The benefits for marketers of implementing a digital media strategy for their marketing go beyond higher reach for lower cost, it has also become a vehicle for reaching their desired target audience more directly. It’s so effective that it has become more common for marketers to utilize digital techniques and tools to boost the effectiveness of their offline marketing.
There are three primary areas where traditional or offline media buying is enhanced when used in conjunction with digital media:
- Market Research
- Audience Targeting
- More Advertising Options
More Accurate Marketing Research
Before digital marketers and media buyers had to rely on less sophisticated ways to define their audience, particularly for traditional campaigns. Certainly surveys, focus groups and other audience research provided us with some indications of who our audience was and how they consumed media. The only major problem with these methods are that we are left creating campaigns and entire strategy around what a consumer thinks they want or are willing to actually say . This marketing research can be problematic, however, for several reasons:
- People can forget what media they consumed on a daily basis.
- People won’t always honestly share what they consume out of embarrassment.
- People’s responses can be impacted by indirect factors like the wording of a question and whether they are in a group or individual environment.
Digital has not entirely eliminated these issues, but it has considerably reduced them with technology that has made targeting easier to do. Here are some ways digital technology gets used to increase the value of traditional offline marketing.
Better Audience Targeting
Ratings are a vital part of what media buyers and marketers use to determine the CPMs. Ratings are also a huge factor for networks in deciding how much to price advertising for their shows. For many years Nielsen, the standard for TV ratings, utilized written diaries from the families they measured to get their data. Not only was this cumbersome, it was also pretty easy to make mistakes or forget what you watched.
They now use a digital meter that is attached to the television and measures not only what programs are being watched but by whom. This digital advance has increased the accuracy by which TV media buys are priced and purchased.
Nielsen Audio, formerly Arbitron, is the radio audience measurement division of Nielsen. Because radio listeners are typically not stationary when they are listening the meters are not attached to the device like the TV meters. Nielsen Audio instead employs a digital system called the Portable People Meter, or PPM. The PPM looks like a pager and it is able to detect both the radio and television programs the listener is exposed to.
This data has streamlined the old paper journal system and provided valuable data for media buyers and marketers who are considering radio media buys. While the meters can also track satellite and Internet radio listenership, satellite and Internet radio has simplified and improved audience measurement with subscription services that get details about the users and cookies that track users music selections. This provides more honest reporting and a considerably larger data pool.
More Advertising Options
With the success of Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Cards” and radio services like Spotify, digital TV and radio subscription services are becoming the new normal. As such, they’ve also become a new avenue for marketers to advertise. In fact, Nielsen recently added ratings and tracking for digital content and programming as part of their offerings. Marketers can now get real data to back up their marketing investments in digital television and radio. It can also create integration and cross-promotion opportunities between with their traditional and digital advertising. The possibilities are unlimited and can open up opportunities for some really creative marketing.
Digital has not diminished the value of traditional marketing. If anything it has made traditional marketing a more valuable, accurate, and reliable place for marketers. Diversify and enhance your marketing mix with elements of both to maximize your marketing budget and advertising effectiveness.
Let our media strategists customize a digital or traditional marketing strategy for your company. Contact Capitol Media Solutions for more information.