Benefits of Partnering with an Online Digital Marketing Agency

The pressure is mounting in online digital advertising to make ad dollars go further and for stakeholders to have a greater understanding of emerging channels, platforms, and privacy regulations.

A quick scan of the news will reveal that more and more brands are moving their marketing and digital advertising to online digital marketing agencies. Agencies are better positioned to have greater institutional knowledge and the deep-seated experience required for driving efficiency and results. 

The ultimate goals of transitioning from in-house managed digital advertising to an online digital marketing agency are for brands to extend their internal team and access expertise, tools, preferred pricing, and exclusive partnerships. Below I’ve outlined these benefits and then some.

Get Access to Talent

Over the past decade, the digital marketing industry’s fast growth has made high-quality talent sparse and has made hiring incredibly difficult for companies of all types and sizes. This is especially true to brands. When you partner with an agency, you get access to talent that spans operations, planning, innovation, strategy, and more. Whenever and wherever you need it, your agency’s mission is to be your eyes and ears, your imaginative thinker, your strategist, and your team player. A good online digital marketing agency will understand your end goal and will consider your success to be their success. 

Share Accountability With A Third Party

Accountability ensures that you are in lock-step with your agency team. You can contact your strategist to discuss performance or ideate on changes to ongoing campaigns. It means that you can trust and rely on your agency partner to know about the right tactics and use them. 

You’ve got someone accountable for your digital marketing strategy and the numbers behind it on the accountability side. If you’re missing the mark on reaching your target audience or seeing a jump on your cost-per-lead, your agency partner is responsible for diving into what’s happening and why. 

Keep On Top Of Changes In The Industry

Attempting to keep up with marketing changes, especially as it relates to emerging channels, privacy regulations, and the deprecation of third-party cookies can feel like an endless game of catch-up. Right when you think you’ve caught up, you’ve already fallen behind. A smart marketing agency will have a front-row seat to industry innovation and consumer trends that will shape your marketing strategy. To help you and your team maintain a strong pulse on your industry and the marketing industry at large, you can expect to receive regular communications and attend regular calls and presentations from your agency team. 

Gain Institutional Knowledge 

One of the most often ignored benefits of working with an online digital marketing agency is the access to veteran specialists working behind the scenes and institutional knowledge. External partners see more scenarios across more brands and industries and pass these insights on to clients through recommendations and strategy.

Get Access to Expensive Tools and Platforms

There are some incredible tools available to help digital marketers gain valuable insights about consumers, website activity, and paid marketing activities. The bad news is, they often come with a hefty price tag. 

From social listening and social media management tools to marketing measurement, it’s a safe bet that if there is a marketing initiative your team is working on, there is a tool that needs to execute that initiative.

Digital marketing agencies often have dedicated budgets for technology stacks that include the best tools for managing marketing programs on behalf of clients. In some instances, you will get direct access to an agency’s technology stacks. In some other cases, you may get limited, read-only access. But across the board, you can expect to see the output of your agency’s extensive technology stack in the form of performance, insights, and efficiency with marketing spend. 

Get Savings On Costs and Better Pricing

The cost to hire a marketing team with specialized skills can be incredibly high, especially if you make a poor hire or quickly need additional skill sets. A smart digital marketing agency has a team of specialists in-house who will be staffed on your account by how many hours weekly you need their resources. In this case, you are only paying for what you need vs. staffing a full-time team. Additionally, online digital marketing agencies often have pre-negotiated rates with media buying platforms and data partners. With an agency, you get access to platforms and partnerships that have a high barrier to entry and get access at a cost that saves you money on marketing campaign execution. 

Should I hire an online digital marketing agency? Or do it all in-house?

You may be asking yourself these questions. If so, it’s important to review the benefits and drawbacks of an outside partner and to look at potential partners through the lens of what’s most important to you, your team, and your business. Marketing agencies do more than create banner ads or write strategy; they work hard behind the scenes to make sure your products, ideas, and services are at the top of consumer’s minds and search queries because they know what consumers are looking for. 

Digilant has proven digital marketing agency expertise and an experienced team ready to meet your needs if you seek an outside partner. We help marketers realize digital marketing’s full potential with access to teams, tools, insights, and unmatched performance. 

Ready to learn more about Digilant’s agency services and experience? Contact us today!

Successful Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns: A Beginners Guide

Consumers are embracing omnichannel shopping habits more than ever before. 86% of shoppers, to be exact, regularly channel-hop across at least two channels while shopping. This shopping strategy spans both digital and brick-and-mortar channels, to add complexity to advertisers’ situations. Consumers may research and select a product online, maybe even add it to their cart, but they’ll pick up the product in-store while running errands over the weekend. Conversely, while browsing in-store, they may be using their phone as a virtual assistant or chose to make an online purchase instead. 

These varying shopping journeys have all but solidified the necessity for advertisers to embrace omnichannel marketing campaigns. For brands to remain competitive, they need to create seamless shopping journeys for consumers across every channel consumers will use to research, browse and ultimately buy a product. 

So, if you’re ready to join the 87% of marketers who recognize an omnichannel marketing solution is critical to success, keep reading. Below is a guide to help you get started building successful omnichannel marketing campaigns. 

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

In the simplest of terms, omnichannel marketing is an approach to marketing that addresses each channel’s customer experience – desktop browser, mobile, retail, social media, podcast, and any others you might use – and how customers transition between channels they make purchases.

If you’re interested in learning more about what omnichannel is and the different aspects that make up an omnichannel marketing campaign, check out our blog post What is Omnichannel Marketing.

The Benefits of an Omnichannel Marketing Solution

We outlined a clear benefit of an omnichannel marketing solution above: more directly correlates to how consumers shop, which creates better brand perceptions amongst consumers. However, studies have shown that omnichannel marketing benefits an organization’s bottom line. Brands with omnichannel marketing solutions yield better sales and customer retention rates than those who do not.

The Aberdeen Group found that companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement see a 9.5% increase in revenue, year-over-year. On the other hand, Google found that omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who shop using only one channel. 

These stats outline the benefits brands can see when embracing omnichannel marketing campaigns. 90% of customers expect consistent interactions across channels, which quickly shifts omnichannel marketing from a beneficial tool for marketers to use to an essential. Let’s dive into how you can get started building a successful omnichannel marketing strategy. 

Keep Your Consumer at the Center of Everything

The main reason you have decided to invest in an omnichannel solution is to better the experience for your consumers. So, as you move through different stages, continue to keep your mind focused on how your consumer thinks, interacts with your brand, and will benefit from various investments you make. 

Take some time to step into the shoes of your consumers. Test what their customer journey would be like right now. What is the online shopping experience? Are there integrations when switching from their laptop to a mobile device? Are your online assistants helpful? Is it easy to choose in-store pick-up when shopping online? 

The more you can understand how your customers are interacting with your brand, the better you will tailor your advertising dollars to meet their needs. 

As you understand how your audience is interacting with your brand, it’s also essential to understand your audience. So, take a moment to outline all the various aspects of your customers. Consider the following: 

  • Demographics: where do they live, their age, gender, occupation
  • Psychographics: what they enjoy doing, lifestyle attributes
  • Behavioral: how they spend their time, device usage, channel preferences

As you continue to build your omnichannel marketing strategy, you will gain more information about your consumers. But, this will start as your baseline to help you with the next step. 

With Great [Data] Comes Great Responsibility

A successful omnichannel marketing solution requires actionable data. And, as your omnichannel solution continues, you will acquire more data. You will begin to understand better how your consumer behaves, where they shop, which ads they click on most frequently, which discount and sale offerings garner their attention, etc. And all of this information will come to you in the form of data. 

Just think: if you’re running different creatives across different channels, the data sources begin to add up quickly. Before you even get started with these campaigns, to find the most success, outline a data collection, organization, and integration plan. With so much robust data, it’s easy to get lost in spreadsheet land quickly. Finding a data analytics solution that works for your brand will solve this problem. 

Channel Prioritization 

Omnichannel marketing campaigns can include channels such as paid search, paid social, programmatic, audio, TV, print, mobile, email marketing, in-store, influencer marketing, and direct response marketing (and the list continues). This is why it was essential to take some time to understand your consumers and where they spend their time. This will allow you to better budget (both financially and time-wise) where your ad spend should be allocated. 

As you begin to build out your content for different channels, keep these three things in mind: 

  • You can’t be everywhere, but your consumers also aren’t everywhere. This might sound like it contradicts everything that has been said prior. Yes, consumers are shifting between more channels and devices. However, not all these outlets are perfect for your brand. By spreading yourself too thin, you miss out on more substantial, more timely impressions. For example, rather than spreading advertising budget across all social media, try re-targeting people who have interacted with your Facebook ads on Instagram. The key to a successful omnichannel marketing campaign is to work smarter, not harder. 
  • Fill the gaps: As you move through your customer journey exercise, make sure you fill any gaps that you notice.  Were you unable to purchase the product online and pick it up in a store? Any infrequencies consumers experience with the brands presents the risk of them shifting away from your brand. 
  • Avoid Silos: Consumers want an integrated customer journey. The sentiment a customer feels when entering your store should mirror your website, social media, etc. If someone asked a brand rep a question about a specific product, the next email they receive should resonate with that conversation. Consistency is key. 

Be Responsive & Reactive

Conversations surrounding consumer data have been at the forefront of industry news (if you want to learn more about consumer data changes, check out our future of third-party cookies hub). However, many studies have found that if you use consumers’ data to create more personalized experiences, they are more willing to give it up. Digitaltrends found that 73% of consumers prefer to do business with retailers who use personal information to make their shopping experience more relevant. 

As marketers, it’s our job to utilize this data to create a personalized customer journey. As you dive into your omnichannel marketing campaigns, think about how you will create personalized ad experiences for your consumers. Consider the following: 

  • Retargeting: Deliver ads to users who have previously visited your site and/or landing pages. You can qualify this based on which pages they visited, how recently they visited the pages, or how frequently they visited the page. This allows you to target the consumer who has been looking at one of your products three times a day for the last two days. The personalization comes as you serve them an ad that directly correlates to the products they have been looking at during their customer journey. 
  • Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO): This tactic uses a highly automated and rules-driven approach to generated ads dynamically based on data feeds. It also optimizes the time in which the ad is delivered. This allows your brand to create hundreds, or even thousands, of unique creatives, with minimal lift. This tool allows more relevant messages based on a consumer’s data – their location, interaction history, etc. 

Continue to re-iterate your customer journey to ensure that you have the content and tactics to respond to key behaviors. The more responsive your marketing can be to where a customer is in their journey, the better it will resonate with them. 

Get Started: Incorporate Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns Today

The digital and physical world will only continue to merge as technology improves. As advertisers, the best way to merge your offline and online advertising strategies is with omnichannel marketing.

An omnichannel marketing strategy is not easy. It requires organization, creative thinking, and quick fixes when necessary. However, with hard work comes great rewards. Your digital advertising strategy will improve along with your overall brand. 

Digilant: An Expert Omnichannel Marketing Partner

At Digilant, we understand the lift required to execute a successful omnichannel marketing campaign. Our full-service agency solutions position brands to stand out in crowded categories. Our biddable media platform experts work with our data analysts, marketing specialists, and planners & strategists to create comprehensive omnichannel marketing plans spanning search, social, display, video, audio, email, and more. 

Every omnichannel marketing strategy starts with customer research. We understand that the backbone of any successful campaign begins with unlocking data to define a target audience. This leads us to develop data-driven integrated marketing strategies, setting the stage for measurable performance. 

Get started with your omnichannel marketing campaigns today with Digilant’s Full-Service Solutions. Let’s talk

Incorporating Digital Marketing Analytics Services into Marketing Campaigns

As marketers, we have an excess of tools available to track, store, and utilize data points throughout our marketing strategy. As of 2020, though, only about half of marketers were using digital marketing analytics services. But, of this same group, “marketing analytics and competitive insights” was voted the most critical factor in supporting their marketing strategies over the last 18 months. 

From this data, it seems like we might be in a situation where marketers understand the importance of data analytics but don’t know where or don’t have the resources to get started. So, if you’re interested in how you can better incorporate digital marketing analytics services into your marketing campaigns, it begins with changing your mindset on data and data implementation. Below we’ve outlined a four-step process to ensure you acquire and utilize data analytics to its maximum potential.

Step One: Evaluate Your Data

Before we start any conversations about incorporating digital marketing analytics into marketing campaigns, it’s essential to stress that data for data’s sake is no longer the answer. Yes, we have all the data we could ever want at our fingertips. But, if this data isn’t working to improve your overall marketing strategy, it’s just a collection of numbers. 

Data has the power to transform campaigns, uncover new audiences, prevent wasted media spend, and so much more. Ensure the data you collect, use, analyze and incorporate is bringing value to your campaign strategy. Now, ask yourself, how am I using this data to better my marketing strategy? If you don’t have a good answer to that question, it might be time to rethink what data you are using.

Step Two: Contextualize Your Data

Data on its own is just a list or spreadsheet of numbers. But the key to building an effective bridge between marketing and analytics (and in turn, stronger digital marketing campaigns) is to paint a picture of what this data means for your overall strategy.

You can look at a 1.3% click-through rate and deem the campaign a success. But, what is that number saying about the consumer? What can you learn about your consumers from the numbers? Take some time to analyze. Look for patterns over the last few weeks, months, or quarters. Are there times when consumers are more or less engaged with your brand? Which tactics are lending themselves toward more successful results and supporting your KPIs? As you answer more questions such as this, a story begins to emerge. This story gives you much more insight into your consumers than merely a number. 

Step Three: Follow the Data

Through this data analysis, you will most likely begin to see patterns emerge. Maybe you ran a social media campaign that led to an 8% increase in sales. Without throwing all of your eggs in one basket, lean into this tactic and continue to work on building data surrounding your paid social media campaign in this example. Test different creative formats offer various incentives. You know, from the data, that this channel is working. Now, use this data to figure out what aspects of these ads are yielding positive results.

You only realize the actual value of data as you implement findings into your future campaigns. Not only can you continue to build this channel, but you can take advantage of the learnings you gain and utilize similar tactics across other media and campaigns. 

Step Four: Drive Decisions with Data

You’ve probably been in a position where you’re asked to create a year-end report. You’re pulling various data sources to showcase success stories from the year. In almost any situation, you can find the data to back up your story. But when you start incorporating digital marketing analytics services into your marketing campaigns, you’ll switch your mindset from backing your story up with data, making decisions backed by data

Finding Digital Marketing Analytics Services that Support Your Brand

As you begin to think more about bridging the gap between your data analytics and digital marketing, you may realize that you don’t have the internal resources for this task. A digital marketing partner with analytics solutions can help. 

Digital marketing companies have the internal tools and personnel to create analytic reports that support the data-driven mindset outlined in steps one-four. They will be able to track and organize the data from all of your campaigns in one simple, organized location. Data analytics experts will then analyze this information to ensure your campaigns are running to their optimal capacity and provide strategic recommendations for future campaigns. 

Digilant’s Digital Marketing Analytics Services

Digilant’s analytics services use over 140 connectors to quickly integrate advertising, media, social, e-commerce, and website platforms so you can visualize and report performance, all in one place. We understand that no two brands have the same digital advertising strategies and goals, so we offer custom-built dashboards to meet your needs. 

We offer real-time reporting and access to your dashboard 24/7, which allows for a holistic, automated view of your digital marketing performance. Automated reports enable our team to pivot your media dollars to ensure success. Are you interested in learning more about incorporating Digilant’s digital marketing analytics services into your marketing campaigns? Let’s talk.

Programmatic Digital Marketing: The Value of an Expert Partner

In June of 2020, eMarketer found that the average American spent over 3 hours on their phone. That number doesn’t consider the time spent on any other internet-enabled devices such as computers, laptops, TVs, gaming devices, tablets, etc. Consumers are spending more time connected to their devices than ever before. This shift in media usage offers great challenges to advertisers to keep their brand in front of consumers. However, it also provides great opportunities. 

Programmatic digital marketing, the use of technology to automatically bid and purchase media, is one of these opportunities. Programmatic advertising allows marketers to connect with consumers digitally; backed by technology, programmatic ads are administered to achieve the best possible results. 

As a marketer, you may have already started to research whether programmatic marketing is a suitable investment for your brand. Maybe you have looked into the pros and cons and are wary of the necessity to have a strategic human-element backing this technological form of advertising. Yes, one of the best parts of programmatic advertising is the automated, machine-learning technology. But, people still need to be at the helm, monitoring analytics and ensuring buys make sense. That is where an expert programmatic digital marketing partner enters the picture. 

If you’re ready to invest in programmatic digital media, but you know you don’t have the internal resources to keep up with these campaigns’ demands, investing in a programmatic marketing partner may be the right move for your brand. Keep reading to learn more about what value a programmatic partnership can bring to your digital media strategy. 

Valuable Assets gained when hiring a Programmatic Digital Marketing Partner

1. Expertise

First and foremost, the most valuable resource gained when investing in a programmatic partnership is expertise. Although it sounds simple, understanding the intricacies, technology, and changes that quickly develop in the industry is no easy feat. But, a programmatic partner’s job is just that: to understand and implement the most strategic features into your campaigns to ensure the best results. 

Take, for example, the current conversations swirling about the depreciation of third-party cookies or previous worries regarding the birth of 5G. Without a programmatic partner, you’re left to research, learn, and understand how these changes will impact your advertising campaign. With a partner onboard, they can perform the heavy lifting, keeping you up-to-date with the information you need to know, ensuring your campaign performance continues to function effectively. 

This value can be seen on a more detailed level in terms of your campaigns, as well. Programmatic partners will utilize their media buying expertise to implement brand safety measures, determine which DSP is the best choice for the campaign, implement retargeting, apply an attribution study, or uncover new captivated audience segments – to name a few solutions. 

2. Technology Partnerships

You may have come across some articles highlighting the best features or options for DSPs, Demand-Side Platforms in your programmatic advertising research. (If you need a refresher on what a DSP is, check out our blog post: Programmatic Media Buying 101: What’s The Difference Between DSPs & Ad Networks.)

One of the most valuable assets an expert programmatic partner will bring to the table is its relationships with DSPs and other technology partners required to run effective programmatic campaigns. Different DSPs have various benefits, such as mobile compatibility, geotargeting features, or reporting capabilities, and a programmatic partner will allow accessibility. Alongside the DSP technologies, programmatic partners also have a breadth of data, brand safety, measurement, audience, and more channel-specific  (DOOH, audio, social influencer, CTV, etc.) partnerships for better targeting and channel diversification in your campaigns. 

3. Real-time Reporting & Insights

An expert programmatic digital marketing partner offers holistic, transparent reporting that fulfills your brand’s needs. Whether you are looking to realign how your team processes data or looking to solve for brand safety concerts, an expert partner will provide reporting that gives you detailed insight. 

A value that an expert programmatic partner can provide is the ability to create custom reports that meet your team’s exact needs. Working with your team to uncover where your brand can most benefit from reporting, a programmatic partner can build comprehensive, automated reports that update in-real time. 

4. Transparency

Transparency is an important aspect of any business partnership. However, in an industry where “lack of transparency” is the second biggest concern amongst senior ad buyers, a transparent relationship is essential. As you are researching programmatic advertising and evaluating programmatic partners, you will find tremendous value in those partnerships that put transparency at their company’s forefront.

A programmatic digital marketing partner should make you comfortable knowing the costs and fees associated with their service. You should have a clear picture of where your media budget is being spent. You should be able to see this transparency in every part of the relationship, all the way through the reporting and insights you receive.  

5. Top-Tier Service

Any programmatic company can run your brand’s media and send you reports after campaigns have concluded. But, you will understand the actual value of an expert programmatic partner in their customer service. 

A programmatic partner should be your trustworthy eyes and ears in the programmatic digital advertising landscape, ensuring that your campaigns are running at the most optimal level. They can offer optimization suggestions, channel diversification, new targeting tactics, industry news, and more. As a partner, you should be able to rely on them to answer all of your questions, running successful campaigns in the present, and looking to the future to ensure you are set up for success down the line. 

Digilant: Your Expert Programmatic Digital Marketing Partner

At Digilant, we have four guiding principles: winning client service, lead decisions with data, focus on outcomes, stay curious & stay ahead. These principles define how we approach our work and keep us on track to ensure we perform at the top of our game for each of our clients. 

Although each of these principles directly impacts our ability to create and execute transformative programmatic campaigns for our clients, our business’s backbone is our passion for providing the best client service. We understand that every brand has different needs and expectations regarding programmatic marketing, which is why we customize our solutions to meet your needs. Are you interested in learning more about the value that Digilant can provide to your programmatic advertising? Let’s talk.

5 Similarities of Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns

Digital advertising campaigns require a long list of moving parts to work in tandem to achieve your overall business objectives. In an environment where consumers are constantly interacting with and digesting media, as advertisers, it can be tricky to pinpoint precisely where to invest your advertising dollars. 

So, when researching and deciding where to invest these digital media dollars, you may be wondering how to garner the most success from your campaigns. The way you approach your digital advertising plan needs to correlate directly with your business objectives; no one-size-fits-all approach works across the board. However, there are certain similarities that all successful digital marketing campaigns share. Keep reading to learn more about steps you should take to ensure your setting your digital marketing up for success. 

1.Realistic (and clear) Goals 

As mentioned above, your digital advertising strategy needs to align with your business objectives. Before you embark on any marketing campaigns, define realistic (aspirational but not unachievable) goals. What do you hope to achieve with your digital advertising? Brand Awareness? Lead Generation? Higher rankings on Google? Form Fills? Conversions? 

You don’t have to pigeonhole yourself to one goal. Most likely, you will always be working toward gaining more brand awareness while also trying to improve your search ranking, let’s say. Try setting weight towards different goals, so you know where best to focus your attention. This will help you stay on track with your digital advertising campaigns and also direct you towards where best to spend your time and resources. 

Although these goals will vary, possibly even change year over year or quarter over quarter, all successful digital marketing campaigns start and circle back to clear, realistic objectives. 

2. Appropriate KPIs

After identifying overall goals, marketers with successful digital campaigns will look at reaching these goals. Enter: KPIs. KPIs should be used as short-term benchmarks to ensure you’re staying on track to achieve those long term goals you’ve set for your brand.

If your goal is to increase brand awareness, KPIs could be site traffic growth, increased impressions, and higher social engagement. If your goal is a specific conversion, KPIs could be higher click-through-rates, lowered bounce rates or increased site traffics. Consider your KPIs your puzzle pieces, and when they are all working together (or achieved), they’ll create a successful digital marketing campaign puzzle. 

Learn more about choosing the best KPI for your business objectives in our blog 5 Digital Marketing KPIs You Can’t Ignore.

3. A Defined Target Audience

One thing that has most likely drawn you to digital advertising is audience targeting capabilities. Gone of the days of sending your message out into the world, hoping it reaches the right people. With digital marketing solutions, such as programmatic digital advertising, you can reach your desired audience, on their preferred platform, at an opportune time. 

However, the key to successful campaigns is a defined target audience. That’s not to say you have to know every last detail of your audience (digital advertising partners can help you more clearly define the psychographics, demographic, etc.). Still, it’s good practice to come in with a general idea. Are you targeting business professionals? Moms? Baby boomers? Reality TV lovers? People in the market to buy a home? Married 55-65-year-olds?

With these parameters in mind, you’ll have a foundation to build upon and set yourself up to understand better your target market and, in turn, have a more successful campaign. 

For example, a CPG client approached our team knowing they wanted to target millennial moms. With this target audience in mind, we created an omnichannel marketing campaign to reach these shoppers both in-store and online. Check out the case study here

4. Channel Variety

The most successful digital marketing campaigns run on channels that work towards the overall goals. Maybe you have a channel you have been using for the last few years you are comfortable running on. It might not be the best option to achieve your overall goals, reach your KPIs, and target that defined audience. 

A successful strategy might require adapting to a new channel, splitting your budget between various channels, or investing in a new channel such as digital audio or email marketing. Successful digital advertising campaigns incorporate media that will continue to work towards your overall goals. 

5. Strategic Content Creation

Consumers expect specific types of content from brands depending on where they are browsing. Social media is a very exploratory forum; websites are used for more detailed research, finding answers to questions, or chatting with an online representative. Email marketing encourages upselling and cross-selling. 

Successful digital marketing campaigns curate content to match these notions. With digital advertising’s targeting capabilities, you can reach your audience at an optimal time to make a purchase. Still, if the message doesn’t align with where they are in the customer journey, it’s a lost opportunity. 

We understand that this isn’t an easy task; it requires various creative assets, different iterations and different formats and sizes. If you don’t’ have the internal resources to build the necessary creative assets for each campaign, consider investing in a digital advertising partner with creative strategists and developers

If you’ve come so far to get your ad in front of the right consumer, don’t let untimely creative deter them from taking action. Read more about the importance of timely creative ads in our blog post Time to Get Personal with Dynamic Creative

Constructing Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns 

There is a long list of moving parts required to implement a successful digital marketing campaign. And, no aspect should be overlooked. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the requirements needed to launch your digital advertising strategy. 

If you know you don’t have the internal resources – either personnel or time-wise – to invest in the intricacies required, consider partnering with a full-service digital marketing agency. From media planning and strategy, research and analytics, paid social experts, digital media buyers, and everything in between, digital marketing agencies are built to ensure that your goals stay on track to support your overall business objectives. 

Digilant: Your Digital Advertising Partner for Success

At Digilant, we understand that no two businesses are built the same, which is why we offer flexible online marketing solutions customized to meet your needs. As a full-service digital marketing partner, we handle digital media strategies that span across the channels such as CTV, display, social, search, affiliate, influencer, and more. Our managed service solutions allow brands to scale media buying quickly across search, social and programmatic. And, our self-service solution offers brands access to a self-service programmatic ad platform that puts the power in the hands of in-house advertising teams.

We know the challenges that brands and agencies face. At Digilant, our various service levels make it possible for agencies to bolster expertise for media clients and for brands to scale media buying quickly. Interested in learning more about how Digilant can help set your brand up with successful digital marketing campaigns? Let’s talk.

4 Digital Marketing Agency Services Mid-Sized Businesses are Better Off Outsourcing

Digital advertising faces emerging channels on what seems like a constant cycle. As consumer preferences change and evolve, so too do the opportunities to reach these captive audiences with ads. Just think, within a year, TikTok grew from a trending app to now having 50 million daily active users in the United States. As digital advertisers, it’s our responsibility to stay up-to-date with these channels and implement them into our digital media plans, when applicable. 

But, the job doesn’t stop here. As the channel landscape diversifies, these channels also get more detailed and granular in strategies and tactical targeting capabilities. Unique layering tactics, cross-device technology, and intricate strategy mean that each channel requires deep subject matter expertise. 

To stay in line with all the changes, digital advertising teams require a combination of breadth of knowledge and understanding of specificities and differences each channel implements. So, what does this mean for brands? Larger teams that grow and evolve with the digital advertising landscape. As new digital advertising opportunities emerge, teams need to ensure they have subject matter experts that can stay in line with these changes and perform quick implementations for campaigns. 

However, having a large team of in-house digital advertising experts is a luxury that many mid-sized businesses simply cannot afford. For these businesses, outsourcing is a great solution. Outsourcing digital advertising frees up valuable resources within an organization and provides additional insight and expertise into the digital world. 

If you’re a mid-sized brand that wants to expand your digital advertising playbook, but you know you don’t have the internal resources to support these investments fully, keep reading. Below we’ve outlined four digital marketing agency services that you are better off outsourcing. 

Four digital marketing agency services you’re better off outsourcing.

1.Social Media Advertising

64% of consumers want brands to connect with them on social media. Many brands take advantage of the organic reach their social media accounts provide for them, but paid social is not something to overlook. Consumers are eager to discover and interact with new brands on social media, and brands need to take advantage of this.

As a mid-sized business, social media provides a platform for your brand’s voice and to showcase your customer service. With so many different projects and responsibilities that your digital advertising plan requires, having your social media fall victim to a lack of resources can be costly. Don’t overlook this tool and the power digital marketing agency services can provide when outsourcing your paid social media efforts.  

Social media is the perfect example of what was outlined above. New social channels are constantly emerging with rumors of the latest and greatest. While new channels are popping up, tried and true social channels (think: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter) continue to evolve their paid advertising and privacy features. Investing in an outsourced social media team ensures that you stay at the forefront of new channels on the horizon while maintaining strategic campaigns and taking advantage of new features with current powerhouses.

2. Email Marketing & Marketing Automation

As a mid-sized brand, you face tremendous competition to stand out from your competitors. More often than not, the deciding factor among consumers isn’t necessarily what one brand said, but rather what they did not say. Consumers interact with more devices, channels, and media forms than ever before, making it essential for brands to continue the conversation with consumers throughout their entire customer journey. 

If a consumer visited your site a few times but never made a purchase, maybe it just wasn’t the right time to make the purchase, but chances are they just forgot, got distracted, or switched to a different device. This is where brands need to use email marketing and marketing automation to nurture this lead and keep your brand top of mind. 

But, again, this is a strategy that takes resources and expertise that many mid-sized brands simply don’t have the access or bandwidth to prioritize. Enter outsourcing. 

The emails you send to consumers need to be personalized and timely. Digital marketing agency services use omnichannel digital advertising technology to understand where the consumer is in the customer journey. Each consumer is then nurtured to fit where they are in the customer journey. Studies have shown that nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities compared to non-nurtured leads. 

Consumers want a seamless customer journey as they switch through different channels and devices. Outsourcing a digital agency will allow for better mapping of the customer journey, more timely and personalized emails, which will keep your brand top of mind amongst consumers and a more significant ROI.

3. Web Design & Landing Page Development

We’ve all been in a situation where we clicked on an ad that piqued our interest, but the landing page was either difficult to navigate or didn’t correlate to the original ad we clicked on. Your immediate action was most likely closing the tab and continuing about your browsing. Landing pages and website development cannot be overlooked! 

Especially as a mid-sized brand, your website is the face of your business. In the world of e-commerce, it is the equivalent of a storefront. I think it’s safe to assume you would never leave your storefront messy or difficult to navigate, so your website should be the same way. 

Outsourcing your web design and landing page development will ensure that landing pages are clean and appealing and that they correlate to the ads or content that directed the consumer to them. Once you have a consumer on your site, you want to keep them there as long as you can. With the team of experts working on your brand’s behalf, they understand the best practices for landing pages to entice consumers to stay on your site. 

4. Paid Search Advertising

Depending on your brand’s age, paid search advertising may be one of the first investments you made in digital advertising. And although paid search advertising may seem like an antiquated concept, it’s not something to overlook. This practice’s intricacies are also not something that most business owners have the time or resources to take on. 

Digital marketing agency services can handle everything from analyzing search signals and keyword intent to choosing the right advertising channel to reach your audience. With 3.8 million searches every minute on Google, your brand must be front and center (or, in this case, top of the first page) for appropriate searches. 

Finding the Right Digital Advertising Partner for your Business

Whether paid search or landing page development, as you begin to research potential companies to outsource these services to, you will come across a breadth of providers. At Digilant, we understand that narrowing down the best partner to meet your brand’s needs can be a timely task. To add more complexity to the situation, you’re probably looking to invest sooner rather than later. Below, you will find a few resources that we hope will help you during the research and vetting process: 

Important Questions to Ask Before Hiring Digital Advertising Companies

7 Questions to Ask Your Digital Advertising Vendors

Digilant: Your Choice for Digital Advertising Outsourcing

We understand that no two companies are alike, so no two digital advertising strategies will be alike. The Digilant team is passionate about finding a digital advertising solution that works for your business needs. 

From paid social to creative strategy and development to programmatic, our team of digital media experts’ expertise spans across every corner of the digital advertising industry. We rely on audience insights, performance benchmarks, data science, and technology to enhance our work’s strategy, creativity, and implementation. Interested in learning more about how Digilant can provide subject matter expertise to your digital advertising campaign? Let’s talk. 

Popular Omnichannel Marketing Solutions for Businesses of All Sizes

Marketers of all sizes need to recognize the digital tools they have on hand and know how to use them to attract today’s shoppers. So let’s take a look at what’s involved in setting up and operating effective omnichannel marketing solutions.

The natural place to start is by defining what an omnichannel actually is (and isn’t).

An omnichannel marketing strategy refers to a strategy by which the sales process, from awareness to action, and beyond, is seamless to your customers across mostly digital media channels. All roads (easily) lead to that first sale and then repeat business. The customer never breaks a sweat.

That’s the basics. Now let’s take a deeper look.

It’s NOT Multichannel Marketing

By name, omnichannel sounds like a fancy new way of saying multichannel marketing, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not.

In the old, pre-Internet sales and marketing days (you remember those…some of you) advertising campaigns were all about exploiting multichannel strategies. If you had the budget, you ran coordinated ad campaigns with maybe print ads, TV spots, billboards, and radio commercials.

You’ve evolved, and now your marketing mix includes ads and related messaging across social media, email lists, and various web destination. Basically, it’s the same thing you used to do, except the strategy is mostly conducted on digital platforms. And an omnichannel marketing strategy is basically the same thing.

Not exactly.

You might have found all kinds of digital real estate to post your messaging, but none of them work together. You’re expecting your customers to become aware of what you have to offer and figure out that they need it and how to get it.

Eventually, they might. But you haven’t made it easy for them.

Establishing omnichannel marketing solutions is all about connecting all of those unique channels and turning them into an easy-to-follow digital path that starts with the customer and ends with easy completion of the sales transaction. Then it puts the customer right back on that same path, eager to repeat the sale tomorrow or next month or five years from now, depending on what you’re selling.

Now let’s look at just some of the tools you might use to get and keep them on that path.

Capture Their Interest

How you do this is going to depend on what you’re selling and what you’ve found that works in the past. If you’re not doing it already, all of your marketing approaches should result in your team capturing your customers’ digital contact information.

This is, of course, easier to do if you’ve already gotten them into your physical or virtual space. Whether they’re at the ‘interest’ stage of the sales funnel or they’ve taken action, they’re quite possibly motivated to share this information with you, and perhaps even interact with whatever messaging you send their way (as long as you don’t bug the hell out of them).

You might also get contact information by establishing accounts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or whatever social media makes sense to add to your audience. However you constantly build your customer and prospect database, you’re now ready to start drawing them in.

Be as Mobile as Your Customers

It’s likely that your most effective omnichannel marketing solution is in your customers’ hands right now. Or in their purses, pockets, or backpacks. It’s their smartphones, of course.

That means it’s critical that your website is optimized for mobile. And that whatever messages you put into cyberspace, they can land in your customers’ phones when they’re at home, at work, in bed, or in your store (or your competitor’s).

Depending on your product or service mix, your company might get a sale, or a missed sales opportunity, from your customers’ phones at any time of the day or night. Or a reservation placed or service call made. Today, almost all omnichannel marketing solutions runs through your customers’ phones.

Give ‘Em a Place to Land

What do you want them to do? Where and how do you want them to do it? This involves some careful thought.

Sometimes it’s easy. You want your customers to go to your website, look at a menu, order a pizza and decide carryout or pickup. But if you own a luxury car dealership, it’s not easy. You want them to take time out of their day to show up at a scheduled time and take a test drive. Or, if you just sold them a car a year ago you want to see how it’s running, schedule routine maintenance and just generally stay in their heads.

These are two very different approaches, and both might be very different from how you interact with your own customers. Once you’ve figured it out, you can create a landing page (or pages) that encourages your customers to take that next step. To move one more block or so on your path to a sale.

Become the Authority

People want to deal with experts. They’ll order carryout from a restaurant they feel will give them a good meal. They’ll get their cars serviced at garages where they think the mechanics know what they’re doing. They’ll market their homes with real estate agents they think can get them the best return on their most precious investment.

One way of attracting awareness and interest for your offering is to demonstrate your expertise in your field, whether it’s in pizza, car repair, or home sales. It’s not hard to showcase that expertise today. Write a blog. Host a podcast. Both can be done very affordably, even if you can’t write or know anything about podcast technology. Once again, trust the experts.

Establishing expertise in your field is a full-time job. But your blog, podcast, or other communications strategies are more omnichannel marketing tools. Remember those email and text contacts you’ve worked so hard to collect? Use them to tell your customers and prospects that you’ve got this new channel. You’re not trying to sell them anything (at least not directly), so what do they have to lose?

Your podcast or blog really isn’t a thirty-minute ad or a thousand words of sales copy. It’s solid and useful information. You’re going to tell your customers how to rebuild their carburetor. How to tell when their furnaces are about to crash and keep that from happening. How to make vegan soups that are just as yummy as the ones you sell in your restaurant.

Why you might ask yourself, do you give your customers information that might stop them from scheduling an appointment in your service garage? Keep them from calling your people for an HVAC checkup or reserving a table at your restaurant?

Because you’re telling the truth. You’re demonstrating your expertise. You’re sharing comprehensive and useful information And really, when it comes down to it, how many of your fans are actually going to rebuild their carburetors on their own? Some might, but they’ll order parts through your garage. Or call for a tow truck and repairs when the do-it-yourself approach doesn’t quite pan out.

Apps Make Sense…if They Make Sense

Sherwin Williams has an app that lets you use your phone to take pictures of your room and then “paint” it with a Pantone shade that’s only available at your local Sherwin Williams paint store.

Your bank has an app that lets you take a photo of the check you received, and then electronically deposit it into your account with your phone. Restaurant chains have apps from which you can read menus, place orders, and schedule deliveries without leaving your couch.

In each of these cases, the app provides a valuable service. And in each case, the only logical outcome of app use is to buy from the sponsor. You don’t go pull up a Chipotle menu unless you’re hungry and eager to place an order. What would you do with your bank’s app except for deposit checks and stay loyal? And sure, we suppose you could find the perfect Sherwin Williams Pantone color and then go to another paint store and see how close you can match it…but why?

Now for the downside of apps: they use prime phone real estate. Downloading takes time. Too many can slow your phone. So ask yourself whether you have something of value to provide your customers via the app. If you do, it’s an excellent way of making your customers’ lives easier, thereby capturing their loyalty and virtually guaranteeing repeat business. If not, they’re a waste of time.

So apps make sense if they make sense.

Be Your Customer

We’ve given you a few examples of what you might do to establish effective omnichannel marketing solutions for some targeted audiences. But every business, every product or service offering, is different. To know what will work for your audience, you must totally put yourself in the minds of your customers or clients.

How are they likely to be captured and what will make them want to interact with your company? What’s the proper sales path to get them from awareness to action? Maybe you start with a text message with a link to a landing page offering a test drive. Or it’s an email with a link to an Amazon catalog and the promise of a 20 percent discount on your first order. Whatever the route is, it will be unique to your company.

Let’s Build Omnichannel Marketing Solutions That Work For You

At Digilant, it’s our job to think like our clients and their clients or customers. Then we’ll help you custom-build omnichannel marketing solutions that uniquely work for your company and your target audience.

Our team of biddable media experts is eager to create a custom omnichannel marketing solution that works for your business. Let’s talk.

Predictions Roundup: Organic Search and Cookie Depreciation

Predictions Roundup: Organic Search and Cookie Depreciation

via Street Fight

The team at Street Fight asked industry experts for their 2021 predictions around topics such as local commerce, media, and advertising. Digilant CEO, Raquel Rosenthal weighed in on the cookie depreciation and measurement:

“As advertisers settle into the new year and face the depreciation of third-party cookies, we’ll start to see other forms of measurement, like econometric or media mix modeling, rise in importance. Standard online measurement has been built around 1:1 measurement using a cookie or a device. With third-party cookies largely going away in the next year and the “walls” of walled gardens like Google and Facebook getting higher, the traditional forms of measurement will become more difficult.

We’ll see more measurement solutions that are underpinned by identity resolution come to market. The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, and MediaMath are some examples of companies jumping in on this. Similarly, we’ll see advertisers themselves making internal changes to their tech stacks and marketing programs to support identity resolution, whether that’s adopting a CDP, investing in a data onboarding partner, or running campaigns specifically designed for list building.”

Raquel Rosenthal, Digilant CEO

Read the full piece here.

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