A quick overview of what we will learn in this section.

How to strategise objectives: marketing objectives, communication objectives and Jobs to be done.

Why is it so important to set objectives on digital

Practical examples from FMCG brands

Brand task is a framework that helps us define our goals. It is a simple and effective tool utilised by businesses worldwide.
It is a simple activity. Complete the sentence get "who" to "do what" "by using communication in a specific way" (GET...TO...BY)

the brand task formalises what the brand must do by compelling marketers to consider:

1. Who is the most pertinent target: "get who" – who is the intended recipient?

2. What actions do we want the target to take? - "to do what" .

3. What the communication will need to do in order to convince them about something or overcome a barrier. How will our communication induce the desired change in behaviour?

Marketing Objectives

A measurement of the behaviour we wish to modify (example: we want people to buy more of brand x or to buy brand y instead of brand z, or we want them to buy more often)

Please note that this is a statement of the brand's objectives for a particular element of its marketing mix (pack, price, promotion, place).

Typically, it is related to a change in behaviour (trial, consumption, frequency)

Communication Objectives

A measurement of how our communication activities will aid in persuading the target to behave in accordance with the marketing objectives.

Please note that this is a statement of the brand's communication objectives (i.e., how communication will influence a specific behavior). Communication is intended across all channels, including offline, online, and in-person.

Refer to what communication can affect: awareness, knowledge, and attitudes.

Follow the structure of the ads buying platform on Facebook to learn how it requires to set objectives when buying ads.

Follow the structure of the ads buying on other platforms (Google, TikTok, Linkedin) to learn about objective setting.

Use the template attached to become familiar with setting objectives and try to write the JTBD related to some specific VDO ads

A quick overview of what we will learn in this section.

From traditional targeting to targeting online: what differences and why so relevant?

Digital persona is a description of a specific audience and its behaviour in the digital landscape within the context of the product category under consideration.

What is the average consumption of digital media for products in this category? What actions should they take online? What types of objectives do they typically pursue? What platforms and touchpoints do they interact with the most?

Are the members of this category active participants in digital communication or merely recipients?

What is their decision-making process when using digital in relation to our product category? This is referred to as the "digital journey," and it is a crucial tool for understanding the influence of various digital touchpoints on a consumer's decision-making process when purchasing a specific product category.

After defining the persona, we want to identify the primary motivator that drives their decision-making.

This relates in some way to the persona type that we have defined.

This is known as a "trigger."

To be a bit more academic, we could refer to a trigger in marketing as the reason why someone initially tried a product.

When did individuals first utilise your product? How?

Why? Who influenced them?

How can these triggers be used to attract more users? What about new target audiences?

Needs, product benefits, new ingredients, performance, innovation, and new trends are examples of triggers.

As previously mentioned, these triggers can vary between individuals.

Back to our example with moisturization

If they search extensively for discounts before purchasing a moisturiser, they are likely promotions junkies. They are motivated by the difficulty of locating the best promotions.

Another persona may be particularly interested in knowing whether the product contains natural or chemical ingredients. They are activated by specific messages such as organic, no animal testing, and zero chemicals.

Another persona may be interested in hearing what experts and key opinion leaders have to say about moisturisers. In this instance, the influencer may act as the trigger.

In all of these instances, we can determine with our agency partners which messages will pique their interest so that we can create relevant content.

BARRIERS

Barriers are the exact opposite of triggers.
What are the most significant issues that people may encounter with our product that can limit consumption, or, if we are examining non-users of the brand, what were the obstacles that prevented them from trying the product in the first place?

Following the example of moisturiser, the presence of harmful chemicals in the product may be a major deterrent for those who prefer natural moisturisers.

Negative comments from their favourite influencer, and so on, could be a barrier for a person who is very interested in watching reviews.

Understanding barriers and triggers allows us to create more meaningful and, therefore, more effective messages. This has a direct bearing on the next section we'll discuss: What - The message.

A Consumer Journey is a graphical representation of each interaction your clients and prospects have with your brand and product, from awareness to consideration to purchase, as influenced by digital touchpoints and signals.

To understand the journey, let's begin with something familiar to traditional marketing, particularly in the FMCG industry: The path to purchase.
This is an attempt to map out the decision-making procedure.

The Path to Purchase facilitates phased analysis of the decision-making procedure. In each stage, a distinguishing event occurs.
If we apply this logic to the digital landscape, we end up with the concept of Consumer Journey.

In this lecture we analyse in details the concept of Consumer Journey by using a real life case study.

Analysis of the Marketing Funnel

What is precision marketing, and why should we care?

Precision marketing is a marketing practise based on the principle of "relevance."

Every day, consumers are inundated with thousands of communication messages across all channels and at all times.

Despite the fact that digital has vastly improved our ability to target the right people with the right messages, there still appears to be a great deal of organic waste, meaning that a great number of the messages we send out are irrelevant to people.

This is especially important for fast-moving consumer goods, which, by definition, seek to sell to a large number of consumers.

With precision marketing, we ensure that our communication activities are tailored to the most relevant cluster of consumers in order to ensure that the messages we disseminate are relevant and will generate the desired behaviour, such as trying a product, switching brands, or purchasing more of a particular product.

Follow up on precision marketing: how it works

Follow up on precision marketing: examples

Follow up on precision marketing: conclusions

Digital persona and digital journey, use the frameworks in the attached slides 1) to clarify who is the main target for your brand and 2) to define their online journey.

A quick overview of what we will learn in this section.

Introducing the idea of the content in digital marketing both in terms of WHAT to say as well as HOW to tell the story.

Advertising is a stimulus-response game. A brand sends a message to an individual with the intention of influencing their attitude and, hopefully, persuading them to act as the brand desires.

Consequently, the purpose of all commercial communication is to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. All of this via a message. Note that the word "message" is used here in its most ample form.

This message is developed beginning with an understanding of the target audience, packaged into an advertising execution, and distributed via the appropriate media channels.

When received by the intended audience, the message will provoke a response. And hopefully this response will solve the initial issue or seize the opportunity.

Therefore, the message we choose to convey is crucial, and we must devote sufficient time and effort to crafting it.

That’s the key message: the most important thing to say that will change consumers’ behaviour.

We want this message to be 1) simple to understand, 2) relevant and interesting, 3) single-minded, 4) unique and different, as explained in the paragraphs.

Now, question is: from where do these messages originate?

Given the significance of what we must say to people in order to influence their behaviour, we do not wish to leave it to chance.

When advertisers consider what to say, they typically consider two factors: their target and their product.

Introducing the analysis of the most relevant types of ads on digital.

Analysis of different types of digital display ads

What is influencers marketing? What types of influencers? How select, plan and strategise influencers' activities?

Introduction into social media ads. In the next lectures we will analyse the top types of social media adv formats

The most common type of ads on FB:

• Video Photo and slideshow ads, ads that appear in the News Feed and Stories, or they can appear as in-stream ads in longer Facebook videos.

• Stories ads are a customisable, edge-to-edge experience that lets you immerse people in your content. Tap into their passions and inspire them to take action on mobile

• Messenger ads help people start conversations with your business.

• Carousel ads let you showcase up to ten images or videos in a single ad

• Dynamic ads allow you to promote targeted products to the customers most likely to be interested in them.
  For instance, say someone has visited a product page or placed a product in their shopping cart on your website, but then abandoned the purchase. With dynamic ads, you can advertise that specific product in their Facebook feed.

• Collection ads let people discover, browse and buy what you offer.

• Lead ads that are only available for mobile devices. That’s because they’re specifically designed to make it easy for people to give you their contact information without a lot of typing.

• Augmented reality ads use features like filters and animation to allow people to interact with your brand.

• CPAS Facebook's "collaborative ads" format is unique in that it is only accessible to a select group of advertisers. Collaborative advertising enables brands to run performance marketing campaigns for their products, and in turn, these advertisements drive traffic to a retailer partner's website, mobile app, or store to complete the transaction.
  Collaborative ads help brands sell more products and make it simple to measure and enhance the effectiveness of their ads.

• Skippable video Ads (TrueView ads): is the best way to drive brand engagement on YouTube. These ads can be skipped after five seconds, you only pay when the viewer watches 30 seconds or more unless you’re optimising based on action or reach.
  With CPV (cost per view) bidding, you pay when a viewer watches 30 seconds of your video (or the full duration of the video if it's shorter than 30 seconds) or interacts with your video, whichever comes first. With Target CPM, Target CPA, and Maximize conversions bidding, you pay based on impressions.

• Non-skippable video Ads
  These ads are paid for on a CPM basis. Non Skippable ads have a time limit of only 15 to 20 seconds

• In-feed video ads: Use in-feed video ads to promote video content in places of discovery, including next to related YouTube videos, as part of a YouTube search result, or on the YouTube mobile homepage. You’ll be charged only when viewers choose to watch your ad by clicking the thumbnail.

• Bumper Ads: Bumper Ads are also Non Skippable ads but they last only six seconds, max. Like non-skippable ads, bumpers are paid for on a CPM basis.

• Overlay Ads: YouTube overlay ads are banner advertisements that you’ll often see running along the bottom of a video. They can be simple text ads like the one above, or image-based banners.

• Masthead ads
  Masthead is the top part of the youtube page where the ad will appear and will autoplay without the sound for up to 30 seconds at the top of the YouTube Home feed.
  It is very visible and makes a huge impact.
  Masthead ads are only available on a reservation basis, you’re charged on a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis

• Sponsored Content - also known as native ads, show up your audiences’ LinkedIn feed, regardless of whether they’re scrolling on mobile or their desktop. LinkedIn labels these ads as “promoted” to distinguish them from regular content.
  When advertising with Sponsored Content, you can go with LinkedIn carousel ads, single image ads or video ads.

• Sponsored Messaging (previously known as Sponsored InMail) lets you directly advertise to LinkedIn members in their inbox. Note that there’s a cap to the number of times you can reach the same person. It’s a more intrusive but more personalised format

• Text Ads show up along the top and right-hand side of LinkedIn’s desktop feed and are a good option if you’re looking to build strong leads with a professional demographic.

• Dynamic Ad use personal details, such as target photo, employer’s name and job title, as part of the creative therefore they make the communication very direct and personal. It is very similar to when we receive an email with the opening with our first name

In-feed ads will appear in the feed with images or video, carousel and text

Spark ads allow your brand to boost organic content from your own account or from other users. This can be used to boost influencers content

TopView ads - Video ads that appear as a full-screen takeover for 5 to 60 seconds when users open the TikTok app.

Branded Hashtag Challenge - A three- to six-day ad campaign format to encourage engagement, in which user-generated content appears on the hashtag challenge page.

Branded Effects Branded stickers, filters, and special effects to get TikTokers interacting with your brand.

• Promoted Ads, look very similar to any other tweet supporting a variety of media formats: Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads (that give advertisers up to six horizontally-swipeable images or videos to showcase multiple products or promotions), Moment Ads and Text Ads simple and native Text Ads feel like the rest of Twitter content

• Follower ads, designed to promote an account to a targeted audience to build awareness and attract new followers. Unless you’re serious about building your brand on TW maybe less useful here

• Twitter amplify - allows advertisers to align their ads with premium video content from the most relevant publishers meaning your ad will be placed as a roll on or a sponsor of a curated category

• Timeline Takeover puts brands at the top of the conversation as the first ad of the day.

• Trend Takeover / Trend Takeover+ puts ads alongside what's trending, placing messages where the conversation starts on the Explore tab.

• Twitter live is similar to FB live where advertisers can broadcast their biggest moments to the world and allow audiences to join in real-time.

Online activation happens when we use digital media, usually social media, to inspire, engage, and in general, make people experience the brand.

This activation typically requires a physical interaction with the product itself. Consequently, the digital space serves primarily two functions.

• to raise awareness and to invite people to participate at the beginning of the activity.

• to amplify some aspect of the experience itself at the end of the activity.

Considering that one of the most significant limitations of activation has always been its inability to operate at scale due to expense and logistical complication, digital media allows us to overcome this barrier and increase our visibility.

VDO LINKS

SLURPEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIjNIF0s-Qw

FOAMY HAIRCUTS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmsIEJqnc4o
COKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPsNE7lxl_k

What is digital video marketing and how to strategise it?

Hero and How content

Different types of VDO on digital

1. Emotions

Because of the environment, online digital videos must focus on storytelling even if they are carrying a very functional product message.

Emotions are a good trick. We have to think like film directors more than advertising producers.

Digital ads can work in the traditional way, but we should be conscious of the different formats, a lot shorter and the different placements.

2. Branding

The role of the brand in the video in a digital environment is quite unique.

If we are looking at digital ads (the TVC kind), as we are pushing the message into people, it doesn’t really matter how strong and hard-selling the brand is.

That’s exactly how it should be. We pay for it and we want to maximise the chances that they will remember what we sell.

In the case of online video, however, the line between storytelling and persuasion is very fine, and an overtly heavy role for brands can turn off viewers.

We want to develop stories that are related to the brand or the product, but not too much... Hey, that’s hard!

Coming from the advertising world, at the beginning of the era of digital videos, we were very excited about the creative opportunities coming from new and longer formats, so we didn’t want to create pure ads (as if it was a bad thing to do). Results?

We often exceed in creating stories where there’s little to no connection between what the brand stands for and the story itself.

In fact, there are many examples of digital videos that are very good and successful stories with lots of views and engagement. But they tell you nothing about the brand or the product they’re supposed to promote. Unless this is a specific objective of the brand, we’re not interested in this.

Over time, we learned to tackle this issue even though the topic is still quite difficult to crack.

Personally I think good branding happens when:

• The brand has a point of view to share and the story is clearly built around it (Adidas, Sainsbury's, Dove are great examples).

• The product has a clear and unique benefit to sell, and you’ve found a great, surprising, and interesting way to sell it (Volvo trucks).

• The story is built around some product or brand benefit, and we are clearly overdoing it in an exaggerated, humorous, and funny way (dollarshave, Geko).

3. Plot

In this section I want to discuss some structural peculiarities of online video that can contribute to interesting storytelling before examining some of the most commonly used techniques.

A typical advertising plot follows pretty much a linear problem-solution approach.

The ad highlights the problem people have, and the brand proposes its unique solution.

Often, we use celebrities, experts, or testimonials to convince people further.

Moreover, we need to operate within the rigid framework of the format (30, 15 or 6 seconds).

In the case of online videos, the approach becomes a lot more complex and at the same time is free from many constraints.

Let’s start from the biggest complexity: everyone can skip everything online, so we need to produce content with the mindset that we are asking people to watch, not forcing them to do it.

This means attention is by far more important than ever. We need to grab their attention in the first 5 seconds and hold it for the whole duration of the video.

Here is the magic of creative teams, but some practical considerations are also important.

Grab attention by getting immediately into the peak of our story. Start from the peak and work your way through the end. No build up. If you think of it as a graph, a traditional ad will start low, have a peak somewhere in the middle, and fade down.

When it comes to a digital video, we want it to have a peak at the beginning, and continuous peaks over time, with twists and turns. It’s like riding a motorcycle on mountains, as opposed to a flat motorway.

Starting from the bang can be done in a few ways. For example, if we have a strong unexpected visual, a visual effect, or a core scene, we can plan for it to come just at the right beginning.

For example, sound can be very important and grab attention. It should be used with a strategy considering, for example, that on YT 95% watch videos with sound on, as opposed to other platforms like FB where the majority of videos are watched with sound off. One last trick often used to grab attention is breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the public.

4. The context

We talked a lot about content, emotions, and plot, but there are some more technical tricks I would like to share with you that come again from the specific context where we place our videos.

The majority of those videos will be watched from mobile devices.

That’s why we say, build the video with mobile in mind. Mobile first. This leads to a couple of technical points to address.

First is the frame, think about tight framing optimised for mobile first.

Second, think about brightness. Most probably those videos will be watched in high-light environments and sometimes with low brightness on mobile devices, so we should make sure brightness is good enough, perhaps by playing with high contrast imageries.

Third, a lot of times, our videos carry copy headlines. In that case, we must make sure we plan the right readable font types and font sizes.

Last, the power of sound. Videos are watched in different ways on different platforms. On FB, most of the time the sound is off. The opposite happens on YT.

This is a crucial consideration to make because in one case you might need subtitles, and in the other case, you would have important opportunities to play with sound effects.

Moreover, as a lot of the usage will be through mobile, we need to consider that they will listen to our stories in crowded noisy spaces or with headphones.

NOTE: links to VDO below in this section

1. DRAMATISING PRODUCT BENEFIT IN A EPIC WAY

Here you tell your product story in a way that you have never told before, in a way that will surprise and engage.

Sometimes you can reframe the way you describe your product.

Check out this long story from.

If you look at the Kingston memory stick, you will see it uses a very long format and a very emotional approach to reframe its product from a simple memory card to one for memories. A simple but powerful way to dramatise the product in an epic way.

2. THE PRANK

When we surprise normal people and make a point about our product,
Those stories can be fun or extremely serious.

It doesn’t really matter, as from the point of the viewer, watching normal people being fooled is not only entertaining but also extremely convincing.

Look at the reactions of adults to kids' requests for smoking in this anti-smoking ad from Thailand.

3. THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS
Similar to the prank, but here we make a point about the product by using an experiment we carry on in public.

In most cases, those experiments are mocked up. But again, it doesn’t really matter because social experiments create a sense of "universal truth" even if they are mocked up.

Normal people participating, drive trust and conviction.

In this video, Dove makes a point about self-esteem.

4. THE TORTURE TEST

“Torture tests” are an interesting way to tell a product story. Make sure it’s entertaining and possibly drive through celebs.

In this example, we have a 4 year old driving a real Volvo truck with a remote control. It basically destroys the truck, but it definitely makes a point about its toughness.

5.INSPIRING MANIFESTO
Drive affinity with a brand through powerful manifesto advertisements that spell out the values of a brand.
Usually, starting from a powerful insight to inspire people, making them dream or fight for a personal cause makes the brand extremely personal and close.

Widely used by sports apparel brands like Nike in this famous jogger ad.

6. CREATING AN ENEMY

Nothing makes people rally behind a flag more than creating an enemy. The enemy can be something unjust in society as well as some unhappiness with product categories.

This hilarious communication from Dollarshave is a brilliant example of exploiting dissatisfaction with a product category.

Here also, please note how Mike, the founder, breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to us in a long shot video full of profanities and jokes.

7. SHOW YOUR PURPOSE IN A SOCIAL CONTROVERSY

Brands with purpose make a strong and long-lasting impression.
Sometimes they tactically exploit social issues, and even better if the issues are controversial.

Clearly, not every brand can do this, especially if the brand is considered part of the establishment. Moreover, this is a pretty risky move, but hey, high risk, high return.

You can leverage social controversy but must make sure your product has a role. There is no point being controversial for the sake of it.

Se a famous case with Always and "Like a girl."

8. EDUTAINMENT
From EDU(CATE) & (ENTER)TAINMENT
We explain what the product is and how it works for you through a series of articles and also entertain.

Here we create episodes and tell stories through series. Here is an interesting series from Oriental Princess, a Thai beauty brand.

9. COLLABORATION WITH MUSICIANS

Many FMCG products collaborate with musicians to build a popular song video around a specific product or brand or at least use the product as the hero in a product placement logic.
Look at Cornetto, a famous ice cream brand that wants to occupy the space of teenage love, collaborating with musicians. Cornetto sponsors music in a video that features their product in a high-quality production for entertainment while at the same time delivering a strong product message.

10. KITCHEN SCIENCE

A simple and entertaining pseudo-scientific way to bring to life a product's action through an interactive and fun demo.

We call it "kitchen science" because we use simple home analogies to break down complicated science.

I'm sure you’re familiar with Mentos/Coke explosions by now, that kind of Kitchen Science can be easily used by brands to make a point of their usages, benefits or mechanism of actions, both directly or through third parties (influencers). Derma brands like Nivea tend to use this approach quite frequently.

LINKS TO VIDEO

KINGSTON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EK5N7sHwyQ

DOVE SKETCHES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE

SMOKING KID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_YZ_PtMkw0

VOLVO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kx67NnuSd0&t=1s

NIKE JOGGER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcbSCnUXOkk

DOLLARSHAVECLUB - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI

ALWAYS - LIKE A GIRL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joRjb5WOmbM

ORIENTAL PRINCESS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gls9fWmrL8E

CORNETTO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyphzoHpL8E&t=2s

NIVEA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL75rT2fdgU

Now that we have discussed some of the most important ingredients of digital video marketing, we need to talk about the last point: distribution strategies.

What do I mean with this?

There’s no such thing as a viral video. The best we can do is plan for virality.

The popularity of our video activities depends on content that will drive interest and shares, but also depends on the way we support the possibility to view and share videos. Their distribution!

Those are called distribution strategies.

When looking at a video, we have 3 big areas we can exploit to drive popularity or views: owned and earned, paid activities

Owned: All assets that are owned by the brand (website, FB, YT, IG pages) that can be used distribute the work.

Earn: The real viral effect is that you must earn. Think about free PR, free media, websites, and people organically sharing the link.

Paid: All paid advertising activities to drive traffic and views.

Think ads, trueviews, digital ads, influencers, paid bloggers.

1. Owned

In order to distribute our videos, we want to make sure we leverage the platforms that we own to their fullest.

Social media pages, websites, or any touchpoint that can be used internally to share our story is an opportunity for visibility.

These platforms are obvious, but the basic hygiene factors we should think about when we set up our videos, such as video SEO, are less obvious.

Again, SEO activities are essential to get the word out and make sure that all of our assets work well together.

Every video on YT comes with a series of features: thumbnails, descriptions, titles, keywords, etc.

Those are important factors for SEO and visibility, and it is important we plan for them.

• Titles, description and the use of tags will help it get videos found in the search results. Try to write titles that pitch the value of the video, not just explain what the video is, and use the description to offer the viewer added value.

• Video thumbnails are one of the most underutilized facets of video marketing but a unique custom thumbnail branding in the search results, or as part of your video archive can really set the brand apart from competition. Video thumbnails are integral part of your branding effort
  Thumbnails are like “magazine covers” need to be enticing and to accurately describe what a viewer will see in the video. Use iconic symbols and catch phrases in your videos to build community.
  In below example, NIVEA mentioning reaching 20M views in the thumbnails of their Music Video (MV)

• Video description: information contained in the description section of each video, examples: link to opt-in, Brief teaser for video content, Contact and Social Links, Longer Description, References mentioned in video and Link to blog

After basic hygiene factors, another area to consider is SEO activities on video.

Here, the main objective is to apply these techniques to improve the organic visibility of the videos on the video platforms.

Without going into specific details, SEO for video is relative to video description, optimisation of thumbnails, providing structured data (live badge, timestamps, or seek to action).

To have an overview of those topics for each video you watch, you can install an extension if you use Chrome called Videolytics.

When you run this extension, you can see some stats on the right side of the YT panel giving you an analysis of the SEO rankings, social links, best practices, and tags and keywords.

It is a very specialised activity, for which you should consider working with SEO agencies.

2. Paid

In the words of an expert: "Pre-roll and in-display ads are the cheapest ways to earn massive views from a highly targeted audience.”

In other words, virality requires a business plan.

Marketers are leveraging the power of paid ads to achieve virality, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The idea that viral videos are placed online and mysteriously seen by millions of people is a myth. It’s marketing, people!

We have discussed paid advertising on YT to a full extent, so I won’t discuss it here any further; I just want to mention that beyond ads, we can achieve visibility by using third parties to promote our content, for example, using influencers or platforms that help share the videos.

A huge group of influencers on video are YouTube creators with whom we can collaborate.
Of the top 10 celebrities voted by millennials, half are YouTubers. Audiences today have moved beyond traditional media.

If you’re serving an audience of millennials (20-somethings to 30-somethings), than YouTube influencers are an excellent way to reach them. Staying relevant to this generation has a lot do with knowing who is performing well in the online space.

Paid activities also include the remarketing activities we discussed previously, especially when you have many video assets that work together, creating multiple series. When you create a series, you can:

• Remarket to users based on how they interacted with the video, video ad, or GDN Ad

• Target users who have viewed, commented on, liked, disliked, or shared the video or video ad will see that

• Reach these users on YouTube as well as the Google Display Network.

• Negative remarketing: increase the coverage of your campaigns by targeting users who have not seen your videos.

3. Earned

When it comes to earned, a lot has to do with actual content; here we need to earn the popularity, but still a lot can be done to support this. The role of PR is crucial here.

Most of you employ pr agencies. They are the first point of contact in helping with this.

Where possible, think about how to give people something to do with your content.

Netizens love memes and messing around with content. If done right, this can result in massive visibility.

An interesting case some time ago was the song Happy, where they supported parodies and covers, up to creating a website collection of all the cover versions of the song from all remote parts of the world.

A quick overview of what we will learn in this section.

We identified a problem or an opportunity for this brand/product (the WHY).

We know exactly who we want to convince (the WHO)—we understand what triggers their interest, we follow them through their journey, we realise what their key digital touchpoints are.

We have then developed a communication concept with a specific message and translated it into creative executions (WHAT) that potentially help convince this audience to behave the way we want.

Now we need to broadcast this message through media (WHERE).

The challenge here is how to plan and focus on the relevant digital media platforms.

One of the most common problems that marketers face is deciding which digital media platform to focus on.

This is a common problem for all marketers, whether they work in FMCG or any other industry.

When looking at digital media, the landscape can be overwhelming. Social media, programmatic, apps, e-sports, blogs, forums... we are exposed to a huge number of channels and it is hard to decide what to focus on.

This section wants to clarify some key principles first and provide a framework to help us navigate through the immense choice that the digital world provides.

MEDIA BASIC PRINCIPLES

Let’s start looking at some key basic principles to keep in mind when planning for media.

Principle 1: A digital media strategy is an integral part of the plan. The choice of which media to use depends on what the goals are and who the audience is.

In other words, we start with our objectives and then choose media depending on the ability of that specific medium to engage the desired audience and meet the objectives.

Principle 2: different (relevant) media channels for different target groups.

We, the people, use different types of media according to who we are and, most importantly, what we want from that experience (education? entertainment? information?).

If we want to communicate with students, we must choose media channels that are suitable for them, considering the type of experience they want from that media.

Media channels are different in many aspects: for example, the type of problem they solve for people, geography, age, level of details they can carry, reach potential, cost, etc. We should choose the ones that are more relevant for our target and our objectives.

In other words, the relevancy of the channel is more important than its coverage. Think about a business-to-business situation where a company needs to communicate with a very selected target group. For this company, it will be more effective to communicate in a specialised magazine instead of choosing to be on TV.

Principle 3: each channel works in a different way. In order to achieve our objectives, we must develop the most relevant media mix (you’re the manager of this football team!)

Some media channels are extremely powerful at creating awareness very fast amongst large numbers of people. Some are able to deliver a lot of information. Some are good at making people try the product. No media channel is better than another, but instead we need to think about how to orchestrate them to achieve our objectives.

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is about using different channels for different purposes. Like a football team, you have a goalkeeper, a middle field, and an attack. Each one is perfect for his job.

Principle 4: Social media planning must follow people usage of each platform
This is a variation of a famous principle: media is the message.
We all use media for a mission: to entertain, educate, update, communicate, share, inspire etc. This mission dictates what platform we use as well as what we do there because different online platforms allow to accomplish different missions.

Implication: Know how each social media is used and check against brand objectives whether to use it or not.

PLANNING FOR DIGITAL MEDIA

The 4 principles discussed above are intrinsically connected to one another and they start from an important assumption: as people, we use media, and particularly digital, for some sort of need, a purpose, whether learning, entertaining, staying informed, buying something etc.

Think about this, we use:

• Media to learn / knowledge: google, youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest

• Media to entertain: youtube, tiktok

• Media to experience first person: google maps, reviews, VR

• Media to communicate / discus: formus, chat applications

• Media to share / spread: FB, IG, Tiktok

• Media to narrate / explain: blogs, FB

• Media to participate / belong: twitter

• Media to affirm our personality our personal brand: IG

The need we are trying to satisfy through a medium dictates what platform we use and how we use it, as well as what we do there.

If we want to plan for digital media, first we need to have a clear idea of why people are using different platforms, what needs they satisfy with that media, and then decide whether this is the right platform for our brand, whether it matches the objectives that the brand might have.

Let’s make a simple example. Let’s look at the differences between Youtube and LinkedIn, for example.

In one case, YT, we are there to learn or search for entertainment or search for how to's. On the other one, LinkedIn, we are there to check what is happening in our circle of professionals, or we are updating our CV, searching for a job... The reasons we use one or the other are really very different.

Let’s imagine we are from IKEA and our brand wants to educate people on how to assemble a cabinet (communication objectives). YT is a better platform than LinkedIn.

HOW DO PEOPLE USE DIFFERENT DIGITAL PLATFORMS

When we want to plan for digital media and strategise our approach, the first step is to have a basic understanding of what drives the usage of certain types of platforms in the first place. Why are people there? What do they do there? What type of mission are they there to accomplish?

Once we have a clear idea, we want to select the ones that are useful for us.

In other words, we want to marry the communication objectives with the need that is behind the consumption of a certain medium.

In the next few pages, we look at social media platforms, how they are used, and what problems they solve.
For the purpose of this manual, I will structure the analysis as follows:

• A description of the platform

• What do people do there?

• What problems do they want to solve?

• How?

• How is this relevant to us as advertisers?

FACEBOOK

The place where people go for updates from others they care about, whether family, friends, interesting topics and pages, or to a limited extent, branded content.
It reaches billions of people globally.

GOOGLE

An intelligent search engine that tries to figure out what you want to do and provides the most relevant information for you to do it.

Search by keyword is the entry point of most online journeys; based on the nature of the keyword, Google tries to interpret people’s intents and needs and direct them to the best possible source. For example, if you search for pizza from a mobile phone, it will probably direct you to a link to a restaurant in Google maps. If you search for the best headphones for jazz music, it will probably direct you to a link to reviews and so on.

YOUTUBE

The video platform where everyone can upload content as well as search and watch videos.

In fact, it is the second search engine for users after Google.

INSTAGRAM

The place where you can show off. It started as a place where you could share your pictures with filters, but it has become a showcase of glamorous lifestyles.

IG is the social media platform where people share and get inspiration.

Linkedin

The social media site where professionals can connect with each other, look for jobs, and recruit.

Pinterest

The platform where people get inspiration

In the previous sections, we looked at the concept of the marketing funnel.

As mentioned, old concept in a new digital look.

Now, given the nature of this course, I want to show how I believe this marketing funnel is relevant for traditional and FMCG marketing.

In order to do this, I will integrate the concept of a digital marketing funnel together with off-line opportunities and see how we can actually integrate online and offline.

At the end of the day, this is how our target consumers, aka people, aka us... live our lives. We have started integrating offline and online in our lives seamlessly; it’s about time marketing does the same.

At this stage, consumers either don’t need our product yet or they don’t know about it at all.

The key to connecting with buyers is to make them aware of your product and the benefits it offers.

Here is where the awareness comes into place. If they don’t know us, they should. Therefore, we should aim at all those channels/executions and marketing activities that will help our product become popular and well known.

Where? Let’s start with the offline and then we will move into the online space.

In the traditional marketing and advertising world, this is the space of the so-called Above the Line (ATL).

Think about TV, ambient, outdoor, magazines, newspapers, etc. They have one thing in common: they can reach a lot of people in a relatively short time.

In this type of channel, we are not able to segment who we talk to (imagine a billboard placed in a crowded area), nor can we broadcast complicated messages.

We focus on simple, core but relevant messages that will make people become aware of who we are and what we do.

The name of the game here is reach. We want our message and our media selection to be able to reach the highest number of people who might be interested in our offer in the shortest time possible. All this according to our media budget.

Of course, in order to optimise our budget, we will need to select a media mix that will allow us to effectively talk to them. But as much as we can, we want to reach the highest possible percentage of our potential target.

This is the area where FMCG brands traditionally spend almost all their budgets, and now it should be easy to understand why.

It comes to no surprise that, awareness is still the area where FMCG brands tend to spend the most of their money when investing in digital media too.

In fact, the approach is exactly the same; we want to use online opportunities to make sure we reach the maximum of our target.

As per online consumption today, this happens on social media as well as outside social media, on websites.

The majority of media dollars are spent on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, which allow advertisers to buy ads and, more importantly, target opportunities to reach a specific audience more efficiently.

We have discussed the types of executions in different sections of this course, so I won’t repeat them here.
As social media tends to play the lion’s part when it comes to building awareness online, we often tend to forget the other parts of the online world, the open web.

In fact, when we are online, we search, read articles, chat, use apps, work and do a lot more than simply scrolling through our social media feeds.

On average, people spend about 20% of their time consuming content on the open web, so we must look at other platforms to build our awareness, starting from the entry point: search.

I mentioned that there are approximately 8.9 billion searches per day on Google; a large number of those involve problems that FMCG products are trying to solve, whether they are how to stay hydrated or the perfect shave for men.

Search is a great opportunity to give visibility to brands and establish a presence in people’s minds.

Secondly, there are millions of websites out there providing information, entertainment, education, you name it... most of those can be used to build brand awareness through programmatic advertising.

Although quality is lower and, unfortunately, there are several frauds too, programmatic is an opportunity to reach specific audiences at a lower cost compared to social media.

And finally, there are several other channels like chat applications, OTT platforms like Disney+ or Amazon Prime and Netflix that are planning to integrate ads if they’re not doing it already, video games and e-sports.

In other words, there’s an entire universe outside Facebook that should be considered when a product category matches the main audience. Think, for example, about the sponsorship opportunities for energy drinks and e-sports.

See what we are doing here?

Before concluding on awareness stage, I'd like to draw your attention to the nature of messages that we tend to adopt at awareness stage.

In communication planning, we learn that the desired response we want from our audience has a direct impact on the nature of the message we deliver.

In this case, as we are at an awareness stage, we want to make sure that our message is simple, memorable, and able to let our customers know who we are, what we stand for, and/or what we do.

At this stage, people have heard about our product or service, they have started thinking that they might need it, but they might lack information about it or they want to make sure they do adequate research.

In the old traditional approach, this stage is also called "information search."

This is where people go back and forth and gather information, do some research, and discover new opportunities.

For example, a mom might become interested in a new baby formula and they want to do some research to see if it is safe, made of quality ingredients, produced according to high safety standards, etc. While doing this, they might discover similar new brands they didn’t know about before, and start the information search process again.

In fact, more than a stage, this seems to be a research and discovery loop.

During this stage, it’s crucial to build your authority and get your target audience to get info from you directly, for example, on your website.

When it comes to FMCG, this stage is often addressed by broadcasting ads focused on product features’ messages. Because we know you’re looking for info, we magnify product features in our communication.

The message here should be simple and clear, describing what the product does for you and/or why it is better than competitors. In other words, we focus our communication on benefits, reasons to believe and competitive advantages as defined previously.

FMCG brands have traditionally broadcast those ads in ATL channels, so think mostly TV, print, and outdoor.

This is because those media enabled brands to reach a large number of people in a short period of time and persuade them of their messages. But again, digital is a crucial channel that complements the above ones and we should definitely use it for this purpose.

We start with the usual: social media. The channels we discussed before, from Facebook to TikTok, are all important to engaging people. We need to plan for them differently from what we did in the awareness stage and lead them to do different things.

The name of the game here is to make people consider our product and make sure they understand what we do and why we are better.

We therefore need to build this authority and lead them to our sources.

The best digital marketing strategies for consideration, the middle-of-the-funnel consumers are:

• Video marketing because four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, and almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.This can be done in all the social media channels as well as in the open web we discussed before. Clearly we choose the platform according to relevance of our product and target group as well as the message we intend to broadcast.

• Reviews are the second golden ticket for middle of the funnel digital marketing— 92% of online consumers read them, and 88% of them trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
  
  Influencers are everywhere. With macro, micro and nano influencers, we need to strategies our approach and decide how to use the power of third parties to support our products
  Some platforms, think about Instagram, YouTube, FB and Tiktok are definitely the most important to primarily look into.
  Influencers are crucial for certain categories of FMCG products, think about personal care for example, beauty products, skincare.

• SEO: search engine optimization is an important source of organic web traffic and leads, and arguably serves most stages of the buyer’s journey. It’s by using SEO that your website will show up on page one of search results—and 93% of consumers begin their research phase with a search engine.
  
  However one might be tempted to overlook this channel for FMCG brands, at the end of the day who is going to search on google when they want to buy a coca cola or a dish-wash soap?
  This is understandable but is also important that there are millions search everyday that are not necessarily branded search but are relevant for a brand anyways.
  That’s the difference between searching “Sunlight dish-wash” and searching “how to wash dishes”?
  The second search is definitely crucial for a brand like Sunlight, so SEO and PPC become a lot more important if seen from this perspective.
  What about your brand? What do people search for? Did you ever do a keyword analysis? How could you use this in your favour? If this makes sense, you see how investing in PPC search ads, the ads that show up at the top of the search results when someone Googles something, become crucial part of your media strategy

• PRECISION MARKETING: Lastly, but even more interesting, I would say, is the opportunity to use digital to deliver tailor-made content that we know will increase consideration as well as the next stage, conversion.
  We already introduced a very important idea: precision marketing, the marketing practise based on the principle of personalising messages through dynamic ads in order to improve their "relevance".
  Consumers are bombarded with thousands of communication messages every day on every platform at every point in time.
  
  Whilst digital has dramatically improved our ability to target the right people with the right messages, there still seems to be a lot of organic waste, meaning that a lot of the messages we put out there are not relevant to people.
  
  This is especially important for FMCG products, which, by definition, want to sell to a large number of people.
  With precision marketing, we make sure that our communication activities are tailored to the most relevant cluster of consumers in order to make sure that the messages we put out there are relevant and will generate the behaviour we want to provoke, whether trying a product, switching brands, or purchasing more of a specific product.
  
  Precision marketing breaks down one campaign into several executions carrying different messages that we know are relevant to specific clusters of targets. By being more relevant, they engage with the brand a lot more.

CONVERSION

Now that people know our brand, they have done some research, compared alternatives and come to the conclusion that conversion is the stage where they buy our products

In FMCG, this stage has traditionally been the reign of retail marketing and in-store activities. At the end of the story, people have to go to retailers to buy it, no?

Well, COVID has challenged this axiom too, as for a good part of the past couple of years we couldn’t physically visit a store and had to order our groceries home through e-commerce.

The share of FMCG grocery shopping varies country by country. As an example, in Asia today, FMCG e-commerce accounts for nearly 20% of FMCG sales and is the second biggest retail channel after traditional trade, with the most advanced markets like Korea leading with more than 30% share (Data Nielsen).

Not only is it big, but it is a phenomenon that is here to stay despite the end of the pandemic. In-home grocery purchases remain 8.4% higher than they were before COVID-19 (data from Kantar Jan 2022).

So, when considering the conversion stage, we want to concentrate on what we can do in both the physical and online stores.

PHYSICAL STORE

Let’s start with what we are familiar with: in-store activities, trade marketing, or retailer marketing. This is the set of activities we do in the store in order to influence consumers’ decisions at the point of purchase. FMCG companies tend to have a big army of sales teams who negotiate, implement, and check those activities almost on a daily basis.

They negotiate the positioning on the shelf, the price promotions, the presence of our promotion in the retailer's weekly brochure, checking out of stock and so on.

The proximity of these activities to the actual moment of truth makes them particularly important.

We might spend millions in advertising, but this is wasted money if the product is not visible on the shelf or our main competitor is selling 50% off.

Another crucial activity that is often overlooked because of some logistical difficulties is the in-store promotions carried on by promoters who talk through the product features, make demonstrations or make people try a new product. Again, due to the proximity of those activities to the moment of purchase, being able to establish a human connection with a potential buyer and make them see the product features might result in high conversion rates and represents a perfect complementary activity to close the deal.

ONLINE RETAILER

Now, given the importance of e-commerce for FMCG too, the internet is another crucial channel here we might be less familiar with.

How can we use digital to drive sales for a grocery product?

Let’s start from the consideration that there are some fundamental similarities between the visit to a physical store and an online one.

Like a normal trip to a store, most online FMCG missions involve more than one category, though the number of categories varies from country to country.

According to Kantar, in countries with high e-commerce penetration, such as the UK and Korea, 68% of online FMCG shopping trips covered multiple categories.

Secondly, just like any normal visit to a physical store, people will not change stores for our brand nor will they visit our website for a direct purchase. In all likelihood, they will visit an e-commerce platform or an online retailer platform and purchase multiple product categories there.

With the above considerations, the challenges are:

• How to use digital marketing activities to drive people to the store and buy our brand?

• How can we give visibility to our brand in an online store?

• How to make sure they reach out to our brand when buying adjacent categories?

In order to answer those questions, let’s look into advertising formats and key messages.

Starting from advertising formats, we mostly execute on social media and on the e-commerce platforms directly.

Social media shopping ads (FB CPAS, YT, Google)
Facebook collaborative ads lead directly to the retailer's platform where the product is listed.

In Facebook's words: “collaborative ads create efficient and effective partnerships between retailers and brands. These ads allow brands to run performance marketing campaigns for their products, and in turn, these ads direct traffic to a retailer partner's website, mobile app, or store to complete the purchase.”

Collaborative ads help brands sell more products and make it easy to measure and improve how well their ads are working.

Through these types of activities, brands can directly advertise in their brand space on social media and lead people directly to the online platform where they can buy their product and get all the data they need to improve their future activities.

A similar approach can be planned for advertising on other platforms, like, for example, using cards from YouTube videos or Instagram.

Another opportunity can come from listing our products directly on Google and using shopping ads, but this, of course, opens a series of problems from a logistics point of view.

Ads on e-commerce platforms

Another option is to advertise on the e-commerce platform itself.

Advertising on th e-comerce platform directly brings several advantages:

1. great visibility on the platform's virtual shelf,

2. the chance to collect data that will make your ads better and more effective, let alone the retargeting possibilities

3. the chance to take advantage of cross-category opportunities, which we've already talked about.

When you advertise directly on the e-commerce platform, most of the time your ads will be visible in:

• Search results Ads appear on the search results page when shoppers search using keywords that match your ads.

• Similar Products that You May Also Like. Ads show up on the product detail pages of products that are similar or go well with each other. This is done to reach a highly relevant audience.

• Daily or weekly discovery

KEY MESSAGE

The second aspect to look at is the nature of the message our ads will carry and how we should plan for it when it comes to the conversion stage.

In order to define the nature of the message, we need to start from where our audience is during conversion.

They realise they want or need a specific product. They might have done some research and evaluated some alternatives.

They’re willing to pull the trigger for purchase. They need the last push and be directed towards our brand instead of competitors.

Messages at this stage, therefore, should be pretty hard-selling, direct, and to the point.

Many times, they are promotional messages (price promotions, % reductions) or messages that refer to the experiences of others who have tried the product previously (testimonials).

For promotional messages, there’s a plethora of examples of coupons, promotions, special discounts, and in general click-bait headlines we see everywhere.

Nothing really new here.

Lastly, precision marketing and remarketing, which we discussed previously, play a crucial role here as we can retarget with promotional messages certain clusters of consumers, for example, those who interacted in some form with our previous activities.

LOYALTY & ADVOCACY

This is the stage where, after having purchased and using our products, all consumers form an opinion regarding their experience.

This experience leads to two main topics that we discuss here: Loyalty and advocacy

First loyalty: in FMCG, we define loyalty as the amount of volume that is dedicated to a specific brand when the same consumer buys a specific brand.

In human beings' words, this means: will I buy this again? And if yes, will I suggest a friend buy it (advocacy)?

Now, this opinion that leads to loyalty and advocacy is affected by a number of different dimensions, but mostly refers to the value that the product has created for them.

Did the product’s experience match expectations?

Did the product benefit solve the problem that triggered the initial interest and purchase?

I’m not going to spend too many words on the value equation as I am sure that the FMCG audience in this class is well aware of it. I want to point out a different issue here.

In the past, when we were not happy about a product, we hardly complained to anyone. Perhaps in some rare cases, we would write to the company and get a refund.

This was mostly because we didn’t have so many easy channels to share our views (and probably had a lot more interesting things to do in the real world).

Today, social media has exacerbated this complaint culture on one hand, and on the other hand, it has made it so much easier to share our comments with a much wider audience, the whole internet.

Brands are always under pressure to keep their online image in check because they know that a simple mistake can hurt their reputation and hurt their business in a big way.

Every day, we witness new instances of online public relations drama.Those cases run across all product categories, including FMCG products.

What tools and strategies can we put in place?

REWARD LOYALTY

We know that it is easier to keep an existing client than to acquire a new one, so repeat purchases should be fostered through promotional activities.

Again, there is an incredible amount of science on this topic and I will not add anything new except the consideration that the digital landscape makes the contact and distribution of loyalty points a lot easier and more effective than before.

Social Listening and Managing Conversations

When it comes to advocacy and its more scary flip-side, complaints, the first tools that we should put in place refer to social listening; if we don’t know what people are talking about when they mention our brand online, we can’t do much about it.

This means hiring a company or freelancer that does this for us or equipping our team with some tool to do this.

There are a number of platforms (like Hootsuite, Brandmentions, and Brandwatch) that can be used to realise in real time if and how people are talking about our brand.

Some of those platforms, like Hootsuite, allow you to manage different social media assets as well as do some research and planning.

Once we know what they're talking about, that’s when the difficult part comes into place.

Managing online PR can be very tricky and risky, and usually the best approach is to let professionals help the brand. However, whether we do it internally or we use third parties, there are a couple of principles that seem to be relevant and I would like to mention them here:

• Keep calm and don’t panic: the speed of the internet is supersonic, meaning that people's attention gets diverted very easily and they seem to move on very fast. Most of the time, issues that internally seem to be PR nightmares end up fading pretty fast and with no huge consequences. This doesn’t mean we can ignore them, but we must keep calm and take time to properly think.

• Be prepared: we must have a PR emergency strategy. Even if we can't cover every possible scenario, we must be prepared for the most likely ones and have a plan in place to deal with the more risky ones.
  In this respect, it is always useful to run a risk assessment of the possible things that could go wrong and weigh them against the likelihood that they will happen and the impact on the business if this happens. But this is for another chapter.

• Lastly, check your tone: from my personal perspective it is always important to be smart and not aggressive. For example never delete negative comments but not necessarily need to engage in endless conversations that only give them visibility (never feed the trolls, they say)

Section summary

• Media principles are based on the idea that people use media to accomplish a goal or solve a problem; start with marketing objectives and select media that are relevant to the target and fit with the previously defined objectives.

• As a consequence, we looked at digital platforms from the point of view of why people use them and how they are beneficial for advertisers.

• Traditional and online channels are complementary and we can plan for a mix. This also applies when it comes to managing FMCG brands that have traditionally been managed differently.

• The marketing funnel is an important guideline that we can use to plan for the most relevant platforms and approaches at each phase. We kept an eye on what this meant for FMCG brands.

• Monitoring performance is important, so we discussed what key KPI’s we should look at.

Well done!

Thanks for enrolling and successfully concluding this class.

Good luck for your future.