in dynamic marketing so manage your campaigns for you.
Prioritize data quality: Ensure your data is accurate, up-to-date, and actionable by implementing robust collection and validation processes.
Plan for creative flexibility: Develop a range of content variations tailored to different scenarios, customer segments, or external triggers to keep campaigns relevant and engaging.
Start small and scale: Begin with a single dynamic element, such as weather-triggered ads or behavior-based emails, then expand as you refine your approach and build confidence.
Optimize and refine continuously: Use A/B testing and performance metrics to assess what works, and refine your strategies to improve outcomes over time.
Align teams and channels: Foster collaboration between teams and integrate messaging across channels to deliver a seamless and cohesive customer experience.

Step up to the plate

Dynamic marketing enables you to deliver impactful, timely messages that truly resonate with your audience. Ready to elevate your marketing game and get a W? At Tallwave, we specialize in crafting innovative, dynamic strategies tailored to your goals. Let’s work together to make your marketing more agile, engaging, and effective. Contact us today to get started!

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The power of personalization in marketing

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date November 18, 2024

As technology has evolved and marketers have (mostly) maintained access to audience data, personalization has become an essential marketing strategy for brands aiming to drive engagement, build loyalty, and ultimately boost conversions. Customers expect brands to provide them with content and offers that feel personal and relevant. Personalization in marketing is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a must for modern marketing success.

What is personalization in marketing?

Personalization in marketing refers to the practice of tailoring content, messages, and offers to individual customers based on their data, preferences, and behavior. You’ve probably experienced this before in scenarios like these:

You fall in love with an article of clothing on the website of a brand you’ve bought from in the past, you add it to your cart, but because it is a little pricey, you ultimately decide not to make the purchase. An hour later, you get an email from the brand reminding you about the item in your cart and offering you 10% off.
You log in to your favorite streaming app and are met with recommendations on what to watch next based on your recent viewing activity. “Welp, better block off my Saturday. The latest season of The Great British Bake Off just dropped.”
You are doing some online research for a new sports car. Over the next week, you see banner ads on social media platforms and news websites and even hear an ad in your favorite podcast for different types of sports cars.
You book a flight to visit your parents in Kansas. In the weeks leading up to your trip, the airline sends you a series of emails asking if you’ve booked your hotel and your rental car yet. It might even send you a list of activity ideas. Because who wouldn’t want to plan a visit to the largest ball of twine?

As you can see, personalization can take many shapes. It spans across a variety of channels, including email, websites, apps, social media, and paid media. When done right, coordinated personalization across these channels can be extremely impactful, creating a cohesive, seamless experience throughout the customer journey.

The science behind personalization

At its core, personalization taps into the human need for recognition, relevance, and relatability. Individuals want to feel seen, and tailored content and experiences can help make this personal connection between brands and their audiences. You may not even register a generic ad that finds its way in front of you, but an ad that uses your name, showcases a product you’ve expressed interest in, or tells a story that aligns with your values is a lot harder to ignore.

By using data—often with machine learning and AI—brands can better understand their audience’s needs, preferences, and behaviors. This insight enables them to create personalized experiences that feel more human. When brands connect with audiences in this way, it builds trust, strengthens loyalty, and encourages people to take action.

Personalized content cuts through clutter

In a world oversaturated with digital ads and content, personalization is a powerful tool for cutting through the noise and capturing attention. Generic, one-size-fits-all messages are easily ignored, but personalized experiences feel relevant and valuable to the customer. By delivering content, offers, or recommendations that align with individual preferences and behaviors, brands can bypass the usual clutter and stand out in crowded inboxes and social feeds.

Personalization allows customers to feel seen and understood, making them more likely to engage with the brand, remember it, and even seek it out again. Through tailored interactions, personalization transforms a brand from just another voice in the crowd to a meaningful, memorable presence.

A masterclass in personalized experiences

Some brands have mastered personalization, creating unique, memorable experiences that keep customers coming back. From predictive recommendations to curated playlists, these brands understand that personalization goes beyond simply addressing a customer by name; it’s about anticipating needs, surprising customers, and delivering relevant content across every touchpoint. Here are a few standout examples:

Netflix: Known for its sophisticated recommendation engine, Netflix uses machine learning to suggest shows and movies based on viewing history and individual preferences, creating a uniquely tailored experience for each user.
Spotify: With personalized playlists like Daylist and Discover Weekly, Spotify crafts music recommendations based on listening patterns, helping users discover new music that fits their tastes.
Amazon: By leveraging data on previous purchases, browsing history, and wishlist items, Amazon’s personalized recommendations and tailored email promotions make shopping easy and relevant for each customer.
Coca-Cola: Their iconic “Share a Coke” campaign, featuring customer names on bottles, created a personal, shareable experience that resonated with customers globally and encouraged brand loyalty.
Nike: Through the Nike app, users receive workout recommendations, personalized style tips, and early access to new products based on their activity and interests, blending lifestyle and personalization seamlessly.

What personalization strategies mean for your bottom line

When 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience, you can pretty much guarantee results from a well-executed personalization strategy. The deep connections forged with audiences through personalization materialize in the form of:

Enhanced customer experience: When brands align their messages with individual preferences, customers feel valued and understood. This, in turn, improves overall satisfaction.
More conversions: Personalization delivers relevant content to the right audience at the right time, making them more likely to engage and convert.
Increased customer lifetime value: When customers feel connected to a brand, they are more likely to stay loyal over time. Personalization fosters this loyalty by making customers feel seen, resulting in repeat purchases and longer relationships.
Stronger ROI: Personalized marketing strategies typically generate marketing efficiencies as the people you reach become more likely to engage and convert. As a result, you generate more conversions and revenue compared to your investment, increasing your ROAS and ROI.

Overcoming personalization challenges

Despite its benefits, personalization does present marketers with some challenges:

Data privacy: In an era of rising concerns about privacy, brands must balance personalization with transparency and ethical data practices. Obtaining consent and offering clear explanations for data use can help maintain trust.
Data quality: Poor data can lead to irrelevant messaging and missed opportunities. Ensuring data accuracy and regularly updating customer information are crucial to effective personalization.
“Creepy” factor: While customers appreciate tailored experiences, over-targeting can feel invasive. Brands should aim for a balanced approach that respects boundaries and avoids overly personalized content that may come off as intrusive.

Keeping these factors in mind as you embark on your personalization strategy will help mitigate major challenges with targeting effectiveness, meaningful content creation, and consumer trust.

Key considerations for effective personalization

Like all marketing strategies, personalization requires thoughtful planning and diligent execution to be effective. Be sure to consider the following:

Understand your audience: Dive deep into customer data to uncover behaviors, preferences, and motivations. This audience intelligence will inform your segmentation strategy to deliver relevant content that resonates with each group.
Manage data quality: Regularly update your data collection practices and focus on quality over quantity. Clean, accurate data enables you to make informed decisions about content, timing, and targeting.
Test and optimize: Personalization is an evolving process as consumer behavior and market trends shift. Regular A/B testing and feedback collection help refine strategies and ensure your personalization efforts are impactful.

Effective data quality management is essential to implement a successful personalization strategy. Learn more about how to harness the power of data for actionable strategies.

Personalized support with personalization

Personalization can significantly boost your marketing effectiveness, but it requires the right mix of data management, audience insights, and digital marketing strategy. If you’re ready to explore personalization strategies tailored to your unique goals, our team at Tallwave can help you create meaningful customer experiences that drive results. Reach out to learn more!

Tags brand strategy, customer experience, personalization

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4 scary mistakes you’re making with your marketing attribution model

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date October 28, 2024

This Halloween, the scariest thing lurking in your marketing strategy isn’t a werewolf or a ghoul—it’s your flawed attribution model. While you might not hear its eerie whispers, the wrong model could be silently leading you into a budget-wasting nightmare. Failing to track the full customer journey, misinterpreting data, and over-relying on outdated methods can turn your marketing into a horror story. But don’t be afraid—we’re here to shine a light on the spine-chilling mistakes you might be making with your marketing attribution and help you escape the darkness of misleading measurement.

What is a marketing attribution model?

The customer journey is a complex process. On average, it takes consumers seven interactions with a brand before they will make a purchase. Each of those interactions plays an important role in influencing your consumer: a billboard that makes a consumer aware of your brand, a TV ad that educates that consumer about your product, a display banner that takes them to your website for more information, a retargeting ad on Instagram that finally convinces them to make the purchase. But which of those channels should get credit for the conversion? Sure, the retargeting ad got them to put the product in their cart, but that ad couldn’t have been served to them if they hadn’t visited the website through the display banner. And they may not have clicked on the display banner if they’d never seen your brand on that billboard or TV ad.

A marketing attribution model analyzes those various touchpoints, or channels, in the customer journey and then assigns credit to those channels when a conversion occurs. There are many types of attribution models, and while there is no right or wrong attribution model, some may be more appropriate than others depending on your marketing goals and measurement strategy. Here are some examples of the various models:

First-touch: Full credit is assigned to the first channel a buyer interacts with before a conversion occurs. In the example above, the billboard gets full credit for the conversion.
Last-touch: Full credit is assigned to the last channel a buyer interacts with before a conversion occurs. In the example above, the Instagram retargeting ad gets full credit for the conversion.
Linear: Credit is divided equally across all channels in the consumer’s journey leading up to the conversion. In the example above, the billboard, TV ad, display banner, and retargeting ad all get equal credit for the conversion.
Time-decay: Credit is given to all channels in the journey, but is weighted more heavily to the channels closer to the point of conversion. In the example above, all channels get credit, but the retargeting ad gets the most credit and the billboard gets the least.
Position-based: Credit is given to all channels in the journey, but is weighted more heavily to the first and last channel. In the example above, the billboard and retargeting ad might each get 40% credit with the TV ad and display banner only receiving 10% each.
Data-driven: The most complex model, data-driven attribution uses first-party data and machine-learning algorithms to determine how to assign credit based on past performance.

Customer journeys are complex to begin with and privacy regulations have made it even more difficult to track those journeys. As a result, every attribution model is limited to some degree, but choosing the one that is best for your business will set the foundation for more meaningful insights.

Avoid the marketing graveyard: Why a strong attribution model matters

An effective attribution model is critical for understanding the impact of your various marketing channels. It provides a common denominator for marketers to evaluate channel performance and return on ad spend (ROAS), rather than relying on vanity metrics or misaligned KPIs. Armed with effective attribution data, marketers can better allocate budgets, build more effective marketing strategies, and optimize campaigns.

Relying on a flawed attribution model can lead your marketing efforts down a dangerous path, distorting the true impact of your campaigns. When data is incomplete or skewed, it becomes easy to overvalue certain channels while completely overlooking others that play a critical role in the customer journey. This can result in misguided strategies that shift resources toward less effective tactics and cut budgets for those that actually drive conversions. While you may not notice the impact immediately, long-term, you waste valuable marketing dollars and miss out on key opportunities for growth. Ultimately, a faulty model not only damages your ROAS but also clouds your ability to make informed, data-driven decisions.

Beware of bad data: Common attribution model mistakes

There are a lot of mistakes that can be made with attribution models, but here are four of the most pervasive:

Incomplete attribution

Incomplete attribution occurs when a brand’s marketing model fails to account for all the touchpoints along the customer journey, leaving critical data gaps that misrepresent the true impact of your efforts. This often happens when non-digital interactions, like phone calls, in-store visits, or direct mail, are overlooked. The result is a skewed understanding of which tactics are impacting conversions.

For example, a customer might have discovered your brand via a TV ad, engaged through social media, and finally converted after a paid ad, but if you aren’t including non-digital channels, like TV, in your attribution model, you might overlook the value of TV ads in generating brand awareness and driving future engagement with your brand. Incomplete attribution can result in survival bias where marketers overlook data that went unrepresented, making it difficult to effectively optimize a marketing strategy and invest in the most impactful channels.

Over-reliance on last click attribution

Over-relying on last-click attribution is a common mistake that gives all the credit for a conversion to the final interaction a customer has before making a purchase, ignoring the rest of the journey. While the last touchpoint is important, focusing solely on it overlooks the many valuable interactions a customer has leading up to that point.

This narrow approach can lead to underinvestment in key channels that play a vital role in building awareness and nurturing potential customers. The result is a distorted view of your marketing performance, where decisions are made based on incomplete data, ultimately causing inefficiencies in budget allocation and missed opportunities for long-term growth.

See the scary truth of what happens when a misaligned attribution model hyperfocused on conversion attribution informs marketing decisions.

Not giving credit to assisted conversions

Assisted conversions occur when a touchpoint plays a role in guiding a customer toward a purchase, but isn’t the final step in the journey. For example, a customer might engage with a blog post, download a whitepaper, and attend a webinar before finally converting through a paid search ad. If your attribution model only values the last interaction, the crucial steps that nurtured the customer—like content marketing and webinars—are overlooked.

This leads to underappreciating and underfunding the channels that help build trust and move prospects through the funnel. Over time, this misallocation of resources weakens your overall strategy, as the channels that contribute to long-term engagement and relationship-building receive less attention, reducing their impact and ultimately hurting your marketing ROI.

Choosing the wrong model

Different attribution models offer varying perspectives on how to assign credit for conversions, and selecting one that doesn’t align with your business goals or customer journey can misrepresent the true impact of your marketing efforts.

For example, using a last-click model for a long sales cycle with multiple touchpoints may completely ignore the influence of early-stage marketing activities like content or social media. This misalignment skews your understanding of which channels and strategies are driving results, leading to over-investment in certain areas and neglecting others that are crucial for nurturing prospects. Like many of the other common mistakes, choosing the wrong model for your business can cloud your ability to make data-driven decisions, undermining your marketing strategy and negatively impacting your ROI.

Don’t let your attribution model haunt you

Concerned that you may have fallen victim to a flawed marketing attribution model? Our data strategy and analytics experts at Tallwave can help. Contact us today to see how we can help enhance your attribution model so you can start making informed decisions and driving spooky good results.

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Marketing channel strategy: Multichannel, crosschannel, and omnichannel explained

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date October 7, 2024

This morning you might flip on the TV and listen to a news segment broadcasting from New York City, then open your laptop to respond to some emails from your coworkers in the London office. By lunch, you need a break and, while scrolling through your sister’s study abroad pictures from Spain on Instagram, decide you really need to purchase those new Nikes you’ve been eyeing. They’re shipping from Seattle, but they’ll be at your doorstep in Phoenix by noon tomorrow. In the evening, you call your parents in Chicago for a quick chat. Today, we are more connected than ever. And our marketing channel strategies should be too.

Terms like multichannel, crosschannel, and omnichannel marketing get tossed around a lot, but understanding the nuances between each of these strategies can be challenging. Each strategy offers unique benefits and caters to different business goals and customer needs. In this blog, we’ll explore the key differentiators of each marketing channel strategy, helping you navigate this complex terrain and choose the right approach to maximize your marketing effectiveness.

Multichannel marketing: Mutual independence

Multichannel marketing is probably the most simplistic of these three digital marketing strategies. It involves marketing across a number of channels, which operate independently of each other. Most marketers are doing this, whether they realize it or not.

Example of a multichannel marketing strategy

Barbara’s Beach Beanies has a communications team responsible for email strategy, a social media team responsible for Facebook strategy, and a performance marketing team responsible for paid search ads. These teams manage their strategies independently and do not communicate with one another.

Advantages of a multichannel marketing strategy

Wide reach: Marketing across multiple channels, regardless of coordination, will increase the number of people you reach and the frequency at which you reach them.
Flexibility and speed: Because each channel operates independently, the responsible team does not need to consult other teams before making decisions. They can move swiftly and pivot quickly.

Disadvantages of a multichannel marketing strategy

Inconsistent user experience: Because a multichannel marketing strategy does not consult with other teams, that means that your marketing emails might have a very different look and feel from your paid ads, which might have a very different look and feel from your website in a siloed organization. This can leave potential customers feeling confused and mistrustful.
Tracking difficulties: Without understanding what other teams are doing, it will be difficult to understand the impact that other channels have on one another. For example, if a user clicks through a paid search ad and makes a purchase, the paid search team might take credit for that conversion, but that customer’s journey may have actually been initiated by a marketing email or an organic social post. Attributing that purchase only to paid search wouldn’t accurately represent the impact of the other channels in the mix.

Crosschannel marketing: Coordinating and complementing

Crosschannel marketing takes multichannel marketing a step further by using those multiple channels in a coordinated manner to enhance the customer journey. In this strategy, the channels work together and complement each other with an emphasis on customer experience and the transition between channels.

Example of a crosschannel marketing strategy

A potential customer clicks into a marketing email from Animal Accessories, Inc. showcasing flamingo flip-flops (among other animal footwear), is sent to a flamingo flip-flop landing page, and after leaving without making a purchase, is served retargeting ads for flamingo flip-flops. Despite the various touch points across multiple channels, the user is served consistent content across all those channels.

See how we used a crosschannel marketing strategy to help 70K+ students rebuild socioemotional skills and address learning loss in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Advantages a crosschannel marketing strategy

Improved engagement: Consistent content and messaging throughout the user journey is more likely to resonate and drive action. If that content has been personalized based on past behavior, it is even more likely to increase engagement.
Better understanding of customer behavior: When we look at customer behavior across multiple channels, we get a better view of what channels helped generate awareness, which got the customer to engage, and which got them to convert. These insights better inform full-funnel marketing strategies and provide more accurate reporting.

Disadvantages a crosschannel marketing strategy

Robust tracking requirements: An appropriate attribution model is necessary to measure how these channels work together. This can require more complex analytics support to properly set up tracking.
Complex coordination: Coordinating channels means collaborating closely with other teams. This can often result in technical restrictions, slower decision-making, and more hurdles to navigate.

Omnichannel marketing: Overall integration

Omnichannel marketing is the king of marketing channel strategies. It represents a unified, customer-centric approach across all channels, online and offline. Omnichannel marketing strategies aren’t easy to execute, but they significantly elevate the customer experience and improve a brand’s ability to drive results.

Example of an omnichannel marketing strategy

Fragrances 4 Frogs has an app that allows customers to scan items for more information while they’re in store. Purchases made in store will show up in their app so customers can keep track of what products they love.

Advantages of an omnichannel marketing strategy

Enhanced customer experience: A seamless and consistent experience with smooth transitions across all touchpoints—whether shopping online, using a mobile app, or visiting a physical store—makes it easier and more enjoyable for customers to interact with a brand.
Improved loyalty and retention: Maintaining a unified message and brand voice across all channels ensures that customers receive coherent and reliable information, which helps build trust and a stronger connection to the brand. Additionally, omnichannel strategies often include loyalty programs directly aimed at encouraging repeat purchases and long-term customer retention.

Disadvantages of an omnichannel marketing strategy

Advanced technology and data integration needs: An omnichannel marketing strategy requires sophisticated technology and robust data integration to operate effectively. This often requires specialized resources and monetary investment, which can be a barrier for smaller businesses.
Complex implementation and management: The complexity of an omnichannel strategy demands significant time, effort, and skilled personnel to manage and maintain. Additionally, it requires coordination and collaboration across many teams and platforms, which can itself be challenging and impact overall efficiency and effectiveness if not done well.

Choosing the right marketing channel strategy

Understanding the differences between multichannel, crosschannel, and omnichannel marketing strategies is crucial for choosing the right strategy, or combination of strategies, for your business. By carefully considering your business’s goals, resources, and customer preferences, you can select the most effective channel strategy or strategies to engage your audience, improve customer satisfaction, and drive long-term loyalty. Not sure where to start? Tallwave’s integrated digital marketing team specializes in coordinating and implementing these various marketing strategies. Let’s talk.

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From press releases to paid ads: The PR and digital marketing powerhouse

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date August 5, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Phoenix, Arizona — Public relations and digital marketing teams often operate in silos, but integrating these two powerful strategies can unlock unparalleled advantages for brands.

By merging the credibility and trust-building strengths of PR with the dynamic, data-driven capabilities of digital marketing, businesses can create a cohesive and robust approach that not only amplifies their reach, but also fosters deeper connections with their target audiences. In this ~~press release~~ blog, we will explore the transformative power of aligning PR and digital marketing strategies, and how this synergy can propel your brand to new heights.

What is the difference between PR and digital marketing?

Public relations is a strategic communications process that helps brands create and maintain brand awareness and a positive public image through impactful storytelling and strategic mass audience engagement. Oftentimes, this includes strategies like media relations, events, community engagement, strategic partnerships and even publicity stunts that unleash polar bears in London. Traditional PR encompasses a broad spectrum of media channels, from print to television. Digital PR is a specialized approach that leverages online platforms to enhance a brand’s visibility and reputation.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, is a more targeted strategy aimed at delivering a specific message to a particular audience through carefully selected digital channels to drive a particular action. It is typically more focused on ROI and includes strategies like paid media, SEO, social media, email marketing, and more.

Learn more about how Tallwave’s integrated digital marketing services can help drive results across the digital journey.

In a nutshell, PR focuses on building a brand’s reputation and awareness while digital marketing focuses on identifying and converting a target audience. Although these two strategies have different goals, deliverables, and success metrics, they can complement each other through all parts of the marketing funnel.

A dynamic duo: How integrating PR and digital marketing can better your business

Public relations and digital marketing strategies on their own are extremely powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. But fostering communication and collaboration between the two teams can amplify impact and drive efficiencies that would not otherwise be possible.

Bolster brand awareness

Amplify PR content through paid channels: Public relations teams often produce great storytelling content. This might take the form of local news segments or long-form digital video content. The digital marketing team can cut down these video segments into bite-sized ad units that can be promoted across paid channels like YouTube or other digital networks. Putting some dollars behind this authentic, impactful content can boost reach across a wider audience and drive more engagement.
Build social proof: Share PR achievements, like media mentions or awards, on your social media channels to engage audiences and create a positive brand image that can influence consumer behavior.
Unlock earned media opportunities through paid media buys: If your digital marketing team is buying large amounts of inventory with a specific publisher, especially a local publisher, they have the ability to negotiate earned media (publicity) opportunities. For example, if the digital marketing team purchases a package of homepage takeovers on your local news website, they might also be able to negotiate a two minute on-air segment in the daytime news as added value for the PR team to facilitate.

Enhance credibility and trust

Garner third-party validation: Earned media coverage through PR efforts is typically perceived as more trustworthy than paid advertisements. A strong PR presence will help improve the credibility of paid ads for users who are exposed to both.
Manage an impactful influencer strategy: Influencer marketing tends to straddle the realms of PR and digital marketing, especially when shifting away from 1:1 influencer relationships into third-party influencer network platforms. This often creates internal friction due to a lack of clarity around who owns the strategy. But if your social media, paid media, and PR teams collaborate closely when working with an influencer platform, you can mitigate those potential friction points and run a more impactful campaign.
Effectively manage your online reputation: Your SEO team works hard to manage your local business profiles. When customers leave reviews on these profiles, utilize your PR team’s communication expertise to craft thoughtful responses, especially to any negative reviews.

Increase engagement

Strengthen your backlink strategy: PR efforts generate articles, video segments, and other online content that can result in backlinks from reputable news sites, improving search engine rankings. Your SEO and PR teams can work closely together to measure the impact of these backlinks and generate a strategy for future backlinks.
Use audience research to create messaging that resonates: Digital marketing teams gather vast amounts of information about their target audiences through paid media performance data, organic search journey data, Valuegraphics surveys and more. PR teams can use this information to craft messaging and hone their outreach in ways that are more likely to resonate with specific audiences and drive better engagement.
Apply PR narrative skills to create more compelling digital campaigns: PR teams are great storytellers. They can work closely with SEO content and paid media folks in your digital marketing team to craft compelling website content, meaningful ad copy, and more. A more compelling digital campaign will drive better engagement.

PR and digital marketing: Your full-funnel powerhouse

Integrating public relations and digital marketing strategies is a powerful approach that can transfigure a brand’s presence and impact. By harnessing the strengths of both disciplines, businesses can create a seamless, compelling narrative that resonates with their audience, builds trust, and drives engagement. Ready to take your brand to new heights by closing the gap between your PR and digital marketing teams? Give us a shout.

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Engage and inspire: Powerful digital marketing strategies for nonprofits

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date July 15, 2024

Animal welfare, environmental conservation, youth services—your nonprofit is fighting for a great cause! Who wouldn’t want to donate? Unfortunately, with nearly 2 million public charities in the U.S. alone* vying for your donors’ attention (and dollars), those donors have many options, and yours may not be at the top of the list.

While you’re trying to increase total donations, bring in net new donors, and lower your cost per acquisition (all in the name of saving baby gorillas), you’re likely facing challenges with competition, user experience, financial constraints, or accurate reporting that hinder your ability to meet those goals. Let’s explore some digital marketing strategies for nonprofits that can help you overcome these obstacles and protect those gosh darn baby gorillas!

Meaningful moments: Connect with your audience to stand apart from competition

With so many competitors in the market, your donors have to make the tough decision of which nonprofit organizations they want to financially support (civic engagement is great and all, but also, baby gorillas). As such, it’s crucial to resonate with your audience in a way that makes you stand apart from competitors and increase brand awareness. You can do this through:

Knowing your audience: Prospective donors don’t give simply as a function of their demographics; their giving is a reflection of their values. Taking a valuegraphics-based approach to understanding your audience will empower you to position your cause in a way that resonates with the ultimate decision driver: values.

Impactful storytelling: By sharing compelling stories, you can evoke emotion and illustrate the tangible impact of your work, making your mission more relatable and memorable.

Influencers and ambassadors: 69% of consumers trust influencers over information coming directly from a brand. Consider partnering with influencers and ambassadors to amplify your message and leverage their reach and credibility to broaden awareness and build trust.

Community building: Building an online community fosters a sense of belonging and engagement. This strategy is particularly impactful for establishing a base of sustained donor relationships as opposed to singular donations.

Personalized digital experiences: Tailoring digital experiences to individual preferences and behaviors make interactions more relevant and more meaningful. Knowing when to send someone to a landing page for ocean conservation versus, say, baby gorillas, could be the difference between a one-time $20 donation and a sustained monthly donation of my entire paycheck.

Make it easy: Drive action through improved UX

You’ve connected with a potential donor and got them to your website, but now they’re not sure where to go to make a donation. Once they find the donation page, it defaults to a $100 donation, and they can only give $50 but can’t figure out how to change the amount. Fine. They’ve decided to forego Starbucks this month so that they can afford the $100 donation, but now they don’t have a credit card nearby and the mobile payment platform doesn’t take ApplePay. UGH. Your potential donor just left your site and has no intention of coming back. Be sure that you’re providing your website visitors with a great user experience and making it super easy for them to donate. You can do this by incorporating:

User-friendly features: Create or enhance features that simplify the donation process. That might include adding a prominent donate button on the homepage and throughout the site, giving users intuitive ways to change their donation amount and frequency, or providing a variety of payment methods for donors to choose from.

Accessible website design: Ensure you’re creating a welcoming space for all by designing your website and mobile app according to WCAG accessibility standards. Accessible websites and apps remove barriers for a significant portion of the population, allowing you to tap into a wider audience.

CRO strategy: Conversions rate optimization (CRO) strategy is a continual testing and optimization cycle that identifies and addresses friction points on the website in an effort to drive ongoing incremental improvement to conversion performance. Addressing even the most minor pain points on your website will improve user experience and increase your donation rate. In just 3 months, we helped an e-commerce company double its revenue with a strategic CRO campaign.

Embrace efficiency: Invest in tactics with limited waste

If you are a marketer at a nonprofit, you’re likely operating with a limited budget and resources while also striving to make a significant impact. Every penny counts, so it’s crucial to invest in tactics that drive sustainable results with minimal waste. Consider:

Google Grants: Google offers nonprofit organizations up to $10,000 of advertising credits per month. While there are some restrictions, it’s basically free money. Make sure your nonprofit is taking advantage of this great tool.

CRO strategy: We already mentioned it once in this blog, but it’s so powerful, we have to bring it up again. A strong CRO strategy is an insurance policy for your paid media campaigns. If you invest in paid media, you are spending a lot of valuable money driving people to your website, but what if they get to the website and they’re met with a bad experience? They drop from the site before ever making a donation, and given the poor experience, they’re not likely to come back. We call this the “leaky bucket effect,” and it’s something that can be greatly reduced through CRO strategy.

Full-funnel marketing: A lot of nonprofits invest heavily in lower-funnel tactics like paid search, because they can see the direct conversions. But neglecting upper-funnel awareness and consideration tactics chokes your funnel which has major downstream impact as you lose your ability to reach net new donors. Invest in a full-funnel strategy to set yourself up for long-term, sustainable growth.

Data is king: Prioritize analytics to drive growth

Accurate and accessible data can provide meaningful insights, drive strategic decision-making, and enhance the effectiveness of your mission. For many nonprofits that often find themselves wading through more data than they know what to do with, consider honing in on these strategies:

Strengthen your data foundation: A strong data foundation is the cornerstone for any organization that seeks to harness the potential of its data. Not only will this enable better decision-making throughout your organization, if you wish to level-up your marketing game with things like personalization or AI, a strong data foundation is essential.

KPI alignment: Because nonprofits often put such a heavy emphasis on driving donations, there is a tendency to misalign marketing tactics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Bottom-of-funnel tactics, like paid search, are meant to drive conversions (a.k.a. donations), and therefore, conversion rate (CVR) or cost per acquisition (CPA) are appropriate KPIs for paid search. A podcast ad, on the other hand, is an awareness tactic that sits at the top of the funnel. It plays a crucial role in your marketing strategy for reaching net new potential donors, but it’s not likely to drive direct donations (its impact will be felt downstream through those low-funnel tactics). As such, the success of podcast advertising should be measured based on KPIs like reach, frequency, and audio completion rate (ACR).

See how right-sizing a national environmental nonprofit’s unbalanced measurement approach enabled us to implement a full-funnel media strategy that increased their conversions by over 60% and resulted in a 22% lift in peak-season giving.

Data storytelling: You’ve worked so hard to connect with your audience, stand up an efficient marketing strategy, and capture meaningful data. Make sure this isn’t lost on your executive team. Communicate data-driven insights effectively through data storytelling. By transforming complex data sets into a compelling narrative, you avoid unnecessary complexity to prevent misinterpretation, foster engagement, and enable understanding across teams.

Great marketing strategies support even greater missions

A smart marketing strategy can help you overcome many of the common challenges faced by nonprofits, setting you apart from the competition and setting you up for long-term success. Not sure where to start? Tallwave can help. Let’s save some baby gorillas together.

* Source: Statista Research Department, and Jan 5. “Public Charities by Subsector U.S. 2021.” Statista, 5 Jan. 2024

Tags brand strategy, business strategy, Data & Analytics, empathetic marketing, SEO

CRO Customer Engagement Paid Media Reaching New Customers SEO

The road to victory: Paid media strategies in an election and Olympic year

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date April 8, 2024

For a few months every four years, the U.S. presidential election and Summer Olympics dominate the media landscape and create major challenges for advertisers trying to establish reach, maintain ad frequency, and meet cost per acquisition (CPA) goals. From roughly mid-July to early November, election campaigns and Olympic promotions overtake ad inventory, limiting supply and driving up costs for other advertisers.

In 2020, the Tokyo Olympics attracted $2.25 billion in U.S. ad revenue and the U.S. election cycle totaled an unprecedented $2.5 billion of ad revenue. And that’s just for TV ads! With all of that extra competition in the market, breaking through the clutter and maintaining effective reach and frequency without breaking the bank becomes a major challenge for most advertisers.

Let’s explore how a thoughtful election- and Olympic-year paid media strategy can help you emerge victorious from this quagmire. After all, who doesn’t love a good underdog story?

Politics and pentathlons: The negative impacts on marketing

Before we discuss strategy, it’s important to understand what is at risk during these quadrennial events. Here are some of the ways your current paid media plan might feel the impact of the election/Olympic year:

Limited inventory

Channels like traditional broadcast, out-of-home (billboards, transit, airport advertising, etc.), and even CTV, have a finite amount of ad inventory. As politicians, advocacy groups, super PACs, the Olympic Games, and the likes buy up ad inventory, it becomes a challenge for other advertisers to secure inventory for themselves.

For election candidate advertising specifically, the FCC requires broadcast stations and cable systems to charge legally qualified candidates the lowest unit prices, making TV advertising more affordable, and increasing the likelihood of those candidates purchasing a lot of inventory. Additionally, because candidates are guaranteed the lowest unit price that other customers receive, this means that you likely won’t be able to secure any zero-cost added value spots during this time.

In an effort to treat competing candidates fairly, the FCC also requires broadcast stations to abide by the “equal time” rule. This means that if one candidate gets a spot in the 6p news, the other candidates must also be able to receive a similar spot. As such, many non-political advertisers get preempted (“bumped”) during this time and may not receive makegoods during the desired window. This rule makes it especially challenging for advertisers who are operating within very specific promotional windows.

With political and Olympic ads taking over the airwaves, it becomes difficult for other advertisers to secure any ad inventory at all, yet alone enough to maintain an effective reach and frequency that will grow brand awareness or compel action from potential customers.

Cluttered ad space

As politics and Olympic promotion overtake traditional advertising outlets, many non-political and Olympic advertisers will move into the digital realm to secure inventory and lock in flat rates. The political and Olympic advertisers will be here too by the way. As you can imagine (or have experienced first hand in years past), the digital marketplace becomes inundated with heated political messaging and inspirational (usually sports-themed) stories, on top of all the normal ad clutter.

It can be extremely challenging to break through all this noise. Consumers often get overwhelmed by excessive advertising, making it less likely that they will engage with or be influenced by ads.

Increased costs

While broadcast stations are required to keep costs low for advertisers, digital channels are not. Costs on Google, Meta, and other auction-based platforms will surge as competition increases. Cost per clicks (CPCs) and cost per conversions (CPAs) will increase as advertisers bid against each other to win ad space. Target CPAs are going to take more work to hit as each impression becomes significantly more expensive to secure. While you can still serve ads within a set budget, your paid media dollars won’t go nearly as far in auction-based platforms as they normally would outside the election and Olympic seasons.

Taking the podium: Overcome obstacles with a winning strategy

While the challenges that exist during an election and Olympic year may seem daunting, it’s not too late to implement a winning strategy. Strategically planning ahead can help mitigate these challenges:

Adapt your channel strategy

Perhaps the most obvious response to the challenges highlighted above would be to adjust your paid media channel strategy. The limited inventory on traditional broadcast channels will make it difficult to maintain an effective reach and frequency and auction-based digital platforms will experience increased costs. While you may not want to exclude these channels altogether, consider countering those challenges by:

Secure broadcast sponsorships and packages: These often guarantee a minimum number of impressions without the possibility of being preempted.
Extend your broadcast impressions with digital video and streaming audio: These channels have more inventory and often allow you to negotiate flat CPM rates.
Invest in podcasts: Podcasts break through the clutter by speaking to highly engaged listeners.
Incorporate flat-rate digital platforms: Plan ahead and collaborate with digital partners that will guarantee flat CPM/CPC pricing to avoid the increased bidding costs.

Understand your audience

As inventory shrinks and costs rise, efficiency is key. Don’t let your advertising dollars go to waste serving impressions to people outside your audience.

Many marketers use demographics to define their target audience, but demographics have little to do with why a person takes a particular action. Well ahead of the Opening Ceremonies and primary elections, consider investing in values-based persona research to more clearly define who your audience is and what motivates them so that you can tailor your messaging and creative accordingly. Effective ad messaging and creative that resonates with your audience will help break through the ad clutter and drive action during a time when consumers are faced with significant distractions.

Additionally, make sure you’re investing in your first-party data to understand consumer behavior. Today, marketers collect more data than ever before, but often struggle to harness the power of that data in a way that yields actionable insights. Effective data quality management enables you to analyze the right data points that help you understand your customer, enhance their experiences, and optimize campaigns for more efficient and effective results.

Invest in Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy is the insurance policy for any paid media plan. A strong paid media strategy can drive significant traffic to a landing page, but if users are met with a poor website experience, they might leave without converting, thus creating a leaky bucket situation. A strategic CRO program systematically tests various iterations of website design and functionality to weed out points of friction and increase conversion rates.

By investing in CRO strategy ahead of the election and Olympic year, you can help prevent valuable paid media traffic from trickling away pre-conversion during that time when paid media traffic is more expensive and harder to come by. During election and Olympic years, when digital costs increase and consumer attention is being directed elsewhere, decreases in conversion rates are almost guaranteed. An effective CRO strategy will help offset the anticipated decrease in conversion rates.

Learn more about CRO and other Integrated Digital Marketing Services from Tallwave.

Emerge victorious

Strategically planning ahead is key to ensuring strong paid media performance during election and Olympic years. Ready to get started? Let Tallwave help you get the most out of your paid media budget this election and Olympic year.

Tags conversion rate optimization, CRO, Data & Analytics, paid media

Customer Engagement Reaching New Customers Strategy

Mastering full-funnel marketing for lasting growth

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date October 30, 2023

Many companies have shifted their focus to bottom-of-funnel tactics, like paid search and retargeting ads, as economic uncertainty drives budget constraints and increases the pressure to make sales. However, this imbalanced approach will almost certainly have a lagging negative impact on revenue and ROI.

Implementing a full-funnel marketing strategy can fix the imbalance and ensure long-term growth and sustainability. Let’s look at the full marketing funnel, why stage-specific engagement matters, and how to bring them to life.

What are the stages of full-funnel marketing?

Marketing strategy is often compared to a funnel because of the shape it takes as consumers move through the purchase journey.

Stage 1: Top-of-funnel

Awareness tactics (at the top of the funnel) are broad and cast a wide net to reach consumers. This might include things like radio ads, billboard ads, blogs, or public relations campaigns.

The purpose of top-of-funnel tactics is to get your brand in front of your audience and generate brand awareness. As such, success for these individual tactics should be measured by publisher metrics like impressions, reach, frequency, and video completion rates or through survey metrics like lift in brand awareness and ad recall. A common misstep we see marketers make is trying to measure the success of a top-of-funnel tactic by the number of conversions it drives. Billboards aren’t going to result in a click-through conversion, but they do influence consumers who may not even know they want to buy your product or service yet. Similarly, an attribution model that ignores the role top-of-funnel tactics play as part of the confluence of factors that ultimately drive conversion can work against you.

Stage 2: Mid-funnel

Consideration tactics (in the middle of the funnel) focus on consumers who are familiar with and evaluating the brand. Tactics deployed at this might include product-specific emails, FAQ pages, and organic search strategy.

This is the stage where we start to see consumers interacting with the brand so success metrics look different than those in the top of the funnel. Here, we are interested in engagement metrics like click-through rates, social media interactions, rich media interactions, average time on site, pages visited per website engagement, scroll depth, and non-conversion website events (e.g., PDF downloads, webinar registrations, video completions, etc.).

Stage 3: Bottom of the funnel

Conversion tactics (at the bottom of the funnel) get in front of consumers who are ready to make a purchase. Paid search is a major tactic at this stage of the funnel, but tactics might also include website content like comparison charts or savings calculators.

This is the stage at which we measure tactical success in terms of conversions. Consumers, influenced by the awareness and consideration driven higher up in the funnel from other tactics, are now ready to make a purchase or submit a lead form.

But it doesn’t end there! After consumers convert, they move into the loyalty part of the funnel. The tactics in this part of the funnel keep consumers coming back. It might include things like personalized content, rewards and loyalty programs, or incentive campaigns.

The success of your loyalty program can be measured by customer retention rate, customer lifetime value, and repeat purchases.

The lowest part of the funnel is advocacy, which is all about getting consumers to tell their friends about your brand. This often takes the form of customer reviews and referral programs and can be measured by metrics like customer satisfaction scores, online reviews and sentiment analysis, and social listening insights.

Why does a full-funnel marketing strategy matter?

Although marketers like to position their strategy into a nice, neat little funnel, the reality is that the consumer journey is not so nice and neat. It’s also not linear. On average, it takes 8-12 touchpoints with a brand to convert a customer!

The beauty of a full-funnel marketing strategy is that it helps you meet consumers where they are in their journeys. It is a holistic, integrated approach that drives repeat exposure and facilitates multiple touch points with customers at different stages of their journey, which is critical for ensuring your brand is top of mind when the moment of truth comes and a buying decision is made.

The negative impact of a bottom-of-funnel approach

Conversion-focused tactics often get the most attention because they produce the most conversions. But consumers can’t convert if they aren’t aware of your brand. Consumers won’t convert if they know about your brand, but haven’t taken the time to consider what it means to them. By neglecting the upper parts of the funnel, you choke the funnel and restrict your ability to drive conversions in the long term.

Unfortunately, many companies get overly focused on the bottom-of-funnel tactics due to the very real and understandable pressure that marketers get from leaders focused only on transactional KPIs. This is especially true in times of economic uncertainty (check out our white paper on how to optimize your customer experience for recession resilience) when driving revenue takes on a heightened priority.

A broken funnel can manifest in many ways:

Poor engagement rates

If you skipped over the awareness part of the funnel, consumers may not be familiar with your brand. Trust and credibility have yet to be established and so they are not prepared to engage with your content.

High engagement, but low conversion

Similarly, if consumers are clicking, but not converting, may not be meeting them at the right point in their journey.

Conversion stagnation

Often a symptom of low-funnel strategies, you may have tapped out your available audience by ignoring critical awareness tactics.

Unintentionally over-indexing on first-time customers

It is 5-7 times more expensive to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. If your customer base is over-indexed on new customers, you may need to double down on your retention efforts.

Decrease in branded searches

Customers can’t search for you if they don’t know about your brand. Investing in top-of-funnel tactics is crucial to driving brand awareness.

Increase in costs to convert

Persistent increases in cost per lead (CPL) or cost per acquisition (CPA) signal that you are competing for a finite, over-indexed audience and would benefit from upper-funnel tactics.

Bringing a full-funnel marketing strategy to life

If any of the scenarios above sound familiar, it’s probably time to evolve your marketing strategy to adopt a full-funnel approach.

Here are some key considerations when establishing a full-funnel marketing strategy:

Teamwork makes the dream work

A full-funnel marketing strategy requires collaboration across multiple teams (think strategy, brand, paid media, creative, content, design, PR, email, loyalty… the list goes on!) to ensure thoughtful, cohesive customer experiences. Make sure you are pulling in representatives from all the appropriate teams to drive alignment and ensure consistency.

Measurement matters

An appropriate measurement strategy is key to keeping a full-funnel strategy on the rails. As we described when defining the stages of the funnel, KPIs must reflect where tactics sit within the funnel to properly measure success and make informed marketing decisions.

Similarly, an attribution model can make or break your strategy. Last-click attribution models in particular can influence over-indexing on bottom-of-funnel tactics by assigning credit to the last touch before a conversion. This model puts a thumb on the scale for bottom-of-funnel tactics, limiting the ability to optimize for the distinct goals of tactics that play other roles in the funnel. Linear or data-driven models are generally more effective at assigning appropriate value to tactics throughout the funnel.

Be patient

The impact of a full-funnel strategy won’t be felt immediately. Upper-funnel efforts build future demand. Building loyalty and driving advocacy takes time. But this strategy sustains growth marketing investment in the long term by allowing you to reach more potential customers, extending the lifetime value of those customers, and generating more profit for less investment by driving efficiencies across the program.

The bottom line: full-funnel marketing strategies work

A recent Nielsen study of CPG brands showed that those with a full-funnel strategy had 45% higher ROI and a 7% increase in offline sales compared to marketing campaigns running in a single purchase stage.

We recently published a case study about how we helped a nonprofit client of ours drive efficiencies in their paid media program by enhancing their bottom-of-funnel paid media program to a full-funnel one. In the first year of running this full-funnel program, our client spent 9% more on paid media year over year, but produced 61% more donations.

Designing holistic customer experiences that drive growth is our strength. Because full-funnel marketing strategy is a team sport that requires participation from multiple teams, internal silos are the enemy of creating a holistic, integrated strategy. At Tallwave, we pride ourselves on two things: 1) relentlessly keeping the customer at the center of what we do at every stage of the journey and 2) driving integration and collaboration in the strategies that drive the customer experience so we can deliver successfully against your customers’ needs and your business goals.

Ready to learn more about how Tallwave can help enhance your marketing program? Give us a shout!

Tags brand strategy, business strategy, customer experience, customer journey, empathetic marketing, full-funnel marketing, marketing funnel, paid media

Customer Engagement Strategy

Better Together: A Paid Media and CRO Marketing Love Story

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date February 14, 2023

No love story is complete without a montage!

Picture this, you’re executing a holistic paid media strategy, driving traffic to your website through a broad range of tactics like digital video, streaming audio, display, paid social, and paid search. Paid media is living the good life, racking up impressions, driving ad engagement, and generating some conversions along the way. But something is missing…

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) marketing, a strategic method of testing, iterating, and optimizing on-site functionality to improve the user experience and increase the rate of conversion (or high-value action), is sitting on the other side of town, pulling petals off a daisy, waiting to find a partner who can produce the quality traffic and insights it needs to really thrive. A partner to complete him…

Both paid media and CRO are integral parts of an efficient and effective marketing plan, but oftentimes are treated as independent tactics with little regard for one another. Much opportunity is missed by only running one of these programs or by running them in silos.

Integrate your paid media and CRO strategies and watch the sparks fly.

Two Lovable Leads: Paid Media & CRO

Our love story begins with two independent marketing tactics, paid media and CRO, living worlds apart (or perhaps just a siloed marketing team away), not realizing just how incomplete they are without one another. Existing as stand-alone tactics, paid media and CRO will generally (hopefully) produce positive results for their campaigns, but are limited in their respective abilities.

Most comprehensive marketing plans include paid media. It’s a great way to get in front of your target audience, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website. In fact, marketers typically spend up to 25% of their marketing budget on paid media.

That’s a huge investment!

But what happens when those prospective customers get to the website?

If they encounter a poor landing page experience, they may get lost trying to navigate through on-site information, they may abandon cart before finalizing a purchase, or — worse yet — they may just … bounce. A poor user experience on-site greatly reduces the chance for conversion, causing something of a leaky bucket situation, in which site visitors fall through before converting. And then all that time, money, and effort you spent trying to drive traffic to your site through paid media was… kind of a waste.

Since paid media success is often evaluated based on its ability to convert traffic, a poor landing page experience can be detrimental to a paid media campaign. To further amplify the pain felt here, paid media marketers often don’t have the ability to control the landing page experience, which can fuel frustration and drive misalignment between paid media tactics and performance. If only there were something that could help plug that leaky bucket….

Meanwhile, still hanging out on the other side of town, CRO is becoming a more popular tactic with marketers. More companies are investing in CRO strategy to identify and address weak areas on the website that may be impacting the user experience and actively working against the company’s goals. CRO allows marketers to systematically test various iterations of website functionality to determine which iterations are most impactful in weeding out points of friction and producing conversions (or any high-value action, like a lead form submission, an “add to cart,” a search query, etc.).

And CRO isn’t limited to just major points of conversion, like transactions and lead form submissions. It can also be applied to “micro-conversions,” or behaviors that sit just upstream of the point of conversion, such as product page views, in an effort to address the larger user journey.

But CRO only works if enough quality traffic is being driven to the website to run tests that yield statistically significant results.

The Meet Cute: Where Two Digital Marketing Strategies Come Together

So paid media and CRO might get along just fine on their own, but bring them together …

FIREWORKS!

By running these two tactics in tandem, always-on paid media ensures enough traffic is flowing to the website for the CRO team to run impactful and efficient tests. In addition to traffic volume, a strong paid media plan will also help ensure that quality traffic is being driven to the site, which is crucial for producing meaningful CRO test results. The more qualified traffic coming to site, the quicker CRO tests can produce data-driven insights, the quicker actions can be taken to make UX improvements on-site, and the quicker you’ll see a lift in conversions.

Likewise, an active CRO strategy helps ensure that users who come to the website through paid media efforts can seamlessly work their way through the conversion path. An investment in CRO helps protect your paid media investment by keeping visitors on-site and increasing their likelihood of converting, which in turn boosts important KPIs like conversion rate and return on ad spend.

Building Butterflies: 1 + 1 = 3

But here’s where the real magic happens.

By running these two tactics as part of one integrated strategy, you now have a constant flow of data between the two. And data, as we all know, is king. Paid media insights can help the CRO team better understand who the target audience is. Knowing who is engaging with ads can help establish tests for how best to connect to those audiences on site. Learnings from CRO tests may impact paid media channels, placements, targeting, and creative recommendations. The constant flow of learnings between teams will increase the ability for both teams to identify tests, optimize features, and effectively connect with the target audience. And, perhaps most importantly, when CRO and paid media come together, they create a more seamless brand experience that is felt by the user.

Through an effective paid media and CRO relationship, messaging, creative design, and paid media placement will feel cohesive when a prospective customer clicks through an ad to the website, rather than feeling like two separate experiences. Leveraging paid media and CRO together makes marketing plans more effective and marketing budgets more efficient.

No love story is complete without a montage!

The Lightbulb Moment: Recognizing the Need for a Paid Media & CRO Relationship

So how do you know when you might benefit from an integrated paid media and CRO strategy?

The following indicators suggest that your paid media traffic is being met with a poor user experience on-site and is in need of CRO:

Paid media traffic has a bounce rate over 80%
Paid media traffic is spending a lot of time on-site and/or visiting many pages on-site, but isn’t taking any high-value actions
Paid media users begin the conversion process (E.g., adding an item to cart), but ultimately do not convert (E.g., complete purchase)

The following indicators suggest that your CRO marketing program is in need of more qualified traffic via a new or improved paid media plan:

Not enough traffic to produce statistically significant test results in a reasonable amount of time
Poor quality of leads (suggesting that the wrong audience is engaging on-site)

Running paid media or CRO alone is beneficial for your marketing program. Running both paid media and CRO is even better. Running paid media and CRO as part of an integrated, seamless strategy with data as a driving force… that’s a love story for the ages.

You Complete Me

Tallwave is ready to play matchmaker when it comes to marrying paid media and CRO marketing. We’ve helped many clients find success.

Interested to know how Tallwave can help you implement an impactful paid media and CRO strategy? Let’s talk!

Tags brand strategy, conversion rate optimization, conversion strategy, CRO, customer experience, paid media