Building a successful brand takes hard work, strategy, and tools to enhance awareness. With the digital landscape continuously evolving, utilizing the power of advertising in this space makes sense. Today’s consumers are online most of the time, relying on these channels to learn and buy. If your brand strategy doesn’t have a digital brand awareness component, you won’t get very far. Programmatic for branding is a smart strategy for building brand awareness.
What is programmatic for branding advertising?
It’s a form of advertising where ads are automated. In fact, programmatic advertising is the preferred choice in the online space. This allows brands to offer a more personalized experience across all the devices they use. Marketing strategies are more targeted with interactive ads and engagement at higher levels to reinforce messaging.
How can brands capitalize on programmatic for branding and reach their key customers? Here are a few ways to effectively drive awareness:
Cross-channel marketing strategies
You never know where your ideal customer is until you start implementing different strategies to find them. Your goal is to find those customers across every platform, channel, device, and system to deliver experiences that connect, engage, and convert. The data you gather will help determine which ones work best for your brand. Consider the way people consume information. Mobile device outreach should also be an integral part of your overall strategy.
This is also known as omnichannel and multichannel marketing. Why is this important? You want to offer your customers a seamless, integrated experience so they can move effortlessly through the customer journey no matter what platform they are on. Everything should be coordinated among departments to offer insight into what customers want and need. Use your data effectively. Behaviors, how they browse, how they react to certain ads, where and when they purchase, and if they engage in other ways can make a huge difference in pinpointing the brand awareness strategies that work.
Be creative
The more you exercise your creativity, the better your chances are of standing out among the crowd. First impressions are lasting ones, and you want to make sure your potential customers remember you from the initial introduction. There are different advertising formats you can use to show your creativity, share the story of your brand, build an emotional connection, and foster trust.
Two types of ads that work well in programmatic for branding are display ads and banner ads. Banner ads help with brand awareness and can be retargeted to those who have already become exposed to your brand. Once you are ready to move past these two, there are additional options that require a bigger ad spend. Interactive banners, video ads, and other forms of digital advertising allow your audience to interact and engage with your brand.
Video is one of the most effective forms of advertising today, with consumers preferring to be entertained. Focusing on viewable content and those metrics is key. You’ll know which advertisements are being shown, which ones are being seen, and which ones are most effective.
Use data
Data drives results. If you’re just putting ads out there and haven’t mastered the art of analytics, you’re wasting money. Brands that focus on the numbers are successful because they have learned what keeps their customers engaged.
What types of data should be considered?
Demographics, psychographics, and geographics to start. Once you know where these customers are, it’s time to look at their behaviors and the time of day when they are looking at your brand. How close are these customers? Are they local or can only shop online? What do they prefer? In-store or via an online platform?
The beauty of programmatic advertising is that you can track everything happening in real-time. That provides an opportunity to quickly change an ad that’s underperforming with one that gets more traction. You should be looking at the amount of traffic, how many views, click-through rate, and overall engagement to get a big picture analysis of the types of audiences you have and what they respond to.
By using these analytics, you’ll be able to have more effective campaigns that reach the right audiences at the right time on the right platform. Once you have this information, you’ll be able to funnel your ad spending to the right channels.
The overall goal is to know your customers well enough to utilize the power of programmatic for branding strategies effectively. This can seem overwhelming if you don’t know where to begin. These tactics, along with using different options for media buying all work together for optimal results. Programmatic advertising not only helps funnel your advertising to the right channels, but it helps minimize the risk of your advertisement being placed in the wrong environment.
Significantly different than paid search, programmatic puts your placements in front of people that don’t know your brand but probably want to. The best thing you can do when driving brand awareness is to create data-based ads that are relevant from the start. With the shift toward programmatic advertising growing, it is crucial for brands to understand and embrace this concept.
Not knowing or understanding how to move forward in programmatic for branding can be confusing. Having a knowledgeable team on your side who can help navigate your brand awareness strategy, pinpoint your target audiences, and get your ads in front of the right people results in a great return on your investment. Working with a partner like Digilant can help you develop a strong programmatic branding strategy while focusing on additional elements of your brand.
For more information on how Digilant can assist in setting your brand awareness strategy for success, contact us today.