Outsmart Media Waste with Micromarketing

Companies are under pressure to make smarter decisions about their finite (and potentially shrinking) media budgets. The question on every marketer’s mind right now is how to make the biggest impact with their valuable dollars.

Outsmart Media Waste with Micromarketing

Companies are under pressure to make smarter decisions about their finite (and potentially shrinking) media budgets.

The question on every marketer’s mind right now is how to make the biggest impact with their valuable dollars.

Advertising programs will need to:

  • Communicate value propositions that speak to people on a precise and tactical level
  • Develop stronger alignment with a company’s conversion funnel
  • Create deeper, more meaningful relationships with every ad unit impression
  • Demonstrate a clear and quantifiable connection back to revenue

For this reason, micromarketing — defined as the ability to connect with tightly grouped audiences in a precise way — is going to grow in importance for people who manage campaigns.

Micromarketing 101

To understand the value of micromarketing, think about the opposite approach — mass marketing.  

This catch-all technique is known to be valuable for brand awareness objectives but often detached from transactional goals.

That’s because broad messages tend to be high-level.

Often, there is an upper limit to whether a high-level message is impactful since one message doesn’t resonate with everyone.

The end result is media waste.

“As modern consumers become more fragmented across platforms, devices and channels, spending more and more time and money online, brands need to know what marketing tactic works, when, and why,” writes Sofie Lundberg, content marketer at GlobalWebIndex.

“Without granular consumer insight that goes beyond actions to map out attitudes, behaviors and motivations, brands will struggle to know their audience well enough to offer the experience they’ve come to expect, and be in front of the right eyes at crucial times.”

Even before COVID-19, media waste has presented a major challenge to marketers seeking to maximize returns on ad spend.

It’s this reason why Procter & Gamble — the world’s largest advertiser — has spent the last few years scaling back its advertising budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Since 2012, P&G has been seeking ways to reduce the overhead of reaching customers.

That process has involved getting more precise about targeting.

"In the past, we’ve had broad demographic groups that we targeted with our media, and it's always been said that half your media is wasted and you still don't know what happened [in terms of measuring what worked effectively]," explained CEO David Taylor in a 2019 earnings call.

To support this goal, P&G has built up a proprietary database of more than consumer IDs.

With this technical foundation in place, the company can reach audiences in a highly individualized way.

A P&G spokesperson elaborates:

"It ladders back to the work that we have been undertaking over the past several years to reinvent brand building: from wasteful mass marketing to mass one-to-one brand building fueled by data and technology, reinventing advertising from mass clutter to ads consumers look forward to, and reinventing agency partnerships to transform creativity and get our hands on the keyboard."

Through micromarketing, P&G sees pathways to put its advertising dollars to better use.

These types of campaigns can reach audiences in a more personalized, compelling, and engaging way.

It’s worth it to put in this work, upfront. The team at AdQuick can help.

Launch a Micromarketing Campaign with AdQuick

Successful micromarketing is all about data.

With AdQuick, you can layer various types of information into your micromarketing campaign.

Here are some steps that you can take to get started:

  • Define your customer profile. Use data from existing campaign datasets to determine who, among your customer base, is likely to be engaged with your product or service.

    Determine what data you have on-hand, and figure out what details you might need to supplement this information.

    Think of your customer profiles as an “x marks the spot” on a treasure map.
  • Figure out how to find the right people. Based on your customer profiles, you can use AdQuick to seek out your ideal audience.

    You come to our team with a general description of who you’re seeking out.

    We can help you reach these exact individuals or build lookalike audiences to find similar people. We can also incorporate insights from additional datasets, for even more robust customer profiles.
  • Find the best ad units. One of the biggest misconceptions that we hear about out of home is that you can’t track ROI.

    That’s a myth.

    The reality is that you can measure performance more precisely than you could with digital.

    For instance, AdQuick uses mobile geofencing technology to measure how many times and how often people see billboards.

    From this perspective, we can make sure that you’re getting value, all the way down to the ad unit, for each option you’re considering.

    Remember that these views don’t run the risk of screen fatigue. Offline, people are paying attention.
  • Integrate with other campaigns.  Your out of home campaign will be more memorable and impactful when part of an overarching, long-term strategy.

    A billboard campaign, for instance, could be an additional touch-point within a more complex series of interactions.

    Blend digital with brick-and-mortar experiences to reach audiences will value propositions at different touch points.

    Especially with people feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, positive and memorable communication has the potential to make a major difference.

Final Thoughts

Take your campaign one step at a time.

Start small, and find small ways to scale up.

This approach to building out your marketing program will yield more efficiency over the long-term.

Imagine that you’re building a car. You can make upgrades and optimize performance in a more granular way.

Reach out if you have questions. We’re happy to show you the ropes.


Contributors Statement

This blog post was a collaboration between the AdQuick team. Chris Gadek, John McClung, and Jack Gaylor contributed to this piece. Payton Biddington created the visuals. If you'd like to learn how out of home can work with your unique marketing campaign and business, send a quick email to [email protected] or call (213) 986-6179. We'll reach out with case studies and recommendations tailored to you.

Disclosure

The opinions expressed are those of the authors. This material has been prepared for educational purposes only. Please be sure to consult with your internal team of stakeholders to assess your specific needs before adapting any practices from this blog, as your own.