Developing a Bespoke Paid Media Strategy

When developing a paid media strategy for our clients, we undertake several key initiatives to deliver successful and ongoing results. It’s not just about setting campaigns live, it’s about developing an ongoing and effective bespoke strategy, allowing us to meet our clients business goals.

The core areas we cover for each of our clients are the following:

• Discovery and Research
• Strategy Alignment
• Keyword & Audience Research
• Full Campaign Audits

In this summary we will take you through the most important steps of each section.

Discovery & Research

We immerse ourselves in the industry of every clients’ business, learning about their objectives, products, market challenges, competitors and unique selling points. For example:

• We aim to learn about our clients’ products as well as they know them, allowing us to create tailored and highly targeted campaigns.
• Developing a strong understanding of a client’s industry and possible market challenges informs us on how best to execute both short and long term tactics.
• It’s important to remember that most competitors will be using similar, if not all of the same marketing channels our clients use. As a result, we are always thinking of new and better ways for how your campaigns should stand out.

Strategy Alignment

Developing a close alignment with our clients’ business goals helps deliver a more effective strategy. The key things we look out for are:

• All paid campaigns to be closely aligned with a clients’ objectives and KPIs. This will include campaign structure, messaging, targeting methods and tactics used.
• Working closely with all online and offline marketing channels to create a more holistic and effective approach.
• Developing detailed forecasts that work towards set targets. This helps us keep on track and ensure all campaigns are optimised towards the right set of goals.

Keyword & Audience Research

We conduct comprehensive keyword and audience research which helps us create highly relevant campaigns across multiple paid channels. Using our own bespoke technology and publisher insight tools, we gather relevant information about our clients’ customers behaviour. This information informs us on the following:

• The role of search for any given industry, product and service.
• How and what customers are searching online through our keyword research.
• How PPC and SEO work together to deliver a more sophisticated and efficient approach.
• The intent behind keywords. Certain keywords are geared towards information / awareness based searches, while other keywords will indicate purchase intent.
• Sophisticated buyer personas developed for each stage of the customer funnel.
• What type of users we should be targeting and what messaging will resonate with them the most through audience research.

Full Campaign Audits

During the onboarding process, we conduct a full audit of any existing paid activity to help us better understand how campaigns have been managed and performed in the past. We tend to look at the following:

• Do the campaigns in question meet the best practices of each of the given channels and publishers? This would include campaign structures, messaging and targeting tactics used.
• Historical performance to identify any obvious challenges or issues, as well as to inform us on what type of results and seasonality we can expect to see moving forward.
• Identifying quick wins and long term opportunities.
• Reviewing tracking to identify any possible gaps or opportunities for better measurement.

This article was co-authored by Klim and Nichole in Semetrical’s Paid Media department.