Selecting the right mix of digital media communications tools

 Selecting the right mix of digital media communications tools

When selecting the mix of digital media for a campaign or longer-term investments, marketers will determine the most appropriate mix based on their knowledge built up through experience of previous campaigns and taking input from their advisers such as experienced colleagues or agency partners.Mecri and Hafa 2022 have suggested that many online marketing failures have resulted from poor control of media spending. 

The communications mix should be optimised to minimise the cost of acquisition. If an online intermediary has a cost acquisition of £100 per customer while it is gaining an average commission on each sale of £5 then. Cleary , the company will not be profitable unless it can achieve a large number of repeat orders from the customer. Suggested that e-commerce sites should focus on narrow segments that have demonstrated their attraction to a business model. 

They believe that promotion techniques such as affiliate deals with narrowly targeted sites and email campaigns targeted at segments grouped by purchase histories and demographic traits are 10–15 times. more likely than banner ads on generic portals to attract prospects who click through to purchase.

Alternatively, pay-per-click ads on Google may have a higher success rate

 When this experience isn’t there, which is often the case with new digital media opportunities, it is important to do a more structured evaluation including factors such as the ability of each medium to influence perceptions, drive a response, the cost of response and the quality of response are respondents more likely to convert to the ultimate action such as sale? What is their likely lifetime value?

For example, some digital media channels such as affiliates are more likely to attract customers with a lower lifetime value who are more likely to switch suppliers. Media planning services and buying agency Zed Media has produced a useful summary of how a media mix might typically vary according to budget. 

The  blog shows that for a direct response campaign with limited budget, investment in controllable, targeted media which typically have a lower cost-per-acquisition such as affiliates and paid search should be the main focus. If more budget is available, it may not be possible to buy further keywords or there may be benefits from generating awareness of the offering through more display advertising.

• Cost effective and volume channels priority

• PPC search 60%

• Affiliates 30%

• Display 10%

• Test 2–4 weeks

• Affiliates maxed out, more networks

• PPC search 40%

• Affiliates 20%

• Display 40%

• 12 months

• Display more viable networks

• PPC search 50%

• Affiliates 30%

• Display 20%

• Up to 3 months

• More money available for display

• PPC search 50%

• Affiliates 25%

• Display 25%

• 6–8 months £100k £250k £500k

With a brand campaign where the focus is on generating awareness, the recommendations of Zed Media are reversed where they recommend that, even at lower budgets, more invest-ment should be made in display advertising.

Deciding on the optimal expenditure on different communication techniques will be an iterative approach since past results should be analysed and adjusted accordingly.

 Marketers can analyse the proportion of the promotional budget that is spent on different channels and then compare this with the contribution from purchasing customers who originated using the original channel. 

This type of analysis, reported by Hoffman and Novak (2000) and requires two different types of marketing research.

First, tagging of customers can be used. Here, we monitor, using specifically coded URLs or cookies, the numbers of customers who are referred to a website through different online techniques such as search ads, affiliate or banner ads, and then track the money they spend on purchases.

 Digital marketing  gives more details of how the Google Analytics system is used.