As your business grows and becomes more complex, your marketing needs will also grow. Working with an expert can lessen the burdens and help you get the most out of your marketing budget, while increasing revenue and ROI. In this post we outline eight situations where working with an expert team of marketers (like us here at Zimmer), versus opting to do everything yourself, can truly make a difference.
1. Developing Radio Creative
Working with experts to develop your radio advertising creative can not only save you time but can help ensure you’re following best practices and airing a commercial that will be much more likely to get results for that particular station (because we know our listeners!)
Plus, working with experts at a radio station will allow you to take advantage of high quality, strategic, and best in the business production and voiceover work. While paying an ad agency or production company to produce your commercials is a great option too, you can oftentimes get the same quality and attention from your Zimmer Radio partnership — but without the additional costs.
2. Choosing a Schedule
Sometimes business owners come to us and know they want to be on this particular morning show and during these particular drive times, but what they don’t always understand is how to piece an entire radio schedule together for maximum exposure within a certain budget.
Your radio account executive has years of hands-on experience planning out radio campaigns aimed at achieving both frequency and reach based on your unique needs. They know their station, the format, the dayparts, and the rates. They know how to use this information to put together an ad schedule strategically planned to get results.
3. Developing Digital Creative
Just like with radio creative, all marketing creative including digital is best developed by experts who can follow best practices, understand the audience, and can deliver the highest quality of production and/or design. Whether your digital advertising campaign is being implemented as part of a larger marketing plan or is a stand alone element, working with experts who aren’t just great graphic designers but truly understand marketing, is what is key to getting the clicks and conversions you’re seeking.
With multiple screens being used to view content, digital advertising demands a more thorough approach. According to Peter Minnium, Columnist for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), this fluidity between screens demands that marketers use three types of advertising to “achieve objectives across the purchase funnel.” These include: concept, content, and commerce ads.
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Concept ads make up the top of the buying funnel. They tell a story that attempts to generate brand awareness and create intent to purchase among customers.
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Content ads are mid-funnel. They encourage engagement to keep attention on your brand.
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Commerce ads sit at the bottom of the funnel with the goal of retargeting visitors with individualized offers based on viewing and/or purchase history.
Your media partner, or any expert you hire to work on digital creative, should utilize this knowledge and other cutting edge best practices to develop a digital strategy and creative campaign that reaches customers across all stages of the buying funnel and aligns with your goals for the campaign.
4. Tracking Marketing Efforts
Measuring analytics can be daunting and confusing, and not measuring them (which often happens instead) means you won’t really know what is working and what isn’t. When it comes to marketing, tracking your results is absolutely critical in order to make wise marketing decisions in the future, and to learn from past efforts. You should constantly be reviewing, tracking, and optimizing your marketing in order to improve your strategy over time.
It’s likely that unless you have a full-time marketing person who is trained and experienced in this area, you might need some help. Any media partner you work with should be able to assist you tracking and measuring — and have a special understanding of their medium that will benefit you even further. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and if they aren’t willing and able to provide this type of support, you might want to rethink that partnership as well.
5. Measuring ROI
In line with tracking marketing efforts and understanding your analytics, measuring marketing ROI can be tough because there are many facets to determining your return, but it’s also vital to the success of your bottom line, and future advertising efforts. An expert, skilled in deciphering the various types of data, can you establish concrete baselines to measure against, as well as systems to set up for tracking. Properly gauging the ROI of all of your marketing investments will allow you to make improvements for future campaigns and be sure you're spending your dollars in the right places.
6. Integrating Marketing
You may be aware that integrating your marketing and using various media channels can significantly increase the success of your marketing and improve ROI. The goal of any effective integrated marketing campaign involves strategically planning out your creative and ad placement for maximum exposure and conversions within a single campaign. This means a consistent and focused offer should be seen across media and aimed at related goals for your campaign.
You might be surprised to learn this, but our team of experts don’t only specialize in radio advertising, they truly understand the needs of other media and how to integrate your campaigns appropriately. If you plan to advertise beyond just a radio station, be sure to share this information and the entire campaign with your radio partner so they can help you follow best practices for streamlining your message and maximizing your investment and time.
7. Targeting Your Marketing
Your media partner will most likely have access to valuable market research that will help you better understand your target audience, and not only related to that medium. Quantitative data is necessary for understanding what your customers shopping habits are like, what’s important to them, how they research and consume information, and much more. When you have this information, from an expert who knows how to apply it, you can align your strategy with the buyer’s journey and even predict some consumer preferences as well.
8. Keeping Up With Marketing Trends
Just like you’re an expert at whatever you do — selling cars, building homes, or making delicious dinners — we are experts at what we do…marketing! Marketing experts don’t just “sell radio” they should be partners who are constantly staying on top of the latest news, trends, and best practices that will impact your marketing efforts.
At Zimmer, our team is constantly going through training as well as staying up-to-date with industry news and research to help advise our clients who don’t have the time to do this (or the need!) Take advantage of this wealth of information, don’t be afraid to ask questions or for advice, that’s what your media partners are here for!
Your marketing budget is an investment, not an expense, and by utilizing the expertise of your media partner, or even hiring an expert when needed, you will find that your marketing starts to become less of a burden and more of a blessing.
