The key steps to structure an effective paid media plan

Paid advertising is an important element to consider once other core digital components have been established (effective website, efficient SEO, quality reviews, free presence on search engines and social networks).

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The key steps to structure an effective paid media plan
The key steps to structure an effective paid media plan

Define clear business objectives

Business objectives can be classified into 3 categories, corresponding to the different stages of the conversion funnel.

  • Awareness : reaching the maximum number of people in order to increase brand awareness. By increasing your presence in prospective customers’ minds, you will improve their propensity for long-term conversion.
  • Consideration : engage your prospective customers by getting them to come to your website, watch a video, or react to content.
  • Conversion : converting the interested potential customer into a client by generating leads, sales and appointments. This is the last stage of the conversion funnel, which is all the more effective if the first two stages have been well thought through.

It can be quite tempting in the digital world to focus on conversion-only campaigns that initially give immediate ROI (Return on Investment), but be careful not to neglect the "top of the funnel" campaigns that generate performance over both the medium and long term.

 

Translate a business objective into a campaign objective and media KPI to be optimised

A digital campaign can only be managed effectively by focusing on a single KPI that will serve as the target variables optimised by the platforms' algorithms (Google, Facebook, Instagram, programmatic display, etc.). A single campaign objective and an associated KPI must therefore correspond to abusiness objective.

  • For awareness or publicity campaigns :
    Campaign objective: coverage, brand awareness
    KPI: cost per 1,000 people reached (CPM, repeat), coverage.
  • For consideration campaigns :
    Campaign objective: traffic, interaction, leads
    KPIs: clicks, landing page views, interactions.
  • For conversion campaigns :
    Campaign objective: conversions, catalogue sales
    KPI: cost per conversion, number of conversions.

Choose the most effective pay-per-use levers

SEA allows you to select the keywords for which you want your ad to appear. It is therefore an essential lever for capturing intentional buyers who express a desire for your product or service. It is an excellent "bottom of the funnel" lever that allows you to transform a purchase intention into a customer.

  • Paid advertising :
    Social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) allow you to display advertising to typical user profiles that correspond to your clientele. The power of these social platforms comes from their precise targeting (centres of interest, geographical targeting, similar audiences, etc.). Social ads are very effective in stimulating potential customers in a very specific way.

    The major digital media platforms (lemonde.fr, leboncoin.fr, ouestfrance.fr, l'équipe.fr, etc.) allow you to display advertising on their websites whose theme corresponds to your target audience. This is also known as display. The targeting possibilities are less advanced and the optimisation logic more complex, but they allow you to associate your brand with powerful and recognised media outlets, guaranteeing a high level of brand awareness. It is therefore an attractive lever for awareness campaigns aiming to reach as many people as possible in a qualitative context.
  • Retargeting :
    This is another interesting lever for optimising customer conversions. It involves displaying digital advertising on Facebook or other major digital media to people who have visited your site but have not purchased your products or services in order to entice them to consult your website.

Review some key operational points

A target-oriented customer journey: where should you redirect the user who clicks on your ad?

  • For an in-store traffic generation campaign, for example, there should be a landing page with at least the address and opening hours of the shop clearly visible.
  • For an e-commerce campaign, visitors should be redirected to the appropriate product sheet.
  • For an awareness campaign, visitors should be redirected to the appropriate brand content, etc.

Avoid campaigns that redirect visitors to your brand's "institutional" site, without any link to the advertising!

Impactful graphic designs

Design is a frequently underestimated factor in campaign performance, despite being a key element. According to Facebook, between 10% and 30% of the ROI of a campaign is linked to good targeting, but between 50% and 80% to good creative design!

Some tips for optimising your designs:

Messages that are tailored to your audience and bring value to your targets (what are the customer benefits ?).

Mobile-optimised designs, with little text on the images and a clear and effective call-to-action.

In your paid media strategy, the key is not so much campaign creation but rather their day-to-day management and optimisation, and in particular effective coordination between the various levers. New platforms, such as DeepReach, have recently been created to automate the launch and optimisation of campaigns, regardless of their objective (awareness, traffic, conversion) and in a cross-lever logic (mix of various marketing techniques).