Through years of experience providing marketing support to some of the UK’s best and biggest brands, we have come to understand which strategies really work to meet performance marketing objectives. One thing is clear – for ambitious brands, a multi-channel strategy is essential. It gives audiences the opportunity to engage with your brand at a higher level, enabling you to cast a wide net and cultivate leads throughout the marketing funnel.
What some brands overlook in today’s day and age, though, is that ‘multi-channel’ is not limited to digital. The lines between digital and traditional are blurred, and so we contrast ‘standard digital’ activity with ‘programmatic digital’ – where programmatic includes OOH media. Programmatic and offline media strategies can play a vital role in the consumer purchasing journey, and without an active presence in these channels, you could be missing out on touchpoints that ultimately lead to sales.
That’s why this blog will explain some of the simple concepts behind programmatic digital and offline media services – and how they could complement your standard digital activity.
At Fusion, we’ve provided these services to major brands for 20+ years, and even have a 12-year standing relationship with our largest offline media client.
What Is Programmatic Marketing?
Programmatic Marketing is the perfect complement to a standard digital strategy. It bolsters and supports the campaigns you are already running, making for a robust and well-rounded digital approach. With programmatic marketing and advertising, you can maximise brand visibility through using a range of automated advertising platforms.
These channels all use Geographic, Demographic, and Interest/Keyword targeting to ensure there is no wastage and only your target audience see and hear your ads, similar to the way paid search and social works.
Programmatic Marketing targets Mobile Ad ID (MAID), which is a random sequence of symbols found within a mobile device’s operating system. This ID is shared with servers of used apps which remembers user’s choices and tracks customer journeys.
MAID tracks data such as geolocation, frequently used apps, and language, allowing advertisers to build specific audience segments based on interest and activity; for example, if someone frequently visits a certain shopping centre or listens to a specific genre of music.
Whilst cookies are session-based, MAID is persistent, meaning it can ultimately lead to more reliable data which can feed into future targeting.
Out of Home Media
The programmatic offering doesn’t end there. It also encompasses Out of Home media, which sees ads displayed via large-scale posters, bus shelter ads, and phone kiosk ads – as well as those in the London Underground, train stations, airports, gyms, service stations, soft play areas, leisure facilities, supermarkets, and shopping centres.
What does this mean? It allows us to run highly targeted digital Out of Home campaigns. This method minimises paper wastage and removes the strict timings and costly production charges associated with traditional Out of Home – primarily from printing and posting.
Digital Out of Home enables you to deliver your messaging to huge audiences in high footfall and high dwell time areas – meaning you can run large-scale campaigns via impactful platforms, and at a level of quality that really stands out. You can also tie mobile campaigns into this mix, and run contextual campaigns that, for example, say ‘Hello Leeds’ to your customers, change depending on the current weather, or even a nearby sports event.
Campaigns can be executed nationwide, regionally, or focused on specific towns and cities – making them flexible and focused on your target market. Crucially, through an integrated campaign strategy you can deliver a multi-touchpoint strategy by targeting users who have been in the vicinity of a digital out-of-home ad with a follow-up mobile ad. This is the pinnacle of offline marketing in the modern day.
Our Offline Services
Here at Fusion, we can go a step beyond digital. Our services also include offline media such as newspapers, magazines, door drops, radio, and standard Out of Home advertising platforms – such as vinyl and paste format bus advertisements.
Again, these media formats can be added to your performance digital campaigns to give support to a specific town/city, region, or indeed nationwide. With the right combination of digital strategy, programmatic, and offline advertisements, you can ensure that your brand is seen in all the right places and by all the right people. But it’s not just about being seen, it’s about the collective impact of creating multiple opportunities for your audience to engage with your brand; feeding the funnel right the way through.
Branch Out with Fusion Unlimited
Brand fame is built by reaching communities and we can help you create the perfect blend of media to construct and deploy a full-funnel, multi-touchpoint strategy to do just that.
These formats are made accountable by trackable impression, circulation, and coverage data – so you still get a comprehensive view of your performance at every level. We work to industry benchmarks, and then strive to beat them so we can drive the best quality campaigns and awareness for our clients.
At Fusion, we are uniquely positioned as a digital media agency born from traditional offline media and have 25+ years’ of buying experience and a wealth of excellent relationships in the industry, which our clients reap the benefits of – from outstanding service, to highly competitive rates.
With long-standing clients of over 12 years in these areas, we are proud to say we know our stuff. Take a look at our out of home work with Thistles Shopping Centre as a starting point.
Why not tap into one of your undiscovered audiences today and get in touch.
by Elena Brooke
