Best Practices For Omnichannel Digital Media Buying filetargeting, as the former director of digital marketing at grainger, a global industrial supply company, told us: “Data is

Best Practices For Omnichannel Digital Media BuyingProcesses: The Digital Media Buying Playbook

by Susan Bidel and Samantha MerlivatOctober 17, 2017

FOr B2C Marketing PrOFeSSiOnalS

FOrresTer.cOM

key takeawaysMarketers Use Data, Technology, And speed For Omnichannel Digital Media Buyingthe availability and accessibility of data allows marketers to make more-informed decisions across digital media channels. advertising technology (adtech) allows them to take insight into action at speed.

Delivering An Omnichannel Brand Promise requires Five stepsthe omnichannel digital media buying process requires marketers to: 1) organize data; 2) define success; 3) design consistently; 4) execute with technology; and 5) optimize to outcomes.

Omnichannel Digital Media Buying Is A Marathon, Not A sprintMarketers shouldn’t expect to develop this process overnight. the process will take continuous refinement and must evolve over time with customer behavior.

Why read this reportas more and more marketing leaders embrace omnichannel digital media buying, the processes and tools they use are rapidly evolving. this report will provide marketers with a collection of omnichannel digital media buying best practices and help them move from plan to action.

this is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.

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table Of Contents

Marketers Rely On Three Factors For Omnichannel Digital Media Buying

The Five Steps To Master Omnichannel Digital Media Buying

accelerate Your Omnichannel Digital Media Buying Process With these Best Practices

recommendations

Your Omnichannel Media Buying Marathon Starts With Small Steps

Supplemental Material

related research Documents

Consumer Data: Beyond First and third Party

Marketing’s Data-Driven Future Demands Unified Measurement

Your Digital experience technology Strategy Starts With a Customer Journey Map

FOr B2C Marketing PrOFeSSiOnalS

Best Practices For Omnichannel Digital Media BuyingProcesses: The Digital Media Buying Playbook

by Susan Bidel and Samantha Merlivatwith Melissa Parrish, Matthew Flug, Stephanie liu, and Christine turley

October 17, 2017

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Best Practices For Omnichannel Digital Media Buyingoctober 17, 2017

© 2017 Forrester research, inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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Processes: The Digital Media Buying Playbook

Marketers rely On three Factors For Omnichannel Digital Media Buying

Digital media buying has significantly evolved in the age of the customer, and marketers have evolved with it, embracing an omnichannel approach. the biggest drivers for this evolution are the availability and accessibility of data, which allow marketers to make more-informed decisions about strategies across digital media channels like display, video, mobile, and social. today, marketers rely on the following for omnichannel digital media buying:

› Data — specifically, customer journey data. today, data is everywhere. Marketers can collect and use data gathered from a plethora of sources, including, but not limited to, website traffic, CrM databases, bid management platforms, social listening platforms, second-party publisher partnerships, and third-party data vendors.1 all these pieces can help marketers improve their targeting, as the former director of digital marketing at grainger, a global industrial supply company, told us: “Data is at the core of every single buy that we have. We take into account what type of customer you are classified as and where you are in the sales cycle to make decisions on what ad you get, how often we show you an ad, how long you will get remarketed, and whether you get a search ad. additionally, we consider where you are in the sales cycle to optimize our buys.”

› Technology. taking insight into action is the key role that technology plays in this evolution; specifically, tools like the data management platform (DMP) and the demand-side platform (DSP). Marketers understand that the data they collect is powerful only if they can use it. as the director of marketing technology (martech) at a global consumer packaged goods (CPg) company told us, “it would be impossible to coordinate omnichannel communication with our customers without [the appropriate] technology. it’s the technology that allows us to understand our customers in a channel-agnostic way and activate those segments across channels.”

› speed. Unfortunately, marketers must also be fast. Why? Customers’ purchase and decision journeys are ever more fragmented, and customer attention spans are getting shorter.2 nuno teles, chief marketing officer of Heineken USa, told a roomful of analysts, “Heineken was able to use speed and reach to gain momentum with its customers for the Heineken light and neil Patrick Harris campaigns.”3 Mr. teles further explained that the speed at which Heineken could programmatically test 15 video pilots within Facebook made a huge impact on the success of the campaign.

the Five Steps to Master Omnichannel Digital Media Buying

Marketers who harness data, technology, and speed don’t do it haphazardly. given the complexities of organizational structures and budgets, the necessity for collaboration across networks of internal and external stakeholders, and the vast array of martech and adtech in today’s ecosystem, marketers must develop omnichannel digital media buying processes or risk losing opportunities to win, serve, and retain customers. to jump-start your omnichannel digital media buying process, embrace the following steps:




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1. Organize data. While there are numerous types of data that can inform digital media buying, the most powerful data that marketers can use is their first-party data. Marketers must link customer life-cycle and customer journey maps to identify audience and channel insights that are specific to their brand (see Figure 1).4 as Daniel Wilkinson, head of paid media at Jellyfish, a digital marketing agency, told us, “We help our clients map out their customers’ journeys to get a greater understanding of their audience and what motivates the customer. then we think about the desired customer journey to establish how each channel can be used to influence each stage of the journey.”

2. Define success. Channel-based digital media buying has defined success based on media interaction metrics like click-through rate and cost per acquisition. Marketers who have embraced omnichannel digital media buying can identify clear business outcomes to measure success across channels (see Figure 2). Jennifer Dalipi, senior director of global media at Coty, told us: “We’ve been working toward formalizing Coty benchmarks. We put everyone in a room together for media days and look at how our channels influence those benchmarks. We start to look at what those benchmarks mean for each channel.”

3. Design consistently. Marketers who understand their customers have the base on which to take personalization to the core of their brand experience. Understanding their customers’ paid and owned experiences allows them to design consistent and customized channel and creative strategies (see Figure 3). the former vice president of eCommerce and digital marketing at alex and ani, a jewelry retailer, explained: “the core of our digital strategy is to create a personalized experience onsite and offsite. We aim to blend online and offline cohesively — connecting the online experience, such as merchandising, with offline brand interaction, such as media buying. We want to connect with the customer through storytelling and bridge the gap between digital and brick and mortar.”

4. execute with technology. all of the marketers we spoke with hammered home how important technologies like DMPs and DSPs are to executing data-driven omnichannel digital media strategies (see Figure 4). at the core of this execution is the ability to activate customer segmentations tied to business value. the director of martech from one global CPg explained: “the DMP is critical to merge data and make it more robust; without technology, you wouldn’t be able to do advanced segmentations. Our brands have the ability to activate on those segmentations based on their objectives, but with adtech today, they can take a one-to-many approach if the brand is trying to increase awareness, or they can take a one-to-one approach when they have more loyalty or are trying to drive repurchase.”

5. Optimize to outcomes. even with adtech that has improved marketer’s ability to measure the success of their media strategies, many marketers are handcuffed to legacy attribution practices like last-touch attribution.5 Marketers must measure against business outcomes to optimize to results that have an impact on the success of the business or risk wasting opportunities that are hidden in channel-oriented goals (see Figure 5). For example, grainger told us: “Omnichannel performance is a marathon, not a sprint. technology and customer behaviors both change very




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quickly. Since we’ve aligned success with business outcomes, we understand the value of different touchpoints even when we know a specific kind of customer will complete the sale through his sales rep. Some brands might stop communicating with a customer like that, but we can still optimize our buys to that customer’s journey.”

FIGUre 1 Understand Value in the Journey Map By linking With the Customer life Cycle

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FIGUre 2 Define Business Outcomes Driven By interactions With Brand experience

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FIGUre 3 Design Consistent Channel and Creative Strategies For Delivering Brand Promise

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FIGUre 4 Use adtech that Can effectively Manage Omnichannel Strategies

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FIGUre 5 Optimize toward Your Business Outcomes

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Omnichannel media opportunities

Accelerate Your Omnichannel Digital Media Buying Process With These Best Practices

an omnichannel digital media buying process enables marketers to make faster, data-informed decisions across channels and audiences. Here are the best practices that the marketers we spoke with rely on to execute omnichannel digital media buying:

› segmentation aligns customer journey, life cycle, and value with business outcomes. at the core of every digital media buying process is customer segmentation. the complexity of this segmentation ranges widely, but all the marketers we spoke with strive to understand their customers’ journeys, where they fall in the customer life cycle, and the value of that segmentation to the organization. these marketers understand that without this crucial step, they can’t hope to deliver their brand’s promise effectively across channels.




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› Measurement must evolve beyond last-touch attribution. Customers and their devices have made it even more difficult to measure success today. Marketers can no longer evaluate the success of their digital advertising with legacy attribution models like last-touch; they risk missing opportunities to reach their customers effectively. all the marketers we spoke with tap into technologies like the DMP, but they also tap into their customer insights practices to understand the success of their digital media buying across channels.

› Ownership is the key to successful adtech implementation. Marketers have taken responsibility for their adtech partnerships, no longer leaving these decisions to their agency partners. While marketers still lean on agencies and consultants to help them evaluate and use these technologies, they no longer sit on the sidelines when it comes to testing, procurement, and ownership. each of the marketers interviewed for this report highlighted the DMP as the one piece of adtech that marketers should own.

› Fluid budgets encourage omnichannel execution. Breaking down channel silos is a challenge that many marketers face today. While each of the marketers we spoke with had varying levels of fluidity, they all mentioned improving the fluidity of their budgets. Why? these marketers know that having a single omnichannel budget allows them to react quickly to shifts in customer behavior across channels. they can’t shift budgets trapped behind channel walls quickly enough to capitalize on opportunities to connect with customers in an omnichannel world.

recommendations

Your Omnichannel Media Buying Marathon Starts With Small Steps

an omnichannel digital media buying process enables marketers to create and deliver a consistent brand message to their customers across channels. it also gives marketers the means to make smarter buying decisions based on how the brand experience across channels influences business outcomes. But marketers shouldn’t expect to develop this new approach to media buying overnight. this process will demand continuous refinement and must evolve over time with customer behavior. Marketers must make these initial steps their focus as they develop their omnichannel digital media process:

1. Focus on the customer journey to understand common business outcomes. Customer journeys highlight key brand experience interactions that influence business outcomes. Marketers must determine how omnichannel paid experiences can drive high-value interactions with the brand. By doing this, marketers will set the foundation for all the data-driven decisions they must make in executing omnichannel digital media buying.

2. Use technology that can create consistency across paid channels. as the marketers interviewed for this report told us, creating omnichannel consistency is impossible without technology. Marketers must embrace DMPs and DSPs to deliver their brand promise to the right




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customer at the right time, on the right device, and in the right context. By clinging to traditional digital media buying practices, marketers risk falling behind their competitors in developing the people and processes necessary to survive in a channel-agnostic world.

3. Improve consistency across paid channels. While consistent creative is a prerequisite for channel consistency, knowing where your customer is in the customer life cycle is imperative to omnichannel digital media buying. Marketers must control creative and channel consistency to deliver their brand promise. Marketers who can’t control messaging across channels risk jeopardizing the customer’s experience with the brand; for example, remarketing to a customer with a product that customer recently purchased.

4. Implement a system where all channels feed off each other. the future state of a marketer’s omnichannel digital media buying process is dependent on a system of martech and adtech that shares valuable customer insights to deliver valuable customer experiences. Marketers must find ways to share insights across the customer journey and life cycle to deliver consistent brand experiences. Marketers who don’t master both paid and owned omnichannel experiences risk delivering an inconsistent brand experience in the age of the customer.




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Supplemental Material

companies Interviewed For This report

accenture

alex and ani

Coty

grainger

Heineken USa

Jellyfish

endnotes1 to learn more about the consumer data landscape, see the Forrester report “Consumer Data: Beyond First and

third Party.”

2 Source: Danny gallagher, “goldfish have a better attention span than you, smartphone user,” Cnet, May 18, 2015 (http://www.cnet.com/news/goldfish-the-actual-fish-not-the-crackers-may-have-a-better-attention-span-than-humans/).

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3 Source: analysts interview with nuno teles, CMO at Heineken USa, and Facebook’s global Partnership team, Facebook analyst Day, new York, February 17, 2016.

4 See the Forrester report “Your Digital experience technology Strategy Starts With a Customer Journey Map.”

5 today’s increasingly complex media environment means once-reliable marketing performance measurement techniques, such as marketing mix and attribution models, fail to properly credit marketing tactics with a customer action. B2C marketers must embrace a new measurement standard — unified marketing impact analytics (UMia) — that will measure marketing’s entire value and identify the best ways to optimize customer interactions. See the Forrester report “Marketing’s Data-Driven Future Demands Unified Measurement.”



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