Small business are often run as digital only business to start with. And it makes sense. D2C brands sell often online, search marketing and social media are very accessible through their self-serve platforms and no minimum spends are required to run a campaign.
These channels have their place and bring value to a small business. BUT, these channels can mainly help in capturing the low hanging fruits, capturing sales from audiences who are already in market, who are open to trying new brands. If a brand wants to sustainably grow adding more channels to the mix can help you grow the pool from where you can fish.
If you don’t grow the pool you keep fishing in the same sized pond and will not grow your business further.
Key advantages of brand building
One of the big advantages of brands is that they create familiarity and trust. Having had exposure to a brand over a longer period and seeing the brand placed in trustworthy channels can increase familiarity and trust in the brand. This in turn brings in more potential buyers who consider your brand when they get to the purchase stage.
While I would say that almost everyone uses social media to a certain extent, it is not the most trustworthy channel and it is very fleeting with little exposure time of an ad.
Looking at “traditional“ channels is a logical and smart way to expand your pool and create more familiarity and trust into your brand. Being placed in bigger more traditional channels can make the brand seem bigger than it is which again feeds into the pool.
Traditional goes digital
Thanks to the digitisation traditional channels have become more digital which makes them more accessible with no or little minimum spends. Tracking and targeting have enhanced significantly over the last few years as well.
So for those marketers that mainly work with digital channels for smaller brands looking at digital audio, digital OOH or Broadcast Video on Demand/Sky AdSmart will recognise similar metrics. This helps in understanding these channels better and unlocking the black box.
Digital audio for example allows you to track listen-through-rates, impressions, clicks (if run with a companion banner) and gives you insights into the audience you have reached in the end. As you can see, this is very close to digital measurement. And dynamic audio ads are available too; and they work pretty well.
Digital OOH has become programmatic and even allows dynamic ads that get served based on location or weather for example.
SkyAdsmart or broadcast Video on Demand gives you numerous targeting options and lets you run campaigns under a £50k budget.
Multiple touchpoints
There is so much out there that does not need you to rely on hitting over and over again users on social media with little exposure time as 3 seconds or less. Exploring other channels will help to address new audiences. And it will also increase your touchpoints in various moments, be it relaxed or lean-in, on big screens or audio only. All these various media consumptions foster bringing your message across and building more brand familiarity and trust.
Do you want to explore a new channel or need help in identifying what the right new channel looks for you get in touch!
Nina Franck is a planning partner for Archmon, comms planner and founder of Franckly.
Photo Credit : Ajeet Mestry