“Think about how you handle planning or forecasting at your company: What does that process look like?”
Greg Finn, CMO of Cypress North, asked this question to two paid media professionals in his session at SMX Next. The presentation highlighted the planned media best practices that remain vital despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes it brought to the landscape.
“Planning for us primarily stems from understanding the industry,” said Neha Divanji, founder of Growth Spin Limited, “We’re seeing if there are any persistent trends in the industry. We look for anything that has changed or anything topical that we would want to pay attention to, then we look at the competition.”
Andrew Lolk, founder of SavvyRevenue, highlighted his agency’s focus on goal-alignment and practicality: “We’re trying to figure out what is the goal here and what kind of limitations are we working within. Do we have any budgetary limitations? Do we have industry limitations?”
Putting together a planned paid media strategy is more important than ever in our changing digital landscape. Here are some tactics marketers should consider when building out these plans.
There are plenty of helpful tools available to help marketers plan their paid media efforts. Choosing the option that adapts to changes in the market depends on your brand, goals and competition.
“I use a tool called Similarweb extensively,” said Divanji, “It essentially pulls data from the competition and interprets which channels are the maximum traffic drivers for various competitors.”
“When we are looking at the campaign level and medium level data, we use Semrush,” she added. “It has options where you can look at specific competitor insights.”
Yet not all marketers prefer to use subscription-based planning tools. Some opt for a more manual planning process that brings all team members on board.