PAID MEDIARising Above the Clutter with

Introduction

As digital marketers, we understand the value content offers brands to connect with audiences and move them to action. We know more than half of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and inform their purchasing decisions than they did a year ago. And as a result, marketers are focused on ramping up efforts to develop significantly more content than in years past - 70% of B2B marketers report that they expect to create more content in 2017 than in 2016.

However, as brands increasingly flood social and digital properties with new content, even the best pieces are struggling to be discovered. When audiences encounter roughly 285 pieces of content daily, how can you ensure that yours is rising through the clutter?

Paid Promotion HelpsB E SEE N BY TH E R I G HT PEO PLE AT TH E

R I G HT T I M E W H E R E YOU R AU D I E N CE L I VE S

Maintain an Audience-Centric Focus as You Prepare, Launch, Measure, and

Optimize Campaigns to:

ENGAGEATTRACT RETAIN

Know Your Audience

Unlike baseball fields, content does not adhere to the, “if you build it, they will come” principle. It works best when you tailor it to address your audience’s interests, needs, and wants.

IDENTITYWho are you attempting to connect with?

INTERESTSWhat kind of content are they consuming, creating, or sharing with their networks?

ENVIRONMENTWhere do they go to

discover content?

PAIN POINTSWhat are the

main pain points experienced by your

audience at a given time?

OBSTACLESWhat is preventing your audience from

achieving their goals?

VERNACULARHow do they talk

about relevant topics?

Identify Where Your Audience is in Their Buying Journey

ENGAGEEXPLORE

EVALUA-TIONINTEREST

PURCHASE

INTENTAWARENESS

CONSIDER-ATION

Think About Your Objectives

Don’t fall into the trap of creating content for the sake of doing so – create and promote assets that drive the measurable marketing objectives most impactful for your business.

ACQUISITION CONVERSIONAWARENESS ENGAGEMENT

Consider What Your Objectives are Worth

Digital advertisers spend (on average) $250 - $300 a day per channel, but are these investment levels right for your campaign objective?• If you’re lacking historical data, launch your campaigns with a modest

introductory test spend. You can roughly estimate your test spend by checking the average channel CPC and multiplying that cost by the number of actions you desire.

• Evaluate the performance of your test campaigns following a 2-3-week flight and optimization period.

• With that information, you can then calculate your ROAS (return on ad spend) and scale campaign spending to maximize ad performance and business returns.

Review Your Content Library and Identify Which Pieces Resonate Most

with Your Audience

Promote Content on Audience-Preferred Channels

SOCIAL NATIVE SYNDICATEDARC

SEARCH AND DISPLAY

Search Network

Display Network

Industry Influencer

Social and Blogger CollectiveAnalysts

PAID INFLUENCERS

Make a Great Creative First Impression

Your ad creatives will be your audience’s first touch point with the destination you’re attempting to drive them to, and the primary factor for whether they engage or not.

Account for 47% of Engagement Probability vs.

11% for Targeting

Increase Purchase Intent by 93%

Target Your Audience

Launching a paid ad campaign to reach your target audience is only effective if you can actually reach the right people.

While many platforms differ in their approach and options for targeting, consider how you can build out targeting for some of these general parameters:• Interest, industry, and competitors• Demographics and professional title• Behaviors• Historical data drawn from email and social lists

As you build your targeting, remember to be mindful of maintaining an audience size that is realistic for your campaign spend. While “the more the merrier” sounds great in theory, you may lose out if your spend is significantly less than what would be necessary to reach your potential audience.

Bring People Where They Expect to Go

Successfully driving your audience to a desired piece of content or digital location is great, but the work isn’t done yet!

You must engage audiences on priority digital destinations by greeting them with:• The content they expect to see (no bait-and-switches!)• A clean and easy to navigate user experience• An identical user experience on mobile and desktop• Additional recommended related content

Take Your Tracking Further

Digital platforms offer marketers an impressive array of ad performance metrics; however, you shouldn’t stop there!

Always pair individual ads with unique tracking codes that you can generate via your CRM in order to gain a more detailed understanding of your

audience’s behavior after clicking an ad.

Measure Success with the Metrics from Your Objectives

Sort through the abundance of digital marketing metrics and select only those that are most relevant to your objectives to measure success.

AWARENESS ACQUISITIONENGAGEMENT CONVERSION

Impressions

Follows

Reads / Views

Likes

Shares

Comments

Clickthrough Rate

Other Clicks

Cost-Per-Click

URL Clicks

Site Visits

CPA Site Visit

Visits Duration

Bounce Rate

Signups / Leads

CPA Signups

Bounce Rates

We Can Help

Understanding the strength of your current content arsenal is mission critical to planning your next content marketing campaign.

Get started with our Content Health Check! It’s a comprehensive, diagnostic content audit of your digital and print assets that provides actionable insights

and an easy-to-follow roadmap to improve your content marketing efforts. Get in touch with us today to learn what it can do for you!

DBL@hotwirepr.com