According to a recent study released by eMarketer, digital advertising will surpass traditional ad spending in 2020. Ad spend in 2019 went down an average of almost 8% across traditional channels.
What is driving this shift in advertiser spend?
1.Cost.
Traditional media is expensive. On top of this, digital spend can be better measured and optimized over the life of a campaign – ensuring you are getting the maximum ROI and every dollar spent is attributable.
2.Spray and Pray vs. 1 to 1.
Traditional advertising is squarely in the space of “Spray and pray” – put a message out and hope that it sticks. Brands see digital advertising as an opportunity to engage in a 2-way dialogue with their audiences, creating a feedback loop that can influence business decisions, and building a personalized relationship in the process.
3.Reach.
With 95% of Americans now owning a cellphone of some kind, and 37% of U.S. adults saying they mostly use a smartphone when accessing the internet, digital is the only way to reach your audiences anywhere, anytime.
How can you, as a marketer, ensure that you are still reaching and engaging your audiences?
Before you can determine HOW to reach them, you first must ensure you know WHERE your audience is online. The Living, Looking, Buying framework takes what you know about your target audience(s) and ensures you reach them.
Living, Looking, Buying Framework
Meet Consumers Where They Are
Consumers aren’t constantly thinking about your brand – they’re out living their lives. The Living phase is where people first become aware of your brand through an ad or mention, for example.
To become fully informed about a product or service, they begin researching. In the Looking phase, they seek counsel from friends and family, conduct online research and listen to influencers and product experts.
At some point, the consumer decides to take an action – to purchase, sign up, enroll, etc. Once in the Buying phase, it’s important that your brand makes it easy for the consumer to take this action and reinforces that they made the right decision.
Activating this framework requires research and insights from all stakeholders. It can be customized. For example: Living, Learning, Acting or Living, Looking, Enrolling.
Activating a Living, Looking, Buying Roadmap
Audience Expectations
1.Be Relevant
Consumers expect content from brands to be personal and relevant. Integrating influencers is one way to maintain relevance in the LIVING phase. Through their dedicated followers and significant reach, influencers increase awareness, impact consumer purchasing decisions and drive meaningful social engagement.
Moore Tip: Leverage an “always on” approach to influencers and media advocates to keep brand awareness high and verify brand authenticity, creating relevancy, loyalty and trust.
2.Make Action Simple
It’s imperative that you make it easy for your target audiences to interact. Audiences who are LOOKING, or researching product or services to buy, can be reached by in-platform lead generation offered by Facebook and LinkedIn to keep the visitor’s experience simple.
Moore Tip: Test a Facebook lead form vs. a landing page on your site. Cost per lead, on average, is lower in platforms, but keep an eye out to ensure you’re capturing qualified leads.
3.Be Personal
Generic messaging to your audiences doesn’t cut it anymore. Artificial Intelligence makes serving content specific to each person easier than ever, and data on your customers is more accessible than ever. Take time to learn what matters to your audiences and approach each one specifically. Once you get someone to BUY from you, it’s critical to keep them engaged with personalized content such as emails based on their behavior and interactions with your site.
Moore Tip: It’s key have the proper tools, analytics and data infrastructure in place to integrate personalized tactics such as email into your marketing mix.
About Moore
Moore is based in Tallahassee with offices spanning three time zones, including West Palm Beach, New Orleans and Denver. Moore specializes in understanding the behaviors, motivations and triggers of audiences and meets them at every point along the consumer journey where they live, look and buy. Representing Fortune 500 companies and small organizations alike, Moore gets results that matter.
