While inbound is a hugely effective, bespoke and creative marketing process, the benefits of introducing biddable media into the mix can't be overstated.
If you want to achieve any marketing aim, then biddable media is a great way to boost activity. However, biddable is difficult to get right. If you want to get some solid advice on perfecting your campaign, read our blog 'What is biddable media, and how can it catapult your growth?'
Biddable media is another term for paid advertising, and includes methods you may have heard of before, such as paid search (PPC) and paid social targeting on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Inbound marketing is one of the best ways to attract new leads. Get the strategy right and inbound marketing can help you to attract a higher volume of leads of real quality; over time and with the right strategy, inbound can be more cost-effective than outbound methods like cold calling and provide better results. Inbound is essential to business growth; adding biddable media into the mix could help that growth happen almost instantly while the more organic parts of your campaign take hold.
So why is biddable media considered so important? 'Targeting' is the key word here; put some of your marketing budget behind a biddable campaign and you can unlock incredibly powerful targeting tools available on the platforms where the vast majority of people spend their time online, making you instantly more visible to the audiences that matter to you most. On a social level especially, the data provided by Facebook (which also extends to Instagram) allows brands to put a creative message and distinct calls to action in front of highly-targeted potential new leads and clients.
It sounds great but, depending on what your business provides and what it wants to achieve, the world of biddable media can be a complex beast, especially if you're juggling a lot of different campaigns across numerous channels. If yours is a fashion-conscious brand targeting a female millennial audience, for instance, then it could make more sense to put your budget into visual platforms such as Pinterest where the majority of that demographic spends its time.
Do your research before you actually invest in biddable though and you can actually cut your potential marketing costs as well as improving the quality and volume of your leads. That doesn't just go for biddable, but for the entire inbound marketing process. Pigeonholing your market is potentially one of the costliest things you can do in any marketing campaign, inbound or otherwise.
Don't assume anything. These are the people who you want to build long-term relationships with to grow your business. Take the time to research and talk to your market to craft deep personas that move away from stereotypes and consider things such as their interests, their location, where they spend their time online, and what you can provide to them that nobody else possibly could.
For instance, Pokemon Go was impossible to ignore at one point during 2016. Although a global phenomenon, its popularity only lasted for a couple of months before its audience moved onto something new.
Fickle, maybe; but there was a point where the most creative marketers and brands investing in biddable media at the time who knew their personas would have an interest in Pokemon Go were able to reach out to that audience in creative ways, get ahead of the competition and attract new leads through clever biddable targeting.
Again, the enormous potential of biddable media can't be overstated. So powerful are the targeting tools available on social and search platforms that a lot of commentators often underline biddable's role in the 2016 presidential election and how Trump's online team used biddable targeting to not only get in front of potential voters, but to also get above certain sources of information on various channels ('suppression' as one member of Team Trump called it) and raise donations for the party.
Sounds like scary stuff, but the republicans weren't the only party doing it. The Democrats also had their own biddable media strategy to attract potential votes across the internet, while closer to home the UK general election in 2017 saw Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and others use their campaign budgets to target people across channels like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others.
It's not just political parties and brands that are marketing themselves this way. Anybody and everybody can target people based on certain demographic information so long as they have a profile and (at least) a tenner in their pocket. How? Because of a focus on big data and the information stored in these platforms; so deep and advanced are these targeting platforms that marketers can reach out specifically to people with a fondness for cheese and crackers if they so wish.
These channels are also constantly evolving as is the targeting technology they offer. Facebook is at a point where it can offer location targeting to add an entirely new dimension to creative local campaigns. Smaller businesses looking to accelerate and scale their growth can now specifically campaign to attract people to their physical locations and increase footfall, collect relevant data from around the local community and more to attract greater interest and local leads.
Like most things in the world of inbound, biddable media works best when it's complemented by another technique to nurture leads and increase the probability that they'll complete an action such as making a purchase or leaving their contact information. You may have drilled your targeting strategy down to an incredibly fine level but it means little if there isn't a creative message in place that speaks directly to the audience you want to build a relationship with.
Creative content marketing combined with a biddable approach is one of the best ways to reach out to new audiences. Again; it pays to know as much about your audience as possible to refine your tactics and discover which platforms are best to invest in.
The same goes when angling your creative message; Instagram is a platform that's attracting a lot of attention from a younger audience, for instance. Could you use less of your budget and attract better leads if you target visual messages to an audience on Instagram instead of directing people to your site through PPC?
Google-owned YouTube could also be the best place for your budget to go, especially when considering exactly how important video marketing is set to be for online brands over the coming years. The advances of smartphone and tablet technology has literally put a mini cinema in people's pockets. Could you get in front of audiences who love nothing more than watching YouTube through PPC without even having to produce a video?
Staying on the future of mobile and voice search is something which continues to creep into the industry through technology like Siri and Amazon's Alexa. You may not realise it, but it's critical to keep up to date with trends like this when considering the world of inbound marketing and biddable media. The world of social and search is constantly changing, and keeping abreast of industry movements can help you to realign your campaigns and refine them as time goes by to help keep costs low and the flow of leads consistent.
Which, from our point of view, is probably one of the biggest arguments for pairing with a specialist inbound marketing agency when it comes to implementing a biddable media campaign for growth. Managing various campaigns across numerous channels can be tricky enough. Do you really have the time to learn the complexities of biddable as well as exploring the benefits of new channels, testing the creative on them, adjusting budgets and evolving with the browsing habits of your audience?
If you want to achieve any marketing aim, then biddable media is a great way to boost activity. However, biddable is difficult to get right. If you want to get some solid advice on perfecting your campaign, read our blog 'What is biddable media, and how can it catapult your growth?'