Optimization – A Tool for All
Wednesday, 06. 17. 2009 – Category: Enversa
Whether you’re plastering billboards and buses with pictures of puppies and babies, or serving a million banners a day on MySpace, your marketing options should remain measurable, fluid and actionable. Why? Because today’s economy demands it and clients expect it. Dollars and the tangible functioning of those dollars must be able to be diverted entirely or tweaked slightly whenever needed. Campaign optimization is no longer just for the performance team down the hall.
They do know it better than anyone, though, right? Direct Response guys live and die in these scenarios: A client has a consultative sales force withering on the vine, sitting in air conditioned offices (that the client is paying for), desperately waiting for the phones to ring or a reason to pick up the phone; each seeking the sound of a live sales lead on the other end of the line. If those phones don’t start ringing, the sales force gets cut, the AC goes on a rolling schedule, and the DR agency responsible for all of this gets canned.
That’s why DR account managers have their creative teams and media buyers following them on Twitter. When a client call comes in unexpectedly or a cursory assessment of initial campaign data alerts them to the need for corrective action, the manager and their team have to be nimble and courageous. The manager must know that ample creative and messaging iterations are ready, and that publishers and sources are fully prepared for all contingencies.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s an emergency or the client simply wants to see what’s ahead. There have to be trip wires in place – actionable seeds of campaign intel, available on a real-time or routine basis to DR team members so they can know that tactics must shift or, perhaps, strategy must be reassessed.
Media dollars are too valuable in today’s economy to do otherwise. There must be humility and a prescience to understand the limits of creative executions and media rotations; and be able to reverse course or present new plans to old clients as needed.
For brand marketers, the same holds. Again, this is 2005 or 1995…money isn’t growing on trees. Brand managers aren’t signing agreements while they fidget for their credit card to pay the bar tab. Clients don’t and won’t have all month to know whether something is working. They need answers…last month. They need to know which media placements are catching consumer eyes, and which aren’t. They need solutions from their agency that will yield success.
They need an agency partner who knows what the heck success even looks like! For instance, are those billboards working, and how do you know? Without some measurable indicator, you don’t know. You might as well be the road crew that works underneath the billboard, because you’re both clueless and you’ll both be soon pulling the ads down due to lack of imagination. How about a Mobile call-to-action on the billboard, asking interested consumers to fire off a text and get a redemption code in response? How about different keyword for each billboard? How about a digital ticker on the billboard that allows you (and the brand) to multi-variate test different keywords/offers/creative on the fly?
Whether you find them simple or not, these are the types of ideas and well-conceived contingencies that spur client trust and budgetary growth. They’re in place before a campaign begins, and they’re ready to be implemented at a moment’s notice. Have a ready response for your clients, and your clients won’t have to respond to another agency’s inquiries.
Marc Pickren is the President of Enversa- a performance-based marketing agency.
Tags: advertisers, brand marketers, Direct Response, DR agency, Marc Pickren, Optimization, planning