To create a can’t miss media plan for a truly competitive e-commerce brand, you first need to understand the digital media landscape you’re currently living in.
In 2020, Google's share of the U.S. digital ad market was 28.9%; Facebook's was 25.2%, according to eMarketer. That mirrors anecdotal conversations we’ve had with prospects and clients in the past year. By and large, Google and Facebook dominate the marketplace because of name recognition and ubiquity.
But they’re no longer the best value in town. And for emerging advertisers who’ve treated them as a two-trick pony, they’ve likely seen diminishing returns, rising costs or both.
There’s a reason for it.
According to AdAge, “Facebook ad prices have historically risen roughly 30% year-over-year before the COVID-19 pandemic, so the fact that we're seeing a 30% rebound this year—still in the midst of social distancing and vaccination—means that pricing will likely remain very high for the rest of 2021.”
Semantics aside, it has become a fool’s errand to rely exclusively on one or two channels. For one, it lulls you into thinking you are powerful enough to optimize your way to the promised land. But the more critical point is the premise of this post — Internet users spend their time in far more places than the properties owned by Google and Facebook.
If your media plan is delivering ‘meh’ performance (and you’re still reading at this point), these tips will help:
One, Focus on a Goal: It may seem like a no-brainer, but an effective media mix has allocations for awareness, education/engagement, and conversion. Yes, we’re all in it for sales, but optimizing campaigns for the bottom of the funnel is akin to breathing through a straw. In this case, these campaigns are highly competitive, expensive, and often times ignore the critical brand-building work that real brands know is a mandatory to rise above the crowded field of competitors.
If you’re an emerging brand, for example, do the work that is necessary to generate awareness and engagement. In this case, it means a rock-solid brand message, first and foremost, with a clear eye on the mindset of the buyer you plan to speak to. If you've got a strong volume of interested buyers, you’re in prime position to pour dollars into conversion-driven campaigns.
Two, Pinpoint Your Customer: An angel loses its wings every time the question ‘who is your ideal target?’ is asked, and the answer given is ‘everyone.’ Develop a customer avatar. If you’ve not done that, make up a person or more than one person who you know is the exact fit for your product, and color them in. Give them a name, an age, a place of residence, a job, interests and behaviors, demographic info (do they have kids?), and pain points they’re looking to solve.
Look at your sales data in Google Analytics or, ideally, your CRM tool. What shows up?
You should know this person intimately, and if you don’t, start reaching out to some customers individually and offer them an incentive for a conversation.
You’ll be blown away by how much you can learn about them, and what motivates them to buy your product. But most importantly, as it relates to a media plan — it’ll reveal where they spend their time on (and off) line.
Three, Explore the Places Your Customer Spends Time On & Offline: Follow this customer avatar on a real or hypothetical journey based on the data you have and research you conduct. Are they active on Reddit or are they passive Instagram swipers; are they on industry publications, local news sites or are they active on blogs and podcasts. Are they on the go, or are they in front of a desk. Do they play video games?
Dig in to the brands that are adjacent to yours — what’s unique about them? How do they advertise to the same type of customer? Subscribe to their emails, visit their website, look at their ad content (Facebook Ads Library, SEM Rush, etc.) The tools are available for you to do this work quickly and at a minimal cost — sometimes free.
Four, Understand How Each Channel Works: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and a few others are generally seen as discovery channels, good for quick engagements and interactions with users who aren’t looking to buy, but who are looking to be delighted or entertained.
YouTube or Google users, or news site visitors, on the flip side, are often in an engagement/education or purchase mindset. They’re looking for something. They’ve gone to a specific source often with specific intent.
Context is important. On many social channels, you’re in the business of stopping thumbs, and you likely have three seconds or less to pull it off. On search-based channels, you can be a bit more intentional with a captive audience.
But you need to understand how your customer interacts with the media they consume.
Here are some quick facts — the average Facebook user spends 33 minutes a day on-site; 28 on Snapchat, 42 on YouTube. Twitch? A staggering 95 minutes per day. (Statista, influencermarketinghub). Not all channels are created equal. And if you’re selling something that appears to gamers, the above stats alone would present an obvious opportunity — not on Facebook or Snapchat, but on Twitch.
Five, Understand the Cost Structure: Awareness-focused ads tend to be less-expensive for an obvious reason — there’s lower buying intent. Purchase-focused ads tend to cost more. But where there’s competition, those costs can be even greater. Even five years ago, Facebook was still a good value for purchase-focused campaigns.
For many brands it’s not anymore. A smart programmatic campaign is a no-brainer for brand awareness, with some of the lowest CPMs in all of advertising. For an engagement/education campaign, you might find better value on Reddit than Snapchat (depending on your user) because its users are actually engaged and there’s less competition for them.
Do your homework; there’s a wealth of publicly available information on average ad costs across different channels that will reveal how to use these channels.
Increasingly, Facebook (for example) is becoming a better value for awareness and engagement than for conversions. So in theory, you could use Facebook to build awareness, and optimize for purchase on other channels where you know your customers go — but at a lower cost to you.
Questions? Send us an email at hello@dbpadv.com.
-DB