Optimize Your Business for the Year Ahead

Cutting advertising simply opens the door for competitors to take more share if you are not careful. Today’s market is much different than the one I grew up in, and even more different than that of my parents. Today there is little to no brand loyalty. Consumer shopping is needs-based, impulsive or responsive to friends and family. The consumer is more price conscious than ever.

Whether you can stomach and take this advice or not is the real question, but there is little doubt that we are headed into rough waters. With that in mind, how do you weather the storm and stay ahead of your competition?

Eliminate Waste

In market conditions like 2023, rather than cutting ad spend, marketers and agencies should be taking stock of who their partners are, demand price transparency, ensure they are not wasting money on fraud and eliminate middlemen. This level of awareness and change should help you have more of the media dollar that can be spent on working media, not on someone else's bottom line.

Once you cut out the waste and solve for fraud, take stock of what is working with solid attribution and optimize your media to ensure you are getting the right balance of brand and performance and possibly turn more to performance in these conditions and less to brand (although you cannot afford to stop brand altogether).

Informed Optimization

During market conditions like these, many will suggest focusing on high value publishers who have scale. I have a different recommendation. A focus on single publishers or high-value publishers only makes sense if those high-value publishers are the ones driving the best performance. In fact, you will likely strike a balance between lower cost smaller pubs and the high value because I have never ever seen just the high value guys perform best.

Your plans should be informed by technology to ensure optimization and manage things like fraud, focusing on buying the audiences and partners who perform best and using a rolling schedule to measure performance. Remember that audience data changes and your audience is changing (unless you are not doing any audience targeting).

Performance for one client may be web- or location-based and for another it may be online or offline sales. There is not a one-size fits all answer to what works, so let your results and data inform your direction. This is not a period for FOMO where you copy others. It should be a period of FOFO (Fear of Following Others), because doing so could be disastrous.

Why Not Just High Value?

Typically, high-value partners with scale cost more. If a pub with less scale but half the cost performs half as well, because of cost they are now at par with the high-value partner -- and if they performed, that means your audience is not simply on the high-value pubs (although at half will be).

CTV audiences are fragmented, and focusing on partners with scale still leaves you missing a huge chunk of the market. With an audience buy, strike the right balance and you will see optimal performance.

Optimize and Boost Performance

Status quo is never a good thing. Challenge your partners to help you find new and better ways to drive your performance. A good client is one who pushes technology and their partners to stay on the bleeding edge. Do not overdo it though, because in these conditions, you need to ensure your blocking and tackling is optimal.

Use first-party data (your customer data and web visitors) to drive better performance and consider modeling them to find more like-minded customers. Use more channels with these customers, as well. I see the best results when merging CTV, OTT, OLV, Audio and Display and even social.

Test New Creative

You need to break through and stand out, more now than ever, so find fun and interesting ways to do so with creative. Do something the consumer would not expect. When you surprise you can delight. Use humor, big events or stunts, special offers, talent, or a combination of these.

Use QR codes when you have an offer that is worth having someone pull out their phone for. For example, a way to check what is available now in inventory for immediate delivery, purchase with fewer steps, etc. Interactivity where it is accepted can cut down on the number of touches a customer may need to make to get to conversion. Make it easy and use it when you have something to offer -- not all the time.

Examine your other paths to purchase, social, search and web and optimize the process and creative to make it easy.

Optimize Sales

Advertise what is in stock and make it easy for the customer to transact. You will want to remove as much friction in the buying process in store and online as possible.

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The opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author and/or subject(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet, Inc. management or associated writers.