Automation is a godsend for the time-strapped modern marketer. However, unfortunately for marketers, it isn’t as simple as flipping the switch and turning your campaigns on. Automating can speed up the leg work and processes but the thinking still needs to be carefully planned.
More than 80% of digital marketers deployed moment marketing campaigns in 2016, according to TVTY’s latest research. To react in the moment manually is both inefficient, impractical and sometimes just impossible. Being able to react instantly matters as peak consumer interest occurs within 10 seconds of an ad being shown. To monitor all the TV stations manually and then launch a search or social campaign would be unfeasible. To capture this interest, brands and marketers need to instantly serve digital ads.
Done well, automating your moment marketing campaign can save you time, cut costs and improve results.
Below are my top tips to ensure your campaign runs as smooth and effectively as possible.
Clarify your aims
It’s crucial that the first step in any moment marketing campaign is to establish what success looks like. Without this being clearly laid out for the whole team, agencies and media buyers, you won’t be able to ensure you have a unified strategy. Once your aims are clear, you can build a strategy to ensure these are met.
The most successful moment marketing campaigns will be aligned to the wider marketing objectives. Your moment marketing campaign could help amplify your brand message and increase reach, complement your existing ads to help create an emotional connection to your brand, or it could be used to engage and captivate your key audience during the moments that matter to them most.
Know what affects your brand
Is your brand TV-focused? Is it weather-sensitive? Or are social media trends particularly important to you?
These are the questions that you need to ask yourself before embarking on a moment marketing campaign. Once you’ve identified the external factors that have the biggest impact on your brand, you’re on to the next step to begin planning your moments.
Plan in advance
There are so many events and moments that you could use to trigger your moment marketing campaign. Creating a calendar of the tactical events coming up is crucial to ensure your brand’s voice is heard during these big moments. These events are often widely known and can therefore be planned for.
Depending on your brand, you may want to focus on major sporting events like The Grand National, the FA Cup or Wimbledon. However, a luxury brand might want to focus on events like the Oscars, Cannes Film Festival or Ascot, and an auto brand would want to launch advertising for a convertible car when it’s sunny and warm.
Adjust for seasonality
Once you’ve factored in the events you can know are going to happen like the Oscars, it’s time to start planning for the moments you can’t predict. Changes in temperature, the rise and fall in pollen and pollution levels, rainfall and even the time the sun sets and rises all affect consumer behaviour and must be factored in the plan. Using a moment marketing platform will allow you to launch digital marketing campaigns based on these elements.
Set rules and choose inventory
Having identified the best moments and other factors that impact your fans, you need to ensure that you’ve set rules in place to create an effective campaign. For instance, a holiday brand might want to launch a search advertising campaign once it’s been raining for more than 20 minutes, as you want an immediate conversion. However, if your aim is to increase brand awareness, then a suntan lotion company might launch a social campaign whenever the temperature is higher than 16 degrees.
Search campaigns are often best implemented when you want to convince a consumer to buy a product. However, social campaigns are often best to build your brand and deepen the association between your core values and a certain moment.
Monitor and optimise
As is the case with all marketing, it’s crucial to review each campaign and assess the impact on consumers. The performance should be shared with the whole team so that these learnings can be included in the planning for your next campaign.
Looking back over a long period of time will mean you can track and capture any trends you’ve seen. You may see that advertising based on sports events are your most successful, therefore you’d want to invest more in these in the future.