Right now, people are watching more TV and staying logged in to their digital devices more than ever. Forty-five percent of Americans often or always use a second device as they're watching TV, providing greater opportunity for your target audience to engage with your brand almost instantly. Your marketing tactics should be working together to keep your audience updated, informed, and entertained across platforms. By integrating your marketing, you can see a substantial increase in your overall investment. Here’s how to blend your digital and TV campaigns to achieve better results.
How to Integrate Your Marketing
Understanding that you need to integrate your marketing is a great place to start. By utilizing the below methods across various platforms, you can improve your ability to connect effectively with your customers. Combining your marketing allows you to create more touchpoints with your target audience in all of the places that they can be found.
Social Engagement
Social media platforms are great for easily reaching users where they spend a majority of their time, and leveraging your existing TV commercial positioning and messaging in the social space can help increase your brand recognition. Over time, this will foster a sense of familiarity with your company that is instrumental in helping shape buying decisions. For example, Geico took the same quirky, off the wall scenario concepts for their television ads and created short, “unskippable” ads that were 15 seconds long but conveyed the essential message in only 6 seconds. The concept stayed true to their overall television commercial direction, but took into account how viewers consume content on social media.
If your advertising budgets won’t support producing a separate, on-line only commercial, you can easily repurpose your TV commercials for digital and social use. Many businesses have found success using 15 second versions of their television creative to extend their message outside of traditional broadcast and into cyber viewing.
Many brands also find that their social platforms are a great place to reinforce the messaging being aired on TV. Facebook and YouTube are excellent platforms to host longer, more educational or informative versions of your TV-based content. Say you’re a new med spa opening up in the Atlanta area. You will want to run a TV commercial to introduce your brand to the community. But you shouldn’t stop there. Expand on your commercial and publish a long-form video to your social media that explains exactly who you are and what you have to offer. Having two videos that are similar running on different platforms will help with brand recognition.
Email Marketing
Email is an excellent avenue for a pre-launch or soft launch initiative in advance of your larger campaigns. This marketing strategy can help increase awareness and prepare your customers for what's coming. Email can also be used to follow up with your target audience or to send out updates in addition to your TV commercials.
For example, you can deploy an email sequence to all of your past customers during your TV campaign. These emails can contain special offers and reiterate the same message that is being promoted through your commercials. Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach your audience should they miss your TV ads. By sending your customers, past and present, targeted emails you can remain top-of-mind while directing them to other platforms where you can be found.
OTT Services
OTT services are a highly targetable medium. They allow you to reach a very specific target consumer, which means that you can customize your ads to directly reach your preferred audience. While you can often repurpose your TV ads for OTT platforms, you want to adapt them to ensure that they are optimized properly for the platform. While it should be optimized for the platform’s standards, you want to ensure that the content itself contains consistent branding and messaging from your TV ads so that the consumers can create a connection.
OTT platforms allow businesses to target a customer and track conversion in real-time, while also offering the advantage of immediate action. You can add a CTA so that your target audience can take action directly from the ad. For example, if you run an ad on YouTube, you can add a click through at the end so they can visit your website. This allows the consumer to engage with your brand immediately, rather than having to remember to visit your website later.
Digital Marketing
Retarget your audience with responsive digital ads for mobile, desktop, and tablets. Carefully construct your campaign so that your broadcast and targeted digital ads work together to deliver the maximum reach, frequency, and awareness. Many digital tactics pair very well with broadcast television. For example, triggering ads to launch surrounding a broadcast event like the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Grammy Awards, or another big event. Digital marketing can also serve as a follow-up to your TV ads, reminding your audience of their previous interactions with those ads and triggering them to take action.
Right now it’s important to focus on combining your advertising efforts. More people are watching TV and utilizing digital platforms simultaneously. As a result of integrated marketing efforts, you're more likely to experience heightened results. Working with a media partner can help provide guidance throughout the process, helping you more effectively connect your ads and expand your reach. There's no "silver bullet" marketing tactic that will suit all needs at all times. Instead, effective brands use a strong, well-considered marketing mix. The reach of broadcast television combined with the high-frequency abilities of digital can give you a better chance of seeing maximum ROI with your marketing.
