Making Lemonade in 2021
2020 is a year to go down in history. Not for celebrating big wins or milestones, something agencies will post about on social media or will send out a news release, but for the pandemic and the devastation it has caused globally. It seems never-ending and something none of us predicted to happen this time last year. But it happened and is still happening, affecting not only how our business is operating, but how it has affected our clients and potential customers. Regardless of these circumstances, the earth keeps spinning, and now is the ideal time to be launching a strategic, annual marketing plan.
New Year. Same Goals.
Like any hard lessons in life, there’s room to learn and grow. The pandemic has certainly taught us all to not take anything for granted. But let’s stay on topic. Marketing Budget planning. Although there’s a vaccination and hope on the horizon, there’s still a lot of unknowns. But we do know we still have to keep marketing our businesses not only to grow, but to survive. For our clients, the business goals basically remain the same year over year. We are looking to grow the businesses and organizations we work with via customers, revenue, donations and/or brand awareness. How we achieve those goals change and evolve each year. As we learn from past efforts, we can shift budget line items to areas that optimally perform and eliminate those channels that are not bringing in any return.
Allocating Your Marketing Budget: Digital vs. Traditional Media
It’s certainly not a new topic and one we’ve been discussing for almost a decade. However, it is still a hot topic that marketers face each year when determining how to allocate the advertising budget. Even though our clients’ ad budgets have shifted greatly throughout the years from traditional advertising like TV, print, radio and outdoor to digital products like search engine marketing, digital display, social media and OTT advertising combined with tactics including geofencing and retargeting, traditional advertising is still an important component to the media mix. Why? When digital marketing is so easily measured and efficient in reaching a target audience coupled with the fact that many businesses and organizations want to drive traffic to their website to sell products and get donations, it seems like digital is the only way to go. That may be so in some cases. Purchasing traditional media is also expensive, and your ads will be reaching more than just your target audience which makes it less efficient. For example, if you purchase TV advertising and your target audience is Women ages 25-49 with children 12 and under, you’ll buy programming that targets that demographic. But that same commercial will also be served to anyone who is not in your target audience, too, which is somewhat wasteful. However, if your customer expands beyond your target audience, getting extra eyeballs on your commercial is a good thing. Plus, although it may seem like it, not everyone uses digital products. Depending on where your business is, where your customers are coming from and what age your target audience is should be considered when determining your media mix.
And although traditional advertising is hard to measure, one way to get a sense of how it affected your business is to do a guest survey. Online guest surveys can provide important insights for determining how your customers found out about you, what media they use, what prompts them to purchase, etc.
No matter what the media mix is, it should be based past on past performances of each medium, monitored and measured. Each medium should be compared against each other. And if they are underperforming even after adjustments have been made, don’t hesitate to abandon that line item and shift to areas that are performing well.
Budget planning can be cumbersome and time consuming. If your company doesn’t have a dedicated marketing manager, or even if you do, hiring a professional firm to help grow your business through a strategic marketing plan may be the best decision you make in 2021, especially if you roll with us! Because we are ON the ball making lemonade, one lemon at a time.