There's no question that we're in an exciting time in the marketing universe. Digital media has opened up a panacea of marketing opportunities. There are four critical metrics that need to be taken into consideration before investing in a digital media campaign. These include: targeting, relevance, engagement, and accountability. Each play an important role in creating an effective digital media strategy and are equally important in ensuring the campaign’s success.
Targeting:
Geo-tracking, geo-fencing, and many other forms of location-based targeting are vital when building a digital media audience. There are hundreds of mechanisms for further qualifying your targeting using data gathered through content analysis, behavioral analysis, and search activity. However, just because you have refined your marketing efforts to the perfect target, doesn't mean you're going to have an effective impact. Too often, the promoters and sellers of digital media tout the effectiveness of their media based on the targeting capability and the "impressions" they can deliver. Don't confuse impressions for impact.
Relevance:
Relevance, in my opinion, can also be considered "context". The digital medium you're using should be in an environment that not only will have your target consumer, but you'll be reaching them in an environment where they'll be receptive to the message. This issue is often challenging to fully clarify.
Engagement:
To me, the most important evaluation has to be engagement. Digital media proponents love to assault traditional media by calling it "interruption media". The fact is, those interruptions, while they may be an unwelcome engagement, they have potential with effective creative to be powerful engagement tools. Many digital media platforms (Facebook, for one) have started to insert advertising or “interruptions” in your News Feed, which may be somewhat unpopular, but I think it amps up the potential for engagement. News or weather apps which offer in-content advertising with a "click to call" option also offer potentially powerful engagement.
Accountability:
Finally, you must have a clear perspective on accountability for your digital investments. Cost per thousand impressions and other digital analytics is not the type of accountability a marketer should be looking at. The accountability should be clicks, click throughs, form completion, and phone calls. Any “click to call” campaign should always have a tracking number.
The bottom line is, before you invest in a digital media campaign, make sure you have addressed the four critical metrics of targeting, relevance, engagement, and accountability.
