In today’s digital age, the pace of change in marketing and communications is dizzying. 74% of marketing leaders have increased the number of channels they use in the past three years, – and new channels are emerging all the time.
That makes it difficult to calculate where to allocate your budget to get the best ROI for your company. And no sooner have you hit on a winning formula than your customers’ content consumption habits have moved on, and it’s time to evolve your approach again. So how can you make sure that you’re continually investing in the right communication channels to meet your customers where they’re at?
Marketing channel figures
Average marketing spend is soaring. Recent figures point to total ad spend in the UK growing by 2.6% to £35.6bn in 2023. Yet, with tech platforms accounting for all of this growth, it’s clear that investment in channels that don’t deliver for your company is a waste of budget – and a waste of opportunities for business growth.
What matters is what works for your company and your audiences right now, and for the next few years. So how do you set about deciding where to allocate your spend?
Understanding your company and your customers
1. Understand your customers. These days, we’ve evolved which details are included in customer personas. You should be exploring things like purchase history, website interactions and order cancellations. Personalisation is the name of the game, and the more you can segment your audience, the better your returns are likely to be
2. Establish a single source of truth. To really understand what’s working and what’s not, you need a single picture of all customer touchpoints. Departmental silos – between sales and marketing, for example – frequently create incomplete or inaccurate pictures of what’s really going on. By establishing a joined-up overview of all communications activity and pairing it with customer data, you can build up a full picture of customers’ unique behaviour, and the channels they like to engage on.
3. Examine what’s worked in the past and be prepared to pivot. If direct mail is a winner for your company, then it’s wise to keep going. But remember that things change fast, and you need flexibility and speed of response to react when customer expectations shift. The quicker you can analyse the success of your campaigns the faster you can react. If instore marketing is building your brand better than social media, then shift some of your budget accordingly.
4.Don’t stretch yourself too thinly. Bigger budgets can open opportunities to invest in an omnichannel marketing strategy. But if you’re working with less resource, it’s wiser to invest in one or two channels and do them well. The 70-20-10 marketing rule can help you experiment with new channels. This involves spending 70% of your budget on channels you are confident will work based on past experience, 20% on channels you expect to work, and 10% on channels you’d like to test.
Using data insights
Of course, it’s not always easy to get the information you need, especially for non-digital marketing such as direct mail. Even with digital channels, your company may suffer from out-of-date tech, siloed systems or lack of in-house expertise. And interpreting data correctly is often tricky. Marketing campaigns are long and multichannel, with numerous customer touchpoints along the way. How do you know what content and which channels should be attributed with the revenue generated? What external factors might have influenced your campaign?
That’s why it pays to have an expert partner on board.
Paragon: your marketing communications partner
At Paragon, we’ve got the knowledge and tools to get the most out of your data, helping you understand your customers and deliver personalised communications in the formats they prefer.
Through our seven business lines, backed by the latest technology and decades of expertise, we can provide a full end-to-end service across all digital and physical channels, tailoring our approach to meet the requirements of your company and your customers. Get in touch to find out more.
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Smart thinking: Great outcomes. 5 ways to make your budget work harder
Read our helpful infographic to find out how we can make your budget work harder through our seven business lines.