Effective Media Mix Strategy

If it takes 7-13 touches by at least three marketing channels to impact a consumer to buy – how do you know if you have the right marketing media frequency and mix? This is what I spend the majority of my day focused on; testing, measuring and analyzing channel performance.

Knowing your customer is paramount. And creating an integrated marketing campaign based on that data helps you to be impactful and not get lost in the crowd of your competitors. Profiling customer’s demographics, psychographics and lifestyle data gets you started in the right direction for large-scale data. What kind of demographics? Geography, income, ethnicity, gender and age are just a few of the demographics that impact media choices and buying habits.

Here is an example of media mix differences in a couple of our clients:

We profiled the top purchasers for one of our clients. The data results show us that wealthy individuals who were 55 or over responded best to a blend of direct mail, email, newspaper ads and inserts, in combination with online marketing. This media mix topped the charts as far as return on the marketing investment.

However, we did a similar evaluation for a different client. These results showed that our best results, or return on marketing investment, came from a combination of email, social media, event interaction and online video.

What works in one geography isn’t a guarantee it will work in another location. What has the greatest impact in purchasing habits for one age group doesn’t mean it works for all ages. Today, we have an abundance of different marketing channels to reach our target audience. Marketing Sherpa recently published data showing how a customer age, just one of the demographics we observe, affects marketing channel preference.

Question: In which of the following ways, if any, would you prefer companies to communication with you? Please select all that apply.

(Graph courtesy of Marketing Sherpa)

A successful, integrated marketing campaign capitalizes on the strengths of each media channel. It coordinates creative, frequency and timing of each of the media channels for maximum impact. The optimal mix and media spend varies for each customer group and competitive marketplace. And our work is never done. Customers evolve as fast as technology and the ever-changing marketing channel landscape. To stay effective, we must continually research, test and change our marketing executions to fit our targets preferences.