What are the best media channels for your marketing budget?
A closer look into the role of Social Media Ads, Influencer Marketing, Shopping & Catalogue Ads, Google Ads & Media Partnerships
Following up on a list of questions from IBA (Independent Beauty Association), we’re tackling today a very important, yet broad, topic.
What are the best media channels to invest your advertising budget? Social media ads, search, media partnerships, influencer marketing are constantly mentioned, but how should you spend your marketing dollars?
The options out there are many, and to help you navigate and prioritize your media spend in this article we’ll share some best practices and the role that the different marketing channels can play in your digital strategy.
THE CONSUMER JOURNEY
A consumer will need a minimum of 5 touch points before making a purchase decision, and often more. This means that your ad spend needs to reach your target audiences, but also engage them and nurture them all the way to the purchase.
The steps that a consumer goes through are part of what we call the consumer journey and usually include:
Discovery
Consideration
Purchase
Re-purchase & Referrals
The consumer journey of your target audiences should be the base on which you plan your media funnel.
In fact if you look at the consumer journey from a brand perspective it can easily be turned into a funnel.
THE MEDIA CHANNELS
In this context, some channels will be better suited than others depending on the specific part of the journey/funnel they are supporting.
SOCIAL MEDIA ADS
In the beauty industry the visual component of the advertising content plays a key role in quickly introducing a product and its benefits. This is the reason why channels like social media are a popular tool to generate awareness.
Social media offers the opportunity to use rich media content (inclusive of video content, photography, sound and copy) and appear in a native placement.
It is considered “native” a placement that puts the advertising content at the same level of the original content of the platform. On social media the advertising content appears in the feeds just like any other post from friends and family, giving it a real competitive advantage compared to the old school display banners.
Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat all offer very advanced targeting capabilities and a wide range of audience demographics and specific interests to target millions of active users.
But the targeting capabilities do not stop there, in fact these top social media platforms enable you to retarget your audience based on their interactions with your brand or social media channels. By retargeting users that interact with your content and site, you’ll be able to feed the “consideration” phase of your funnel. You can use this phase to illustrate all of the reasons why the consumers should consider you vs another brand.
This capability extends all the way to their catalogue ads which enable you to dynamically feature products based on the user’s shopping behavior. These types of tactics work really well to convert and re-engage people at the bottom of your funnel.
For the reasons mentioned above social media ads are a very scalable tool that can help you cover a lot of ground: from generating awareness, all the way through consideration, conversion and loyalty ads.
SEARCH ADS
You may have noticed that a lot of your own traffic is often either direct, or is coming from search engines (paid and organic).
More often than not the traffic from search engines is coming through branded keywords.
We call branded keywords those words that are specific to your brand (brand name, product names, collections, people behind the brand etc..).
The people typing these keywords are aware of your brand, are engaged and are likely coming back from a previous visit. In many cases they’re typing your brand name to learn more about you after being exposed to your brands organically or via ads.
Search in general serves people that already have a high purchase intent and are coming back for more information or complete their purchase.
Unless the user has been exposed to your product on other channels, he’ll be unlikely to convert on your search ad if you target a generic/competitive keyword (e.g. “moisturizer” ).
This is why to feed the funnel you need to generate awareness first.
Similarly to the social media catalogue ads, search ads also offer shopping solutions like “Google Shopping Ads”. These ads are also likely to attract people at the bottom of the funnel, but can in certain instances also attract new audiences for niche products.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing can serve multiple purposes. Beside working as a media channel, it can also help you generate new advertising content.
When used as a channel it can be a great resource to generate awareness. In this case people will discover your brand through their trusted source of information.
When used as a way to create new content, influencer posts are a powerful social proofing tool.
Working with influencers can be quite expensive and time consuming.
Usually only a percentage of their followers sees their post. So if you want to generate an impactful amount of impressions you’ll have to work with bigger influencers. They’ll be likely to charge a premium. Moreover an isolated post will be unlikely to generate meaningful results.
On the other hand you could aim to work with a variety of micro influencers. In this case the cost of each collaboration may be smaller or free. However the money saved on the influencer fees is most certainly spent in management time, in order to handle the volume.
When starting small: if you have an internal resource that has the right skillset and can dedicate a considerable amount of time to this mission, it may be a great way to generate additional value for the brand.
In most instances you will need to put a strategy in place and commit a considerable amount of time and money towards this channel, as the best results are seen when volume and consistency are in place.
Overall Influencer marketing is a great way to generate awareness and consideration, but it needs the support of the other media channels to be fully monetized.
MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS
Another way to cast a wider net is the use of media partnerships.
Through media partnerships you can appear on magazines, podcasts, shows and their related channels.
Similarly to the influencer channels you may decide to partner with niche media platforms (local news, blogs, associations) or work with larger media outlets like Refinery29 or CondéNast owned properties. The cost can vary from a few tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands or more depending on the type of partnership, their reach and the content that will be produced.
We recommend taking a very custom and high quality approach to media partnerships, as they can be a very powerful extension of your media strategy. Overall media partnerships are a great way to generate awareness and increase the social proofing of the brand.
CONCLUSIONS
As you plan your media strategy it is extremely important to keep in mind the consumer journey of your specific target audience.
Audit your media funnel and make sure there are no gaps
Prioritize accordingly: if you’re lacking new visitors, prioritize building the top of your funnel and expanding your reach. If instead you have a good flow of new and qualified visitors, start by putting in place a good retargeting strategy to maximize your returns.
Don’t spread your budget too thin, especially when prospecting new audiences. A small spend in a large pool could literally be like a drop in the ocean.
While some channels are a great way to expand your reach (media partnerships and influencers), some others will be better suited for retargeting and conversions (search and shopping ads).
Social media in particular is a very scalable tool as it offers a wide range of rich media formats and targeting options to support the journey from discovery to conversion.
Last but not least, if you invest in any media make sure that your website and email marketing are ready to maximize the ROI of the traffic generated. Email and SMS marketing can be a great way to increase your touch points at a reduced cost.