You need to focus on six essential elements to create an effective paid media strategy. In 2022, these essentials are even more critical to reaching your target audience and achieving your marketing goals. Paid media continues to evolve, so stay ahead of the curve and incorporate these six key elements into your campaigns.
1. Review & reset benchmarks
As a marketer, it’s important to always look for ways to improve your paid media strategy. One essential part involves regularly reviewing and resetting your benchmarks.
This step can inform you of each campaign's performance and where you can improve. Additionally, benchmarks can help you set realistic goals for your paid media campaigns and allow you to look beyond the systematic analysis we frequently do to monitor campaign performance. Reviewing and resetting benchmarks lets you analyze at a macro level.
To get started, conduct quarterly reviews of your campaign data. Quarterly reviews will give you an excellent overview of how things are going and where you might need to make changes.
Visualizing your data can also be helpful in spotting trends or areas that need improvement. Finally, don’t forget to use benchmarks when setting goals for your paid media campaigns. Doing this will keep your campaigns on track and performing at their best.
2. Build a first-party-first strategy
As we move closer to a world without third-party cookies, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a first-party data strategy. First-party data is the data you collect through things like lead magnets and sign-up forms.
Major tracking and targeting changes are on the horizon, so there’s a high premium on first-party data. Here’s how to build a first-party-first strategy as an essential part of your paid media strategy in 2022:
Create lead magnets. These pieces of content (usually eBooks, checklists, or templates) offer value in exchange for an email address.
Run lead form ads. These are Facebook or LinkedIn ads that include a form that must be filled out before the user can access your content.
Have a content strategy. Produce regular blog posts, podcasts, or videos that drive people to sign up for your email list.
3. Stay on top of advanced tracking technology
Paid media consultants must stay up to speed on innovative tracking technology. This is critical for paid media strategists to preserve their prospects' privacy while accessing the data required to develop advertising strategies and assess their efficacy.
There are a few ways to do this:
The Facebook Conversions API is a tool that allows you to track how effective your ads are at driving conversions. This vital information lets you see which ads are working and which aren’t.
Importing offline conversions is another way to stay on top of tracking technology. Here, you upload your customer data into a platform like Google Analytics to see how customers interact with your website.
Finally, set up Google Ads enhanced conversions. With this tool, you can track how many people click on your ad and how many convert into customers. This is a great way to get more detailed information about your ads’ performance.
4. Test more paid media channels
As we move past 2022, it’s more important than ever for advertisers to have a paid media strategy that includes testing out multiple channels. Because of the events in 2020 and 2021, particular platforms have under- or over-performed significantly against most standards.
Here are some tips on how to do this:
Test out new marketing channels. You never know when a new platform will emerge as an essential part of your paid media strategy.
Employ a mix of paid and organic methods. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Don’t promote the same offer on every channel. Tailor your messages and offers to each platform.
5. Be a steward of automation
As technology advances, more and more aspects of our lives are being automated. The same is true for paid media. Like tracking changes, there has been a clear and concerted effort to move advertisers into more automation.
The appetite for performance-based advertising is growing, as shown with the rollout of Performance Max, an ongoing effort to automate bidding, and a push toward automatic account changes on both Google and Bing platforms — unless advertisers opt out.
There are several things you can do to become a steward of automation:
Test different automation features and tools to see what works best for your needs.
Educate yourself on the different automation types and how you can use them.
Try out AI-powered tools to help you with media buying and optimization tasks.
6. Master responsive search ads (RSAs)
Finally, the Google Ads component of your commercial media plan should include RSAs. Advertisers may continue to use existing expanded text advertisements (ETAs), but new ETAs are disallowed after June 2022.
With that in mind, here are some tips on how to make RSAs an essential part of your paid media strategy in 2022:
Establish RSA benchmarks now. Establish standards to ensure your RSAs are performing as well as they can.
Diversify your copy. As with ETAs, diversify your copy regarding RSAs. This means testing different headlines, descriptions, and calls to action to see what works best for your target audience.
Don’t abandon ETAs. Even though you can’t create new ETAs after June 2022, that doesn’t mean you should abandon them entirely. Pausing and reactivating existing ETAs is still an option.
Paid media will continue to be a powerful tool for businesses in 2022. However, to stay ahead of the competition, you must adopt a paid media strategy built on six essential pillars. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your business stays ahead of the curve and continues to see success with its paid media campaigns.
If developing a thoughtful, successful, and robust paid media strategy is a little overwhelming, we’ve got your back. Fifth & Cor can develop, implement, and execute a successful paid media strategy so that you don’t have to worry about it. Schedule time with us to talk about a paid media strategy!