Performance in the Media Mix

Being top of mind with existing and potential clients is essential for driving campaign results. Those of us in the online performance game understand that maximizing brand messaging across all channels will greatly enhance the consumer experience. Customers won’t have to look for you. You’ll always be able to find them. Some marketers believe the only way to garner such exposure is through social media. But the digital marketplace is far too complex and progressive to hedge all of your campaign bets on Facebook and Twitter. It is important to utilize social media within a proper media mix.

Ineffective implementation of social media is a growing and problematic trend among digital marketers. Incorporating social media into a marketing campaign for the sake of using social media may get you “Friends” but it will fail to deliver revenue.  It should be a complimentary component to your performance media mix, which should consist of email marketing, data acquisition, affiliate, search and display advertising. By adding social to your media mix, your campaign will leverage consumer interest, heighten engagement and strengthen branding.

Let’s think of social as a trendy sports car. It looks good and gets attention. But the car is useless without a skilled driver; someone who understands how it handles, knows when to power it up and appreciates the importance of continually improving it for maximum performance. Social should drive results for campaigns as a vehicle for user engagement. It can aide email marketing and data acquisition initiatives by featuring buttons and links to opt-ins, subscriptions and sign-ups to deliver new conversions. Affiliates can better direct, track and monetize sales by steering the social conversation to their sites. Social media can benefit a comprehensive search campaign in the short-term and long-term. It can help engage consumers and drive relevant traffic for a Paid Search program, increase natural search rankings for SEO and enable performance marketers to establish positive messaging and branding as part of an Online Reputation Management process. Online display advertisers can target active consumers on social sites for their dynamic campaigns.

Making social media a part of your media mix will allow for better optimization of campaigns. Still, social media alone will fail to drive conversions, revenue or results for your online performance marketing programs. It must work for you within a fully optimized media mix. Getting the most out of your complete media mix requires specialized expertise across all channels. Leveraging this knowledge will facilitate branding, engagement and keep you top of mind with consumers and clients.