1. Low Barrier to Entry
The beauty of digital media means that advertisers of any size have the ability to deliver an online campaign. In traditional media channels, minimum investment levels can eliminate the option completely for smaller to medium size advertisers, as they don’t have the marketing budget to support it. Huge online organisations have introduced self-serve platforms that have a lowered the minimum spend, or have reduced it completely; Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and LinkedIn have pioneered this movement – this means that advertisers with a lower media budget can still operate in this space, and be within the same environment as advertisers with a significant marketing budget.
2. Measurability
Within online media, there is the ability to fully track campaigns. This means that each impression delivered, click, engagement, like, video view, follow (and all other key metrics) can be all reported on. Tracking to this level of detail isn’t available in traditional media methods. The measurement of campaigns means it’s clear to see what is and isn’t performing, or achieving the campaign KPIs. Monitoring campaign results on a regular basis means that optimisations can take place to improve the campaign overall; for example, reducing impressions on one site that isn’t performing or generating a high CTR (click through rate) and increasing impressions to another site that is generating a high CTR or delivering high numbers of leads, optimisations are all dependent on the campaigns’ objectives.
3. Real time Results
Results online are instantaneous. Once a campaign is live, there are analytic tools and ad servers that allow results to be viewed at the touch of a button. This is a great benefit, as means the campaign can be refined, or tweaked to ensure its achieving the overall goals.
4. Continuous improvement of strategy
All of the results collated throughout the campaign will feed into the ongoing and future campaign strategy. Investment into areas of the campaign that isn’t achieving the KPIs can be reduced, and areas that are performing well can be boosted. At the beginning of a new campaign, there is a test and learn phase across digital channels, this helps to identify key sites for future activity.
5. Viral
The fastest way to set a campaign viral is by using digital media. On average, people have approx. 200 Facebook friends and 200 Twitter followers, by sharing news ‘liking’ or ‘retweeting’ a comment, they are then sharing with a further 15% of their followers, who then like or share and expand the reach further. Websites use social plug-ins that makes it very easy for content to be shared across the web using links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and many other social channels. There are also viral ad networks that can guarantee a number of views of a video or piece of content, media is bought on a cost per view basis, which means this is very low risk for the advertiser as they only pay once a certain number of views have been delivered.
This list of benefits of digital media versus traditional media is not extensive, but we hope gives you an idea of how it can benefit your marketing campaigns. Although there are self-serve tools, we do recommend engaging with a digital specialist to plan and manage and the campaign to ensure it is successful and achieves your marketing goals.
Samantha has 10 years’ experience working in Digital Media; her previous clients include Warner Bros. Theatrical, Home Entertainment and Pan European, Cadbury, Kraft, ING, Gap, Sainsbury’s, Canon and The Guardian. Sam has a passion for Digital Media and loves to recommend and implement innovative media solutions for her clients. Her experience in Digital Media includes Media Planning, Negotiations and Trading, Mobile Media, Paid for Social Media campaigns and Social Media Monitoring