Blurring the Line: Future-Proofing Ad Strategy for Brands

May 9, 2017

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Blurring the Line: Future-Proofing Ad Strategy for Brands These are the 5 key thinking points for a winning ad strategy…

There has always been a clear line in the marketing world separating lowly direct marketing from higher level brand marketing.

Today, however, this line has become decidedly more blurred – and this has implications for your ad strategy. 

Whereas once brands had a clear understanding of which side of that line a particular marketing approach fell (above for brand awareness, below for conversions), now, a single ad channel can serve both purposes, and foster an entire customer journey from acquisition to purchase.

This change has occurred against the backdrop of a wholesale uplift in digital ad spend. Having recognised that this new approach to advertising can reap very real rewards, marketers are now competing to capitalise on impulse buying, deploying real-time marketing tech that places putting the right offer in front of the right consumer at just the right time. At this pace of change, it’s a matter of sink or swim. Brands, therefore, need an ad strategy which doesn’t delineate between ATL (Above The Line) and BTL (Below The Line), but which instead seeks to cut corners off the customer journey and provide a smooth and direct path to a sale.

Blurring the Line: Future-Proofing Ad Strategy for Brands

Fast cat

These are the 5 key thinking points for a winning ad strategy which bridges the gap between ATL marketing and BTL marketing

 1) Map Out Your Channels

Reading cat

To find your quickest wins, it’s worth sketching out your ad channels and plotting out where the traditional ATL/BTL delineation has become most blurred. Social media is probably the best example: the ATL objective of seeking out a new audience being met by ad targeting; whilst BTL is covered by a buy button or a hyperlink to checkout.
Mvmt, a maker of affordable fashion watches, has done this masterfully. On Facebook in 2015 they generated a conversion rate of – wait for it – 0.5% – and with buy buttons becoming ever-more real, successes such these will only keep on coming.

But beyond social media, solutions like Adimo mean that display advertising can now have the same effect. And with technologies such as augmented and virtual reality rapidly picking up steam, it seems likely that offline advertising is also within sight of becoming a direct revenue channel.

2) Capture Impulse Purchases

Cat trap

Striving to fulfill a binary ATL-BTL ad strategy with multi-stage campaigns used to mean one thing: dropouts.

One exciting recent development in this area, however, has been seized upon by the gambling industry. Live betting has been so successful at capturing impulse spending that it’s already been banned in one Australian state. This effectively makes television a BTL ad channel by eliciting direct responses rather than simply building a brand. And whilst not every brand can rely on the excitement of live sports to capture impulse purchases, technology is making it easier to turn other kinds of ads into fast cash.
Apple Pay, for instance, is finally about to become usable in online environments, opening the door to a future where any kind of mobile advertising can become a point of purchase.
The lesson here? Establish your mobile ad infrastructure now (if you haven’t already) and prepare to cash in.

3) Prepare to Interact

 

cat typing

The idea that human interaction can qualify as a through-the-line ad channel was once the war cry of face-to-face salespeople and market stallholders.
Now, however, we’re in an age where prompts to buy can be personally and directly communicated to a customer with a realistic expectation of success. The most exciting story comes from China. In 2013, Xiaomi, Asia’s biggest smartphone manufacturer, sold 150,000 phones in 10 minutes simply by cold-messaging a targeted audience on WeChat.

We chat

Currently, this wouldn’t work in the West. Instant messaging is viewed as too personal for advertising, and mobile is currently viewed as the UK’s least-trusted ad channel, which is why brands such as adidas are investing in instant messaging as an ATL engagement exercise, without necessarily plugging the direct sale. But as advertising improves in quality, accuracy and reputation over time, this will change.

 4) How Do You Define “TV”?

Cat parrot

Finally, we return to that most classic of ATL channels: television. How do you define TV these days?
It used to be that if you switched from TV to a BTL method such as direct mail, you sacrificed the reach, exposure, and trust that consumers placed in highly-polished TV commercials.
But what if the programming is instead streamed online? A recent PWC report says that premium, streamed TV services are about to become the richest source of television ad revenue.

Crucially, because these ads are digital, they can be targeted, personalised and – yes – monetised.
For advertisers, this amounts to both having your cake and eating it: the ultimate ATL solution with BTL functionality plugged in and ready to sell.

5) Transcending the Channels

Meditating cat

It’s frustrating how many B2B blogs these days open with rundowns on the omnichannel era, but it serves this piece well to close with one. The blurring of the line is not simply a consequence of advancement of technologies, but also a response to the changing expectations of consumers. People expect more of their brands these days: faster, slicker service, right from the discovery stage at the top of the funnel.

The only reason any consumer ever engaged with a piece of advertising was because of the possibility of making a purchase at the end of their customer journey. As this journey becomes ever shorter and simpler, this burden of expectation will only increase – possibly to the point that the only advertising that sells will be that which provides the option of instant buys.
And when that day comes, there’ll be no consumers left with the patience to jump across a line.

Grumpy cat
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