Many of us have been here before—It’s the beginning of Q4, and you’ve just been tasked with auditing your current media vendors and researching alternative options for the upcoming year. Where do you start? What should you take into consideration? What if you miss out on a great new opportunity on the horizon?
The answer to those stuck with this dilemma is more and more often coming back to one solution—move to self-serve. A daunting idea, I know, but once you decide to switch, you’ll never want to go back. Just ask Ikea.
Ikea nailed this fledgling concept and scaled it up to the multi-billion dollar global corporate behemoth they are now—all without lifting more than a five-cent Allen wrench. Ikea doesn’t even bother to rename the furniture from their Swedish nomenclature into the language of the host country the Ikea is located in, but customers, new and old, will still come in droves to purchase furniture they can’t pronounce properly—imagine being that good at self-serve. And they are.
The IKEA Effect
The “IKEA Effect” concept is that consumers get a better value and trust in products they partially create. You buy it, you build it, and you control where the furniture is placed. Ikea simply acts as the mega-distributor of materials, instructions, and Allen wrenches. You do the rest!
Now, take the Ikea Effect and transplant that concept into the world of self-serve programmatic advertising. Imagine being able to bring your digital marketing efforts in-house, creating and owning your campaigns exactly as you dictate without having to rely on a smattering of media vendors to execute the work for you. Aside from this, the purely economic benefit of cutting out the middle-man is incredibly enticing.
Most of us appreciate having control over our work because it allows us to control the outcomes as well. When you can directly influence the ROI of your next programmatic ad campaign, you take back the control that other marketers have been so accustomed to dishing to managed service vendors. Not only does the control aspect make switching to self-service desirable, but the ability to customize your campaigns when and where you see fit is a luxury that is not afforded at the same granularity with managed service partners. A self-service platform puts you in control of customization.
Take control of your digital strategy and embrace customization
People love highly customizable products. Think of the infinite possibilities of color combinations on Nike shoes or the personalization of items and art pieces bought off of Etsy. Having a personal touch on your items makes you who you are, and it represents how you identify yourself. Consumers have embraced their unique identities, and when you can reach them through unique and targeted strategies, you can speak directly to them.
Choozle gives you the option to customize your campaigns to fit your brand and the personal identity of your target audience. Through tactics like cross-device targeting or digital out-of-home billboards, you can meet your audience in the places that make the most sense for them and build meaningful and memorable experiences for your brand. There is no such thing as a cookie-cutter campaign on Choozle. It is custom-built for your goals and budget. You own the process and fuel stronger marketing campaigns through your experience and the results.
No one knows your clientele better than you, so take ownership of your campaigns and speak directly to the audience you want to get your brand in front of.
Transparency and cost-effectiveness
You can become a master of programmatic with some practice. If you allot enough time to learn from Choozle’s resources, your in-house knowledge of programmatic advertising will create value that you can use in every campaign. Leveraging resources like Choozle academy, our monthly webinars, and weekly blogs, you can always stay up to date on the most recent strategies and tactics available in the programmatic ad space. And if you ever find yourself stuck, Choozle’s account managers are here to help you through any questions or issues you’re experiencing.
If you’re interested in investing in your company’s value, self-serve programmatic advertising may be right for you. Reduce the amount of busywork between launching a campaign and seeing the results. Focus on your marketing strategy rather than extended email threads and excessive communication with an outside agency. Act fast and build campaigns based on what you know will actually work. Take time back in your day for other things, such as strategizing. And not to mention, taking your digital ads in-house is more cost-effective too.
Create real-time optimizations
With access to near-real-time reporting of your digital campaigns, it’s easier than ever to track your success and instantly optimize your campaigns for performance. Focus on optimizing around the goals that really matter to you. Make changes and see the effects the next day. There’s no need to wait for excessive data collection or a support team to respond and make optimization decisions for you; everything is at your fingertips.
When you’re using Choozle as a self-service platform, you get to build your campaigns yourself, but that doesn’t mean you’re all alone through the process. You still have a team of best-in-class Account Managers you can rely on, and a backlog of resources and experience guiding you as you build on your own knowledge. Create the campaigns you want to see and drive the results that matter most to you. And when it comes to evaluating vendors, ask yourself, are they helping you build your own outcomes, or are they trying to fit a square peg into an Allen wrench-shaped hole?
About the author:
Rob Brockmann is Choozle’s Director of Growth Account Management. An experienced programmatic expert, a catalyst of genuine partnerships, and a driver of results, Rob works to drive client success at Choozle. When he’s not at work, you can find him traveling, cooking, or outside doing some trail-running.
