Evaluating Your Marketing Mix
To say that digital advertising has grown by leaps and bounds since first emerging is an understatement. It has evolved from its most rudimentary early form to a highly sophisticated tool in nearly every marketer’s toolkit, and now makes up a significant part of the marketing mix for most arts organizations. The specific targeting and reporting that is available with digital ads can’t be matched by traditional media like print, radio, television, and outdoor advertising. Based on these advantages, some organizations have switched to making 100% of their advertising digital. Most of us, while increasing the role that digital plays, still incorporate traditional ads in our mix.
So what is the right mix?
In this special blog post – a collaboration with Samantha Bryant from ASYMM Digital – we can’t answer that for you. Every organization is different, of course. But we can highlight the questions you should be asking. Whether you’re in the midst of budgeting and planning as so many of us are, or not, there is never a bad time to assess the effectiveness of your marketing.
First and foremost, ask yourself “Am I hitting my goals?” If not, it’s time to reassess. If you are hitting your goals, tell us your secrets! Just kidding…but even if you are hitting your goals - is there room for growth? Or can you reach the same revenue levels more efficiently, achieving a lower cost of sale?
Assuming there is some room for growth, data, of course, is always a great place to start. Reporting for different elements of your marketing mix will vary. Digital advertising typically provides robust metrics, while traditional media like print ads, billboards, and radio spots will naturally be less specific. Don’t be afraid to ask your advertising partners for more information - whether that means asking the digital agency to explain what all their numbers mean, or asking the billboard company what they know about the drivers on the stretch of road where your board is placed.
Take a deeper look at this reporting and identify key pillars:
Action: Whether you are able to attribute an action to the marketing effort, such as purchases, signups, engagement, etc.
Revenue: How much revenue can be attributed to the actions.
Demographics: Who you are reaching and/or who is taking action.
Geography: Where your marketing is being delivered and/or where actions are taking place geographically.
With this reporting in hand, it’s time to compare it to your goals. In addition to revenue, you likely also have goals around retaining existing audiences, attracting new ones, or diversifying the makeup of your patrons. You may also be working toward achieving a particular average ticket yield or capacity of your house filled. And of course, you have a goal – or rather a limit – of how much you can spend to reach these targets. You can now use the data you have about your marketing and see how well each part of the mix is helping to achieve those goals.
Audience: What audiences do you want to target in your marketing and is that who you are seeing in the reporting from your past efforts? Are your marketing campaigns set up to find new-to-file audiences or are they geared to remarket your known audiences? New audiences take more time to nurture and ultimately convert to repeat customers or even just a first-time purchaser. Be sure to adjust performance expectations for those that are brand-new to your organization.
Geography: Confirm your marketing campaigns are being delivered to the appropriate audiences in your market. Tip: sometimes value-added direct buys in your local paper don’t apply geo-targeting so your ads may be delivered to patrons out of market to meet an impression goal. Note that time is also a factor. If you’re OK with delivering ads to audiences outside of your immediate area because audiences frequently travel to you, be sure you’re not delivering those ads the day before you close. You’re unlikely to find someone hundreds of miles away who can get to a show in less than 24 hours.
Cost: Consider which strategies are most cost effective. For example, how many impressions do you get for a four-week billboard versus a four-week programmatic display digital campaign? Even if you can’t attribute specific revenue, you should be able to at least estimate the cost per impression based on information about readers/listeners/viewers.
Revenue: Are you able to tie revenue to the actions you’re tracking? If so, looking at ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is the fastest way to assess performance. If your campaign has a $4.89 ROAS that means you’re earning $4.89 for every $1 spent on advertising. (Note: this might also be expressed as an ROAS of 489%.) Here are some other considerations when measuring ROAS:
Dynamic Pricing: Be considerate of how dynamic pricing works with your organization and house map - get a general idea of the range you might expect to see. Is increased revenue coming from more sales or higher ticket prices?
Capacity: If performances are limited or nearly sold out - some patrons may not want to buy the remaining seats available at the premium orchestra price or make a point to choose something more in their price range.
Promotions or Discounts: If you notice average transaction value is lower than usual - be sure to consider if you have any promotions, or free tickets available that may be bringing down the average revenue of the campaign.
Group Sales: if group sales are processed online this can sometimes also get correlated incorrectly to a single-ticket effort.
Subscriptions Renewals/Sales: Especially at this time of year, subscription renewals can be correlated to active advertising campaigns for single-ticket events. If an email went out or a telemarketing campaign started at the same time as a digital campaign, you might get a spike in revenue correlated to a large subscription purchase from someone exposed to the single ticket campaign. If a very high ROAS seems too good to be true, it might be.
Even though comparing digital with advertising might seem like comparing pomegranates with oranges, hopefully this approach of pairing reporting about your advertising media with your goals can help get you closer to apples to apples.
If you need help evaluating your marketing mix, contact me or if you’re looking for a good agency to make the most of your growing digital strategy, contact Samantha. We’d both love to help you meet your goals.