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5-6 Minute Read
There is no such thing as a purely Instagram audience.
Someone may discover you through social media ads, compare through ChatGPT, look at your Google Reviews, and place an order through your website. Your audience is platform-hopping constantly, and the customer journey is as fragmented as ever.
The brands that understand this create a seamless experience across every touchpoint. Because marketing doesn’t happen on one platform anymore. It happens across all of them.
We will explore how exactly a marketer should approach the complex digital world we live in and some of the pitfalls to avoid. Navigating this complex and constantly changing online environment is not easy, but the right plan and strategy can help you stand out above the rest.
If you don’t already have a plan and strategy in place, create a short, medium and long-term plan. Short-term plans are created for the purpose of testing new channels or products in the market with a timeline of 3 to 6 months. Medium-term plans require more stability, with a pre-planned marketing budget and strategy that are reviewed yearly. Long-term plans are 3 to 5 year visions of where you see the company going through a broad marketing directive.
Each one enables you to act accordingly in the ever-changing digital landscape. TikTok gained popularity in what seems like a flash; the same goes for ChatGPT. Meanwhile, the stability of platforms like Meta and Google will serve as the backbone of a successful long-term plan.
Channel diversification is not only necessary to follow your customers where they are, but also to adapt to the rise and fall of digital platforms and marketing channels. Before Facebook, there was Myspace; before TikTok, there was Vine; before Google, there was Yahoo. There is no guarantee that a popular platform that is hugely beneficial to your marketing efforts will be around forever. Having multiple channels active is the countermeasure to that risk.
Continuing the point of diversifying your reach, your budget should also include room to test new advertising channels. Of course, not all channels will apply to your business. However, there is no reason a B2B business shouldn’t advertise on LinkedIn as well as Meta, or why a fast-moving consumer goods product won’t succeed on TikTok and Instagram.
The newest advertising channel in the Australian and New Zealand market is the ability to reach audiences through ads on ChatGPT. Opportunities to be the first in your industry in front of such an engaged audience rarely come along twice. Thus, companies with foresight and a plan that allows them to test out these new channels stand to make significant strides before competition catches up.
Testing new channels is not just about being the leader, but also survival. Your audience is online, and if you’re not in front of them, you can expect your business to shrink year on year. The time when advertising through online channels is a necessity is here, and the choice is a slow decline by ignoring it or sustainable growth by investing in it. If you need any support, you can reach out to IM Creative regarding our full range of digital marketing services.
The ability to track the lead journey from first contact to purchase attribution is what sets out a great marketer above the crowded norm. It is just as important to figure out where most of your leads are coming from as it is to attribute which channel is turning the most leads into sales and revenue.
Setting up Google Analytics, Pixels, G-Tags correctly, using the proper UTM parameters, keyword rank tracking, and volume attribution are some of the fundamentals that many businesses fail to implement. Additional software such as ContentSquare helps analyse user experience performance and ways to improve conversions through better web design.
The other necessity is the ability and experience to interpret all of the analytics and tracking data to deliver tangible improvements in conversion rates and the bottom line. Because the more complex your marketing plan is, with multiple channels, A/B testing, and growing budgets, the ability to accurately pinpoint what is working and remove inefficiencies is what makes all of it sustainable. Inefficient and disorganised campaigns can only go on for so long until the budget runs dry and faith in your marketing efforts is completely lost.
This isn’t some marketer’s plight to get you to pay attention to our skill set and abilities across channels, or to bloat marketing budgets. The simple fact is that customers are not static. Their journey across the internet is dynamic and increasingly so; we are spending more time online than ever before. A study by InternetNZ found that over 50% of respondents are spending four or more hours of their leisure time on the internet each day.
If you’re only advertising through one channel, you run the risk of moving your audience along the buyer’s journey and a competitor sweeping in at the right time, at the right place on another channel, and capturing the sale you helped them make.
In real terms, if you are advertising on Google for honey products, you can lead a customer to your website, and they very well could be in the market to buy some. However, something distracts them, and they do not proceed with the online order. Later in the day, they are scrolling through Facebook and see an ad from a competitor, and all of a sudden they are reminded they wanted to buy some honey. They click through to their website, like what they see, and purchase their products. You’ve just spent money, and your competitor has taken the business from right under your feet.
That is precisely the risk you are taking by not following your audience across the different channels they frequent daily. There are so many distractions in our daily lives, especially online, that you can’t afford to miss out on the opportunity to grab as much of our attention as possible.
IM Creative can either become your full-service marketing arm or work in collaboration with your internal team to deliver outstanding campaigns and results consistently.
Author
Izmir is the founder of IM Creative and is based in Auckland, New Zealand. He is a strong believer in the power of storytelling and marketing to truly transform businesses for the better. A problem solver, an avid reader, a football fan, a tennis enthusiast, and a history buff, he looks forward to bringing a unique perspective to every story written.
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