Creating smart goals for digital media planning and shifting KPIs amid the crisis
We reasonably understand that the cost of acquiring a new customer is one of the significant KPIs and is far higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer at any point of crisis. We understood the marketplace and our business response to it three months ago, competitors, media planning costs, expected results, and even the season. While we were doing that, we got hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The only source of information we return to is from past months.
Your digital media planning efforts & strategies from January may or may not reflect much information for you to devise current decisions for April or May.
With KPI’s amid the crisis, the primary aim should be kept straightforward – You look after your base, and they’ll look after you. One study recently suggests that increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 25-95%. So, the short-term goal would be wise to keep your base existing customers way up in the funnel.
A vital suggestion is to increase your online visibility to those ready to purchase smart marketing techniques. Online visibility metric KPIs should be the goal. Apart from this, you can squeeze out and make time to segment your customer lists and serve them with targeted, relevant content across channels. Don’t hard sell. People are still spending, and they’ll continue to pay with brands they trust. It’s one step at a time and will help you see results flowing in!
Here are a few points to consider and to draw a new angle to your digital media marketing KPI’s and priorities;
The top priority for any organization is to understand its business position. Positioning means assembling an insightful dashboard that collectively pulls out all business-critical KPIs into one place and regularly updates it daily. It can be as simple as excel or something fancy– the key is getting it rolling right now. Are the set KPIs falling, is steady or up? KPI trends set the center stage for the senior hierarchy’s prime decisions, whether to pull back the media planning budgets or to hold steady or to scale.
Step two is quickly assessing and strictly following your audience shift or any impact. Are there new audiences for your product as a result of the changes? How is COVID-19 affecting your audience segmentation? A quick review of the audience profile might reveal insights like – (Grab a map of COVID-19 and compare it to your audience segments’ geographic distribution. Are they being struck now, or is it coming?
Step three is to assess any changes happening in the media marketplace continuously. Right now, there are a few media channels that are far less expensive than the others. Linear television, programmatic OTT, and display are just a few examples of media where costs have drastically dropped while consumption has increased. Smaller businesses, for that matter, have exited YouTube & Facebook, for example, causing both these channels to become more efficient.
Step four is to promptly apply marketplace changes to your digital planning and media mix. How does your mix change with the current scenario? Do these reductions of 10-25% in the media cost to compensate for lower business coming or help promote your brand forward? It will be safe to assume that since the relative values across your channels have changed, your digital media planning mix developed a few months ago after all that testing may very well vary significantly now and might be invalid (in some instances depending on industry and
And that is okay -because the media marketplace right now has never presented more opportunity if your business can stay in the game. How are competitors changing their investments? How do relative Google search interest stats look between you and your competitors? Who is trending currently?
Step five involves assessing on a somewhat narrow, short-term view for the next couple of months. The media budget that is not immediately canceled needs to be negotiated for the short term. Surprisingly you’ll find that many of your media partners are far more flexible now than they could be earlier and would like to see advertisers pull out and will want to work with you. A flexible approach is critical to your plan.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. We would love to hear from you and help you. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Best Regards,
Swati Rekha
Digital Marketing- Mint Twist
I am a digital marketing enthusiast, backed up with good years of sales & client relationship management experience, and an admirer of the digitally-driven age. A professional with 6 + years of experience in Consultative Sales/ Business Development/Client Relationship and now a career changer to Digital, I love to keep up with the latest buzz in Digital Marketing and forever learning. I am currently working for a highly specialized digital marketing agency in London and support and contribute to their SEO requirements & services. Outside work, you’ll see me clicking nature, cooking global cuisines, and diligently enjoying my Dance/ HIIT workouts.
Not to mention, I love connecting with people who are passionate about the field, so feel free to reach out!
Linkedin- Swati Rekha
