Research and Development
At 535media, we typically work though the customer acquisition process in three phases. The first step relies heavily on research and development. Going through a thorough analysis allows our team to lay the groundwork for the exercises needed to identify the proper messaging based on the brand’s user types and who the key purchasing decision-makers are. This research and strategy effort is the most vital element of the process and can be a huge component of what makes or breaks a performance marketing effort. Consumers are increasingly skeptical of brands’ advertising efforts, making the acquisition endeavor a delicate tightrope to walk. This makes it more critical than ever for our specialists to identify the audience, understand their needs, and communicate with them effectively.
To get a clear picture of our profile, we always do psychographic, behavioral, and demographic research around our clients’ product lines. We execute this so that the appropriate customer personas for the acquisition effort become transparent and marketing segmentation can be properly applied. While unpacking all of the different user types and demographic similarities/differences across the business lines, our team also begins to identify the differentiating factors that the brand has relative to its competition. How is our brand different? Who are the key stakeholders within our target audience? Why will these people care when we have a chance to engage with them? All of this upfront work will pay dividends during the implementation effort.
Messaging Development and Media Planning
Once our team has had an opportunity to move through the R&D process in a detailed manner, we quickly pivot to the second portion. This is geared toward crafting our tailored messaging strategy and laying out our online and offline channel mix. When crafting a messaging strategy, our emphasis is always on communicating succinctly and effectively to the distinct factors and needs of each of the decision-makers within our audiences.
The experience that our audience will have with our brand matters a great deal and will help to move users through the sales funnel. It is a priority that we align the targeted messaging with the contextually relevant sites that we reach them on. It is just as vital to create an easy and effective user experience once they arrive to our landing page. We go through an extensive process so that each landing page has multiple call-to actions that are prominently displayed and targeted to each persona. An example of this is if the psychographic and behavioral research tells us that the user type we are targeting is introverted, then an online form will be a conversion point for us rather than a page geared toward increasing phone calls.
After we map out how and why our product lines and services are unique, we create a specially targeted messaging strategy for each stakeholder. As the messaging strategy begins to take shape, our media planning team starts to look at what online and offline channels make the most sense for each persona. Here is where we figure out the right channels that we should reach them on and how targeted we should be on each. Selecting the correct platforms based on the segmentation capabilities and refined targeting that matches our customized creative assets is what we are looking to accomplish. An acquisition strategy should work in synergy with and likely come after a brand awareness effort. Our platform selection process and ecosystem approach ensures that these efforts do not conflict or compete with one another, especially in crowded online environments with expensive real estate. We do not want to shift over to a share of wallet effort until a brand recognition effort has positive impact.
Implementation and Budget Allocation
Once completing the media mix and messaging effort, the final step is for us to transition into our budget allocation and implementation effort. We look at a number of different factors during this phase around business and media consumption seasonality along with current consumer mindset. This is the point where we work hard to make certain our messaging is conveyed in the way we intend. It’s also important to lay out an honest long-term measurement plan that will act as a guide for our optimization team. This is where tag configuration will be set up, along with manual and AI-driven platform performance enhancement that is working toward conversion rate optimization for our brand.
This is a broad overview of the process that our team will go through during a performance marketing effort being executed for one of the brands that 535media represents. There are many variations that could occur from client to client based on the respective industry or product line. However, the process will remain consistent. If you would like to learn more about how our organization would produce results for your business, please contact us for a consultation.