2023 Holiday Commercials Round Up

It’s that time again.

Christmas Ads/Holiday Commercials, depending which side of the pond you’re on, are coming thick and fast.. and with the main event - John Lewis out now, here’s all of them, in one place.

UK Christmas Ads 2023

US Holiday Commercials 2023

Found more? Add yours below!

One thing’s clear though this Christmas in the UK - Hannah Waddingham is the Queen of Christmas 2023 - with her Christmas special due out soon too. Smart casting, M&S and Bailey’s!

Yeah yeah, big budgets = big production, but what of it for smaller brands?

If you’ve got Festive Fomo as a marketing leader in big brands, here’s our take on what it means for you, and how you should view this:

• It’s about owning the moment that makes sense. All these brands are big deals that have a lot of consumption of their service, or product, at this time of year.

• It’s about taking from culture, but also impacting culture, too - it’s circular. John Lewis went first, the category caught up, now it’s a news moment across national press, there’s BTS content… and that’s just in the marketing echo chamber.

• It’s about reminding people you’re there, in the moments that matter. It’s about being culturally relevant - and no that’s not jumping on any and all awareness days.

• And also do something as big as you can afford - play bigger than you are if budgets are small, and break the frame to make leaps and bounds.

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Customer Lifetime Value: A By-Sector Breakdown

Customer lifetime value. The trump card for subscription based businesses.

It’s a valuable metric for businesses where you want to be aiming for light buyers, to inform your customer acquisition cost. Above all - profitable acquisition MUST be your north star metric.

Beating much lauded ROAS… which can mislead decisions as what all looks good on the platform can come undone when you interrogate the individuals and how much it cost to win…and retain their business.

So…

What is it?

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) the measure of just how much a customer is worth for you.

You might adjust how you calculate this depending on your business type… so here we try to cover off some of them, so you can see how it might differ, and also to help avoid any feelings of ‘whataboutmeeee’ - because, let’s face it, DTC ecom businesses have a LOT of content on this, but others, maybe not so much.

We’ve had a look at CLV across FMCG, Fashion, Homeware, Media, Marketplaces, and B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses:

1. FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods):

   • If you’re FMCG and retail is your main distributor, bolstering distribution with an ecom model, can help you understand how much your customers might be worth in store… and some of the information not passed back by retailers.

   • Subscription based CLV: if you have a highly consumable, repeat purchase business - like a supplement, or functional drink, it might make sense for you to look over the total period of time a customers’ been with you. Have a look at what is the average tenure - it might be months… or years.

   • Cohort Analysis: Segment customers into groups with behaviours and calculate CLV for each cohort. This helps identify variations in customer value between groups. This is particularly useful for highly seasonal periods, or where you might deep discount.

   • Churn Rate and Retention Rate: Determine your churn rates (percentage of customers lost) and retention rates (percentage of customers retained) over time.

2. Fashion:

   • Measure from their first purchase with you through to their most recent - consider what promotions might do to shape this for you.

   • Customer Segmentation: Segment customers based on when they joined you, what they’ve bought (categories, lines, collections), and where they came from. You might notice that customers acquired from an influencer partnership, for example, are more likely to shop when a promotion is on.

   • A classic for Ecommerce - RFM Analysis: Use Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (RFM) analysis to calculate CLV. The more recent, frequent, and higher the monetary value of a customer's purchases, the higher their CLV.

3. Homeware:

   • Product Longevity: Consider the average lifespan of homeware products. Calculate CLV by estimating the customer's total spend on these products over time, and if they’re likely to come back to you.

   • Customer Engagement: Assess customer interactions and engagement with the brand. More engaged customers who provide referrals or write reviews may have higher CLV due to their positive impact on others.

4. Media:

   • Subscription Models: In media businesses, CLV can be based on subscription models. Calculate your CLV by considering the expected duration of a subscriber's engagement and their subscription fees - the paywall is a classic.

   • Also consider what you know about them - what content they consume, if you also have a store, or events, are they more likely to pay extra for more content from you?

5. Marketplaces:

   • Seller/Buyer Behavior: Segment customers based on whether they are sellers or buyers. Calculate CLV separately for each segment, as their value contributions may differ.

   • Transaction History: Calculate CLV by analyzing a customer's transaction history on the marketplace - how long they’ve been active, if they have ‘tells’ that they might become active again, considering the total revenue generated from their purchases and fees.

6. B2B SaaS (Software as a Service):

   • Subscription Contracts: Calculate CLV based on subscription contracts. Consider the contract duration, monthly fees, and potential upsells or cross-sells.

   • Customer Expansion & ABM: Assess potential expansion revenue from the customer, including additional seats or services, to calculate CLV more accurately.

Make sure you carry this out fairly regularly so you are up to date, and also flag any shifts in cohorts of behaviour.

This should also always be run in conjunction with insight gathering from your audiences - making sure you can capture halo affects on things like uplift in online sales within proximity to stores, etc.

Want more? Come and tell us!

How to create a marketing budget

Whether it’s time to create your first ever marketing budget, or the first time you’ve been asked to create one, here’s some things to consider before you get cracking:

1. Start with the goal. Can the business give you some sort of steer of what is needed to be achieved. If you’re a founder, what are your growth goals? If you’re a marketer, what have the business said is needed? If they haven’t given you a goal, this is where you should start.

2. What’s in and what’s out of the budget? A fully loaded marketing budget should include everything, including the time spent on marketing - your salary, too. As this will give the business a true idea of the costs involved in marketing activity. Maybe sales enablement tools don’t need to be in your budget, and it’s a good exercise in definition of what is and isn’t technically marketing.

3. Work out the value of a KPI to the business So many businesses don’t know this. How much is a lead, what’s the LTV of a customer? Are they worth the same now, will new propositions change this at all? What does the economic environment dictate (or not)?

4. Plan 80%, keep 20% back for ad hoc things that arise. Keep some wiggle room in the plan, so you can double down on something that’s working, keep some cash aside for something that you want to try, or experiment.

5. Plot your numbers backwards

   1. Once you’ve established what you need to achieve, then you can plan backwards of how many customers you need to get to this goal, how many leads you need to turn into customers, and how many eyeballs you need to turn into leads.

   2. Think people, not impressions - how many people are you acquiring, nurturing, turning into aware audiences?

   3. How much can the business afford to spend now, if that user/customer comes back to repeat. Looking at a CPA basis is only half the story if these targets are set based on their initial purchase - set on ROAS. If they come back and spend 4, 5, 6x their initial spend with you, what did you miss out on that could have delivered more customers, or those that might 8-10x their initial spend?

Want to steal our FREE template? Get in touch.

Marketing Leaders' first 90 days - our guide.

If you’re taking a new Marketing Director/CMO or Head of Marketing role - whether you’re inheriting a team, or the first senior hire, here’s a few things to consider and prioritise for your first 90 days:

1. Listen a lot - record some too if you can (and that’s not weird):

   As much as you will (by the very nature of the role) need to spend time getting to know your team, your company, and your industry, also listen to what behaviour tells you. Do all the audience listening you’d do for the brand, for the business. Know what is a pain point, what politics might you have to navigate, and get a feel for how marketing is viewed within the organisation.

2. Agree some (realistic) goals with your senior leadership team

   Based on what you've learned, set some short-term goals and priorities for yourself and your team. Focus on areas where you can make a quick impact and build momentum.

3. Get networking internally

   Success will come from who you get to collaborate with, get friendly with finance, get to know how the lay of the land works with ops, and get to know your product and sales teams. You’ll be working with these people most often, so starting off on the best possible foot, and make an effort to speak their language, too.

4. Focus on the quick wins

   It might be a more efficient way of doing something, or a tweak to a campaign, logging an early win is a great way to log a tick against your impact, early on.

5. If they’ve just fundraised to hire you, focus on reining in the splurging

   Chances are, they’ll have been building up the internal to do list for a long time. All the stuff that is ‘when we fundraise we will…’ invest in CRM/Team Growth/Martech/Ops tech/Automation/Content/Advertising increases… the laundry list will be long. But spend too much off the bat and you’ll have to go back to fundraising again immediately, before you’ve proved the value and impact of the last round. Prioritise and stress test how long the organisation can ‘go without’ and create a commercially grounded case for the new/now/bigger/better/best to do list.

6. Manage expectations that you are not a magician

   A new leader is not the solution to all problems, and definitely not overnight. If they want a fix to everything on day 1, then big talks need to be had.

7. And make sure the organisation can clearly define the goals you are going to need to help with.

   Lead volumes or revenue targets are great, but what shape do they need to take, is there any sense of how long this will take to realise, what does the cash runway look like, etc - this will avoid the temptation to leap to promotion first.

And above all, connect with people who have been there and done it - a ‘Just keep going’ is probably something you’ll need to stick on a post it on your desk for at least the first 12 months.

Knowing that you have people who are in a similar boat to you can help you feel confident in your abilities, so keep going, you got this (and subscribe to The All Marketer’s Club, too).

Fractional Marketing Services - what are they?

Fractional Marketing Services are visibly on the rise, but the truth is they’ve always been around in some way..

Whether you call yourself a freelancer, portfolio CMO, advisor, or account manager for an agency, giving over part of your time to help a business with their marketing, essentially has a new name.

Startups like the word fractional, as it sounds mathsy, it’s quantifiable.

The Benefits:

1. It can be cost-effective:

   Startups often have limited budgets, and fractional marketing allows them to access the expertise of an experienced marketing professional without the cost of a full-time hire. A fractional marketer at CMO or Marketing Director level typically charges on an hourly or project basis, which can be more cost-effective than hiring a full-time marketing employee.
   
   

2. It’s way more flexible:

   Fractional marketing support offers startups and scaleups the flexibility to scale their marketing efforts up or down as needed. It’s actually more responsible, too - if you’re an early stage startup, you’d tend to think about hiring ‘a person’ but hiring a person when your finances are tight or uncertain means you can end up having to hire and maybe have to fire - all processes that take time and are costly. Fractional marketing support is generally a lower risk to your business.
   
   

3. Plug in expertise:

   Hiring in someone that’s been there and done it saves you time, headaches and guesswork. Whether it’s an equivalent industry, have run a channel on a bigger scale, or executed within a similar looking business, having that expertise on tap is hugely beneficial.
   
   

4. Hit the accelerator:

   Need to get going now? Bring in the right level of Fractional marketing strategist and doer and you can get going with your go-to-market strategy, fast. They’ll be able to work with you, assess your needs, and get going. Go, go, go!
   
   

5. Focus on your roadmap:

   If you’re a product led business in tech, or selling a physical product, you can concentrate on developing your products or service, or navigating operational tasks, while your fractional marketer takes care of the marketing tasks. They should always work together, but handing off to an experienced pair of hands frees up your time.

Depending on the level of experience, and how involved they need to get in your business, you can expect to pay between £400 - 1000 per day for these services.

Getting the most:

• Be upfront about your needs, and when you need them:

  Fractional marketing experts will work with a number of businesses at once. This is often reflected in the number of hours you agree to work with them. Scope creep is something many fractional marketers experience - it’s natural when you build a rapport with someone you like and trust, but when you’re hiring someone on an hourly basis, time is literally money. An experienced fractional marketer will help you help them manage their time with a plan and detailed availability, so you know when to expect them to be available for your business.
  

• Always book discovery time:

  At the beginning of any process, you’ll need to help your fractional marketer get to know your business. Because they’ll be bringing a certain level of prior knowledge with them into your business, this will be faster than hiring a junior employee, but don’t expect them to know all the intricacies. Discovery time upfront is time for you to download what you know to them, and make sure you know what you want to get out of the process. This is also a good opportunity to establish fit in terms of ways of working, tonality and culture - if you’re a super laid back organisation and you bring in someone very corporate, this can do some harm to your internal culture, so make sure you’re bringing someone in that can blend in, but help bring you forward.
  

• Message the why clearly:

  If you bring in an external marketer to an established team, it can be easy to be misconstrued as the internal team being viewed as not working well. This can set the whole project off on the wrong foot. External marketing support isn’t a magic wand to fix all your marketing woes, but IS a useful tool to help cut through where marketing may have been getting stuck, with fresh ideas, lack of prior knowledge, and a particular understanding of a particular area that might be missing within your business.

  Fractional marketers are not the same as hiring in a manager for a junior marketer, and when not communicated clearly to the organisation, this can lead to confusion of responsibility, line management, and conflicting directions.

• Get ready for asynchronous working:

  Experienced fractional marketers should be experts in asynchronous working. They’ll know how to tee you up to pick up when they’re next ‘on’ - use tools like Slack, Google Docs and Loom to help projects keep rolling on when they’re not in the business.

How to play BIG in your local marketing strategy

Hyper-local marketing has been around forever.

It’s the local Yellow Pages ads, dropping leaflets through doors and putting your flyer in local cafes and community centres.

With the rise in marketplace businesses like Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Urban massage and more, hyper-local marketing became a strategic power-play, to drive density in growth in particular areas that were served upfront, to be able to (cheaply) acquire and measure demand, while you build out supply.

These businesses gave hyper-local marketing a name, and a myriad of growth hacking tactics came along with it, but the methods were pretty similar as ‘before digital’ times - get known locally, drive word of mouth (now viral marketing), and grow from there.

So, how can you bring your name in a big way to your business’ local area?

• Know what’s possible with paid digital, first - Google Ads and Meta can get SUPER granular with their targeting, down to postcode level. This is a huge advantage to be able to geotarget key areas (particularly in cities, where postcodes are really specific), and ensure your ad spend is really concentrated. TikTok and other channels aren’t quite so granular, so go BIG on small, then build out from there.
  

• Then get in with the local crowd - join some local Facebook groups, see what’s being said locally, can you join in authentically? Not “Now selling local plumbing services” or whatever your business is, that’s a sure fire way to get banned. But jump in to authentically offer advice first. Next Door is also a channel to consider, but their advertising can be quite expensive.
  

• Do you have a physical location? Can you use one, or share one with a local business? A pop up in a pub, a local restaurant offering a place to support the community during their quieter times. Get the local press down. Particularly if it’s something topical and not overtly salesy.
  

• Door drops and flyers - cherry pick postcodes and, if you’re running Google Ads too, measure if there’s a change in clicks in your local area. Or test brand ads in those key postcodes so you’re guaranteed to show up (if your business is pretty new). This is a slow burn channel, however. People will be likely to keep flyers for a while, and may turn up and redeem your code several months’ after landing, so not one if you need a big impact, fast.
  

• Get to know what’s happening locally, and build your first party data (ie, emails) - give them something extra for giving their emails - if you’re a restaurant, a special discount if they show you your email, or a free drink. Host local events that are invite only from your email list. Content that’s interesting and makes me want to keep subscribing!
  

• Social - keep it fresh and interesting, the same shots of your store, or only new news isn’t going to keep your followers engaged. Speak about why you love the local area, support other businesses, speak about your expertise and what made you want to start your business. How active is your local area on social - are there many posts under your location on Instagram? Do the same people keep popping up with a reasonably big following? Invite them along to film from your business.
  

• Consider outdoor media - buses, billboards, you don’t have to pay a fortune for outdoor media. Notice how often it’s schools and local businesses on the back of a bus as you’re stuck in traffic. These are effective local ways to get your name out there.
  

• National brand listed in a local retailer? If you’re looking to drive footfall to a local Sainsbury’s, then while measurement isn’t as clean as if you’re a DTC brand or local service business, but it’s still possible. It’s the sum of the parts - strategic infrastructure advertising opportunities that lead to the local store, online ads with a call to action and location details for local stockists, some creativity leads a long way!
  

We hope you enjoyed those tips for your local business. If you’d like to speak to us about how your business can play big locally, launch in a new area, or drive specific learnings out of a key location, give us a shout.

What marketing metrics should you track?

Knowing your marketing metrics and numbers, is so important when it comes to being able to unlock growth, brand value and innovative approaches to how to drive your business forward.

We work extensively with brands on helping their marketing teams to identify where they currently are, where they need to be, and how much they should be measuring. 

Here’s some of the critical metrics you need to be aware of, from our founder, Victoria. 

1. Measure what you need to, to drive your success (and not just because you can)

The window for measurement is arguably closing thanks to changes from device manufacturers making all that lovely Google Analytics data increasingly harder to measure, and auto-blocking cookies. 

Spelling panic for the Programmatic marketers, but for the majority of us, is just an adjustment that needs to be taken into account.

People forget the world BEFORE (and those of us old enough to remember just about do)

Let’s be honest setting tracking up on every button of your website feeds a need to have more and more data, but how much decisive action have you taken off the back of the number of clicks your ‘Share to Linkedin’ button has?

Consider what metrics are critical to defining your business success, and track those, don’t get waylaid on vanity metrics that take up time and focus away from the business.

2. Is your target audience inclusive enough to see the growth you want?

I’ve lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had with startup founders who are committed to a huge amount of growth, but actually when asked about who their target audience is it’s “Yoga loving vegan women aged 25-27 with a high income, live in central London and own a dog” - try that massive growth with a - max - audience size of three figures.

Are you also including unconscious bias to limit your audience in some way? It happens more than you think you might be applying it.

3. Or is it too big for your tiny budget

“Anyone could be our customer’

That may be the case, but chances are, with that six-figure fund raise you haven’t planned to plough it into a single campaign (as you’ve got salaries to pay and tech to build), so let’s focus a little bit.

Remember the difference between ANDs and ORs in audience targeting with the usual suspect ad platforms. 

Planning a campaign that’s SO mass media to anyone and everyone means you end up getting lost.

4. Numbers of followers on social are the number one distraction technique for marketing and leadership teams everywhere

So you have 100,000 followers on social.

Amazing!

Are they in your market though? And how engaged are they really? 

For example, a Fitness studio has 100,000 followers on Instagram, but for each of their instagram lives, they generally max out at 1,000 people, live and engaged on the platform. That’s 1% of potential customers that actively join in with a live class, which is fundamental to the brand’s survival and creates a case for monetising classes digitally. 

You make business cases based on the 1,000 people who may not be able to make it to your physical location but have grown to love the brand and are basically saying ‘take my money’! To those may take part in a live class in real life but mix it up with a digital subscription. Not to the 99,000 others that make up the nice neat number when people visit your page. 

5. Downloads don’t come for free (generally)

Do you know your CPI (cost per install) and CPA (cost per acquisition)? 

So you’re building an app.

And you think, like every entrepreneur, it’s going to be the next HUGE thing. 

Awesome! That’s great.

But being a big thing takes time and generally, money, or like some of the biggest ones out there, something rarified enough to capture the public mood at the right time (and even some of those - like Uber - have massive marketing costs and remain not profitable).

Setting realistic targets around achievable conversions from Impressions > Downloads > Active users, all against a marketing budget, and then overlaid against CLTV targets will help you to build a picture of how you can grow, sustainably, profitably, and repeatedly.

6. Discounting is more dangerous than spending your marketing budget on a channel that doesn’t perform. 

Hooking your customers on discounts gives you short term gains, but serves to feed a customer base with low engagement, short term lifespans and ultimately, is likely to make your efforts unprofitable.

Discounting is the low key margin killer that often isn’t borne out until a few months down the road, when you’re left looking at your sales figures, healthy customer numbers but your bottom line can’t get out of the red. 

Understanding what a ‘safe’ level of discount is per customer can be a really powerful tool to use when you need to drive some sales, but heading into a spiral can be very difficult to recover from.

7. Get stuck into understanding what your customers are doing

‘We think’ and ‘We believe’ aren’t good enough these days for your customer insights. Look at your data. Your customers vote with their feet and their credit cards.

Resist the urge to survey them at every moment (the ‘how was your purchase email’ 4 weeks after you bought some doorknobs is more likely to stop them coming back than to elicit any sort of response other than ‘fine’).

Contextualise the purchase in their lives. Do they need emails from you every day if you sell furniture for over £1000? Do they need to write a review for a tester pot of paint?

Build out and collate your churn signals early, and those that go on to become your VIP customers. What hurdles do they have to cross to become one or the other?

Your first party data is so important for your metrics of success - don’t get caught up on what ‘industry standard’ vs your data is saying, if it’s moving in the right direction for you, keep going. If it isn’t, reset, test, rethink, and go!

8. And last on this list, but by no means least, your brand metrics

Brand trackers if your brand is mature enough and broad enough are of course fabulous - I personally love what the team at Proquo AI do, and no they didn’t incentivise me to say that! Especially for challenger brands in established markets.

What if you’re building a brand new market? Well then things become a little muddier. Understanding however the build of brand searches, your ‘direct’ traffic if you choose to track that and general build of your brand reach, is always good, these too if you can’t quite spring for rolling brand tracking just yet.

Even better? When you start receiving sales calls from people offering to help with your marketing/sales/SEO. That’s a sign you’re starting to make a name for yourself…!

If you want to discuss your numbers, or how we can help you get a handle on what your marketing team should be tracking, get in touch.  

Marketing Insight From Our Network

One of the greatest things at We Are All Marketing is the variety of disciplines, expertise and experiences from our network of freelancers.

As we all go off and work on separate projects, and then come together to collaborate on projects under the brand, it means that our insight, experiences and learnings are never stale.

We avoid received knowledge or ‘because it’s always been that way’.

What’s always really interesting is when we do regroup to engage on a project, the differences in our experience take the outcome for the client into the best possible creative execution or innovation.

Commonly too, the routes, challenges and questions we’ve experienced to get there are remarkably similar.

So, we asked:

“What have been your top takeaways from the past few months?”

And here’s what they had to say:

Media

• Many OOH plans shifted out from Q2 to Q4 of this year, with many avails in November pretty much sold out by April.
  

• TV advertising was available at some really competitive rates and for some, a good opportunity to make a leap into it for the first time.
  

• One particular client identified they could secure prime advertising positions at reduced rates in national Sunday supplements, a good fit for their 40+ demographic. 
  

• With many concerns about the ethics and transparency within major ad platforms like Facebook and Instagram, big advertisers like P&G hit the headlines by saying they would stop or pull budget out of these channels, however we have seen many smaller players continue, and as a result fluctuations in costs have been all over the place. Brand build campaigns generally performed better than direct response, with the customer intent in some niches declining in purchase behaviour, but increases in engagement.
  

• Paid search volumes have been hugely fluctuating over the past few months, with government initiatives and announcements hugely impacting search volumes in particular niches, looking back at 2020 on Google Trends in years to come will be an odd one!
  

• TikTok’s huge growth in users means it’s now worth considering for more brands than previously, however with questions over it’s security, and the US market in the air, as well as, ultimately a completely different strategy for many brands, means it’s something that needs serious thought before you dive in with the gloss of a whole new channel.

Brand Agility

• For retailers with physical and ecom stores, the shift has inevitably moved to digital only activity while stores, branches and showrooms were closed.
  

• Activity, resources and budgets shifted to supporting online retail. Clients requested impactful digital communications to build their brand online, both through DTC and retail channel partners. With a move to more freedom in terms of ‘shelf space’ online, creating highly engaging digital POS and interactive touchpoints became very important - something we think will be here to stay.
  

• Those that embraced replicating their in-store service at home did well to build brand reach, engagement and loyalty throughout the lockdown period, and the shift to this new delivery method looks set to stay put. Services like at-home hair colouring and online skincare consultations, exercise classes, high end restaurants pivoting to meal delivery packs and more created added value for existing consumers to ensure they remained loyal and engaged, whether or not the ‘service’ was paid for, or not.
  

• Driving engagement, waiting lists for reopening, introduction to a brand new audience and more will see these brands continue well into the future.
  

• Brands that ceased marketing communications have unsurprisingly appeared to lose brand voice and authority.
  

• What’s really clear is how agile brands are willing to be when they need to. Modern brands recognise the need to adapt their offerings and seize the right moment for marketing. In the case of home care brands for example, who have relaunched existing products with a tweak in the naming - to be more Hygiene focussed in the wake of COVID.
  

Messaging and Creative

• Self-care and positive mental health were able to maintain a dialogue with existing and new consumers by tapping into the new comfort economy.
  

• Those brands that did not have such relevant values, started to look inwardly to create these and create a more empathetic consumer connection.
  

• Brands that took an authentic voice to the market, but also retained some creativity have performed well. Consumers got pretty tired, pretty quickly of the ‘Our Brand Cares About You’ narrative that emerged at the start of the pandemic.
  

Insight and Strategy

• Taking the time needed to review new touchpoints - and in some cases, altered brand demographics, shifting social reach and new market opportunities led to a shift in strategic thinking with some clients.
  

• Taking time to gain insights from your followers, prospects or current customers through surveys, polls and even creating a panel of superusers can help you with a general check-in, reset your current beliefs about your customers, or even help you to find new opportunities to grow.

We’re keen to hear what you’d like to know more about, and how our network can help your business.

Reach out to us!

The Advantages of Radio Advertising: questions, answered!

The advantages of radio advertising are many, not least as it’s a channel that’s done very well out of steady consumption in recent months - during the COVID-19 pandemic.

An often-overlooked channel for cost-effective reach, radio has seen some favourable reach and overall performance, when bought in the right way.

It’s our job to watch the shifts in consumer behaviour and client’s media buying behaviour, and we’ve seen these change week on week, month on month and quarter on quarter recently.

The range of opportunities to buy audio now is huge, with traditional radio, digital, Spotify ads, Podcasts and more. 

Our resident radio guru Lisa shares her insight into what you may not know about buying audio media. There is SO much we could cover, so for the sake of conciseness, here we just focus on Radio - we’ll cover Spotify and Podcasts in another blog:

Q: So, what is it about radio ads that can help a campaigns’ effectiveness?

The advantage of radio advertising is that it is a strong ‘Call to Action‘ medium.

One of radio advertising’s key benefits is its recency to ‘Point Of Sale’ or ‘Point Of Mouse’.

As radio is often listened to while people are driving or browsing online, it can be an excellent medium for getting a message to someone when they may be about to visit the shops or visit a website. 

Q: How do you buy radio ads? 

There are three main variables you want to control when buying radio ads:

• Reach

• Frequency

• Consistency.

Firstly tackling reach:

It depends on the station that you are buying but normally you would plan for reach in one of three ways.

Firstly, you can buy based on a cost per thousand (known as CPT, aka the cost per thousand listens your chosen spots would receive). The advantage of this type of radio advertising is that you have a clear view on when is the most cost-effective time to buy, and you can compare, on a cost per thousand basis, the reach you would achieve when comparing this to print or other media types.

You can also buy based on day-parts (ie based on listener behaviour - you’d expect more listeners in the morning and evening generally, but as listeners habits are changing, so too are the times they listen).

You can also buy based on a ‘spot rate’, based on the value of the spots during different days per week and times of the day.

When it comes to frequency, there is a scientific algorithm to determine what is best.

Known as an ‘opportunity to hear’ (or OTH) and the sweet spot of is 3 per week, or 40%+ reach per week across the campaign to achieve the best return on investment and impact on your metrics.

We take a cross-section view of your market, and plan our clients’ campaigns holistically at all times. When we are planning, we might find that a client has experienced a challenge in hitting the optimal number of spots per week, due to a limited number of stations being bought.

We bring our full mix expertise to each client brief and ensure we are deploying all tools available to us, to challenge the brief, and deliver the maxiumum value.

Being reputable radio-branding experts we have all the tools to ensure we plan your radio campaign for reach and frequency, but also consistency in terms of creative and planning aligned to listener behaviour.

Q: What does an evolving listenership and RAJAR mean for media strategies?

It means that you should assess what you buy or plan frequently to ensure that you are getting the best deals as well as the station performing in the right way for your target audiences.

It might be the case that your target audience are changing how they interact with radio - in post-COVID-19 times, the increase in working from home means that the usual habits of listening in the car on the drive to work are less frequent. Conversely, digital consumption - or even catching up with the show outside of ‘live’ may be on the rise, so planning to hit the audience outside of the traditional ‘linear’ listening patterns could deliver more value to access the right audience at the right time.

Now is a great time to consider running your current mix against current RAJAR figures if you’ve been running radio for a while - checking in to ensure you are buying the right stations and hitting the right audiences without spending on a station that is in decline.

If you’d like help with this, then just get in touch with us, and we’d be glad to help.

Q: What types of spots are available to buy on radio?

The most common format to buy is 30-second adverts (30-second radio ads generate about 80% of proven recall according to Radio Recall Research, LLC (Media Dynamics, 2006), but 10-second tags can be effective to help build on frequency metrics as well as top and tail ads at the start and end of an ad break.

It is possible to buy 60-second or even longer breaks, but these are generally bought as part of a large scale campaign launch (think the equivalent of the big-budget TV spots you might find during prime time).

If you are looking for longer-term branding – sponsorship of a show or segment at a key time across the week/day that fits your audience profile would provide longevity as well as awareness.

Q: What’s the difference between buying traditional and digital radio spots? 

Traditional radio will play out only on the stations you choose at the times you choose. Think of these spots in the same way as buying ads on linear TV. These are great for mass-market consumer brands, where you have potential to hit a wide group of people, and build your SOV.

Digital radio planning focusses on the audience first. This is a great approach if you have a relatively niche audience and a not-so-huge budget. The focus for digital is on building frequency with a % of a key listenership, rather than a spray-and-pray approach.

It’s a more tailored approach to traditional radio, and works really well in tandem with online activity.

Q: Are there any seasonal spikes around radio media costs and availability?

The spikes all depend on the RAJAR results and radio station reach, which change either every 3 or 6 months per station.

The peak times for radio are generally across the week at the breakfast and drive shows – this can vary from station to station often with weekend and celebrity shows performing really well.

If you are buying an even laydown – the peaks will not affect your overall costs. 

Want more info on this? Contact us.

Q: Isn’t radio ad production expensive?

Radio ad production can be expensive if you let it (or want to spend a lot), but with all things, effective planning, working to a budget and being realistic about what you can achieve with the budget you have will help you keep costs down.

If you’re keen to have ‘a name’ on the voiceover, or a known track as background then this is where costs can escalate.

Writing an effective radio script is an art form, so lean on the expertise at the stations to help you with this - each station will have the ability to help you with production, or we can manage this for you with our creative team.

Writing a clear, tight brief ahead of time will help you no end too - if you’re running a cross-channel campaign, consider which ‘visual’ cues of the campaign may or may not work in audio form. How much does the audience need to be ‘in’ on the campaign concept to get what’s being played to them over their speakers?

Key to keeping these costs down too - if you decide to use the stations’ in house production - is the relationship your agency has with the station to begin with. We have managed to negotiate some exceedingly competitive rates for our clients, as part of the overall media & production package.

Using the relationships we have built up over time gives us (and ultimately, you) the ability to secure some great ‘all in’ rates, giving you the reach you need, and a killer radio creative, for a competitive rate.

Q: In a media budget, what’s an ideal % weight of radio if you are running a 360 campaign?

The optimum mix is likely to vary by campaign depending on sector, the current media mix, and relative effectiveness of individual media.

Radiocentre reports that when a client’s budget is reallocated to radio equally from other media in proportion to current level of spending - total ROI increases.

A great example of this is when a campaign was planned with radio at 20% of the total budget is executed, campaign ROI has been proven to be 8.5% higher than a previously planned campaign with the same budget, but a small % allocated to radio. As demonstrated in the graph below:

For us, that’s a clear indication that radio should be something you consider for your next campaign. You don’t necessarily need to spend big bucks to get you on radio, but we can help you understand what budget levels might be required based on your audience.

Q: What type of creative is generally most effective?

The creative process starts with a clear understanding of your brand, your audience and the targeted goals you wish to achieve.

Working with this, our team begin conceptualising the best way to present your messaging in the most impactful way possible.

You will most likely have 30 seconds to tell all you need to. The listener is busy. Don’t make it complicated and sell every single USP and and offer and a call to action. Less is definitely more, to avoid overwhelming the listener.

You have to know your customer to connect with your customer in a personal, authentic way.

This may sound obvious, but too often clients cast the widest net possible and are terrified to offend or exclude anyone.

The result too often is an ad that grabs no one.

A good radio ad provokes the listener’s imagination. It asks the listener to join in the process of generating the imagery to be evoked in the campaign

When forming a brief, consider the below:

What makes you stand out?

What makes your product or service unique?

What special benefits does your product or service offer that no one else can?

It’s this distinctiveness that will attract people to you.

Similarly, your ad should also seek to differentiate itself from all other ads – so it too stands out.

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If you’re considering radio, want some help understanding if it’s the right media for you or are keen to get started and aren’t sure how, then get in touch, we’d love to speak to you.

What are consumers thinking, feeling, spending & not spending during COVID-19?

If you’re a business owner, you might feel a little like you’re suspended in time at the moment.

News, policies and economic adjustments are happening all the time. It’s a lot. It’s also a lot if you’re also working with a wider team, ensuring their physical and mental health are doing the best they can at this time.

Do you continue with marketing plans?

Is marketing appropriate?

When will my customers be ready to purchase again?

What are they purchasing right now?

What do I want to actively avoid doing?

Phew, that’s a lot of questions, isn’t it?!

Here we have compiled a few of our consumer data sources, a mix of global, UK and industry specific data to show you what people are thinking, right now.

1. Which verticals are consumers cutting back on, and when will they start to spend again? (or in other words…don’t take a drop in sales personally)

   
   Of the people that said they would delay a purchase, what’s interesting is when they would say they’d consider purchasing again.
   
   Now, the caveat is that consumer habits are shifting constantly, so we’d love to see if these still stand months into the pandemic.
   
   What’s interesting is the bouncebackability (soz…we know) of verticals like Luxury items, Concert Tickets and Sporting Events, where the draw, and the ‘treat’ is high if those are things that you love.
   
   Watching re-runs of games, live streamed theatre and gigs just aren’t the same, and don’t scratch the same itch. The same for luxury items - perhaps there’s a perception of self reward for getting through tough times.
   
   Some items - if your income has been stable - might now be in reach for some consumers, if their overall outgoings have decreased.

   
   
   2. Where are they learning about new brands?
   
   

   The dichotomy of the marketing budget.
   
   Cut the biggest expenses to save the bottom line.
   
   Totally. When it’s about preserving jobs, cutting those big ticket costs makes sense.
   
   BUT, and is so often the case when decisions are made in a boardroom not considering what the consumers are up to, consumers across the board say that they find out about new products from:
   
   TV Ads
   
   Social Media
   
   From TV shows
   
   Amongst others.
   
   While the media world adjusts to wildly edited schedules, consider how things may have changed for your brand, and how you may still be able to get out there, in ways otherwise not considered.
   
   
   

   3. What does life look like ‘after’?
   

   How long til we can go on holiday again. Do staycations look like more of the norm for now?
   
   What role does this situation play into the focus on sustainability? We can’t forget one in exchange for the other, so how do we strike that balance?
   
   For those of us in the UK, there’s also Brexit to think about.
   
   Do we knock the notion of the two weeks in the sun on the head for now?

   
   These charts, from Global Web Index’s trend report ‘The ‘new normal’: how consumers are planning to adapt’ highlight how different groups say they plan to edit their behaviour, but how these play out remains to be seen:

4. How you handle your brand now and in the short to medium term, may have long term effects

Initial research from Attest highlighted the impact seen from those businesses who were perceived to not be helping, based on their response to the pandemic.

Not just helping customers, but how they treat their staff has had a measurable impact on brand value in consumer’s eyes during this time, and a misstep will likely have an impact on brands for a while to come.

Sites like https://didtheyhelp.com/ have sprung up, attributing scores(!) to how helpful or unhelpful brands or those in the public eye have been during this time. As our approach is always about helping and educating rather than shaming, per se, we think this might be a little strong.. but that said, accountability is important.

And for those that have ‘carried on regardless’ putting their staff or their customers at risk, will likely see the impact on their bottom line, rather than being overly concerned about appearing on various shitlists.

5. How inclusivity is now much more achievable for many brands, if they choose it.

Brands forced to go online means those that could not engage with your brand previously, now can.

B2B SaaS businesses that have pivoted to share their knowledge, insight and research for free, where previously their model priced them out of many innovative startups’ reach, means they have built their audience and helped out their next potential big customer in the future.

Education courses going online means that for those that could not take the time - or afford the travel - to upskill themselves, now can when it suits them.

This new world has potential to be much more inclusive and fair than the world we left behind in 2019.

While we believe that things will not fundamentally change for the mass market - namely middle-class white, straight, cis gendered western society, if brands are now able to embrace a shift to inclusivity, for longer term gain and not pull up the drawbridge again, we’ll all be better off.

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Written by Victoria Scally

Founder & CEO of We Are All Marketing

We aim to help brands through this time using our knowledge and relentless pursuit to do better marketing.

Digital Marketing: 3 Hidden Tricks

Digital Marketing just got a whole lot more relevant to a lot of brands now switching their strategies and going online.

If you’re just starting out, needing to climb a big old learning curve or just want a wee refresher, we’ve lifted the lid on a few secrets of the Digital Marketing world:

1. Get your tracking set up…properly.
   

Yes, yes, we know. BORING. Snooze. Fest.

But it’s so blimmin’ easy to set up, and basically unlocks a whole world of what’s going on under the hood of your website.

There are loads of options out there, but don’t spring budget on something super fancy when you don’t need to - Google Analytics is free, and does a good job for you - the key is setting up your dashboard so it makes sense for you.

Chances are you don’t really care how many page views your T&Cs got, but you probably care who landed on your checkout page, and maybe didn’t go on to convert.

Give Google Data Studio a whirl for a more visual dashboard, ‘cos if it’s prettier, chances are you’ll want to check it more regularly.

You can also add Facebook, LinkedIn and ALL sorts of other tracking software in to the page code, but even easier is popping Google Tag Manager in (and update your privacy policy to tell your lovely customers you’re tracking their cookies), once Tag Manager’s in place, you can hook up all sorts of tracking within it - saves you bothering your developers, and costly time and budget spent in pasting bits of code.

Digital Marketing channels are only as effective as the tracking that supports them, so get tracking!

2. Snoop on your competitors.

Thanks to certain…voting-user-data-sales-based-indiscretions from a social media behemoth, things got an awful lot easier lately to track what your competition’s up to.

On Facebook, the ‘Page Transparency’ section can be found on the bottom right of every page.

Here you can find:

• Details if the page name has changed

• Access the ads being run by that page

• Or search via the Ad Library

  
  On LinkedIn, you can also access your competitors ads via their pages.

So go ahead. Have a snoop around.

Of course, you won’t be able to see performance, but if an ad has been running for 3 or more months, chances are, it’s working.

Check out any pricing changes, tweaks or strategies you can unearth.

Perhaps your competition has made moves to change their product offering?

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3. Find what others are searching for - and check in on yourselves

Google trends is an amazing tool to check in and see what the world, your current market or prospective markets are searching for.

See also great inspiration for home-made pub quizzes.

Remember when everyone was searching for what a ‘Super Over’ was? Heady days, indeed.

Been caught Googling yourself?

Searching for your own brand if you’re fast growing or in a competitive market isn’t vain, it’s a worthwhile, stopgap insight into how your brand is performing out there.

A free and cheap snapshot into brand tracking. Not flawless, but a good way to get a feel for what the masses are up to.

Are people starting to search for you by name?

Good!

Are people searching for related terms to your category as overall awareness grows?

Good but watch those PPC bids on keywords as things get more competitive.

There are loads more to share, but you’re busy.

Check back soon for the next instalment.

The Power Of Words (in a Pandemic)

By Becks Ryall

Writer, Pitch Coach, Proposal Whiz

Becks is one of our writers here at We Are All Marketing.

She has over 15 years’ experience as a professional writer and pitch coach and has worked for some of the largest companies in the world.

Becks can help you to write engaging copy, compelling proposals and help you to prepare for client pitches, virtually or remotely. 

“I’m not going to lie, I really debated whether I should add the last three words to that heading. 

Words have always been important, right?

You use them every day to communicate with your friends and family; your colleagues and your clients.

Most of us email, text, DM or tweet every day. But working together in this weird, remote world that we find ourselves in, has placed an even bigger importance on the written word. 

Yes. We need to adapt.

Yes. We need to communicate. But I don’t think that we need to radically change how we write or what we write forever. So I popped those three little words into parentheses and decided to write some practical guidelines for writing; both for now, and for when we get through to the other side. 

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Writing to your teams

There are three simple rules. 

Be clear

Give yourself a moment to really think about it.

What are you writing?

Why are you writing it?

What do you want your team or colleague to think, or do, once they have read it?

Then, once this is clear in your own mind, open with that message. If you have something important to say, then do it up front. If you need someone to do something, then ask them. Nicely, of course (there is nothing wrong with a please and a thank you, society has not crumbled). 

In times like this, when people on your teams are reading far more emails than normal and juggling big, demanding (potentially stressful) commitments outside of work they will thank you for just getting to the bloody point.

Once you have got your messaging straight, it’s time to make sure that your tone is clear too. 

The tone of a written communication represents your attitude, or your emotion, towards the reader.

And us humans can pick up on a negative tone very quickly.

The tone of a message can affect the reader just as much as the content and you won’t be able to rely on hand gestures or vocal intonation to adjust what you are saying. It can really pay off during times of heightened emotion to pay extra attention to how your reader will feel once they have read your written communication.

Be accurate

Now, I appreciate that this is not brand new information.

But give everything a read over before you press send.

Fact-check your content, run a quick spelling and grammar check. You don’t want to waste anyone’s time by sending out the wrong information or open up a stream of questions because your timeline doesn’t add up. 

Think too about who you are writing to.

Have you accidentally hit reply all?

Do you need to copy someone in from another team?

Be accurate about your audience too.

Be human

Try and write like you would speak, especially if you are using different ways to communicate.

Don’t be afraid to use contractions. idioms, exclamation marks, etc.

Mix up your language in the same way that you normally would - when we chat to our friends we don’t use perfect grammar, we use a combination of long and short sentences and we ‘umm’ and ‘arr’. 

Look at your timelines, expectations and requests and ask yourself do they seem sensible?

Are they achievable? If your team is working adjusted hours to accommodate child care or dropping food off to an elderly relative do you really need them to get back to you by 5 o'clock? 

And if you’ve sat down and thought about what you are writing and why and decided that your clear message is just to make a colleague laugh, then that’s ok.

There has never been a better time to add a little positivity into your written communications.

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Writing to your clients

Unsurprisingly, the same rules apply. 

Be clear

Written communications to your client are, often, a more formal form of writing.

And while we are all working more remotely, written communications need to become even more focussed, targeted and clear.

Why should your client listen to you now?

How can you help them during the pandemic? Put the time in to both your messaging and your tone.

If you are in the process of making a sale or agreeing a deal with your client, then make sure your sales messages are clear too.

Can you offer a creative way to offer the same solution or product despite the pandemic?

In my next blog post, I am going to be writing specific guidelines for writing proposals and making pitches but if you have any pressing questions right now then get in touch.

Be accurate

This is even more important in the current working landscape. Written communications are going to represent you and your business in a much more real way and you don’t want to appear unprofessional by including typos or bad grammar.

Look at the accuracy of your audience here too.

Yes, you might have spent hours writing that creative, targeted communication but have you spelt the client’s name correctly?

Be human

We are all living in weird times.

Your clients are feeling just as freaked out as you and your team.

Can you speak to them with a more human voice?

Even if it means relaxing your brand guidelines or your house style of writing a little.

Honesty and positivity will go a long way in building human relationships through your written communications.

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A final point from me about business speak.

I know it gets a lot of bad press. But if you work in a technical, super niche or highly regulated industry then business speak can really serve a purpose.

Don’t beat yourself up for using an acronym or spend hours trying to distill technical messaging into more simple language if it isn’t necessary.

The only important thing is that you and your client understand each other. And business speak can form a shared language, promote a sense of belonging; and I think we all need a bit of that right now.”

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Are you looking for more information on how to write a killer proposal?

Or how to deliver the perfect virtual pitch?

Well, watch this space.

We have some practical advice for selling coming up in the coming weeks. 

Social Media In A Crisis

Caught up in conversations about what your social now needs to be in this new world?

There are two sides of a scale, and ideally you want to stay away from either 'burying head in the sand' and 'doom-filled-hyper-realists'.

The bigger your organisation - and the higher your production investment - might make you feel like you need to carry on, BAU.

But ask yourself - can it wait. Even a little bit.

If you're caught up, paralysed with what your brand could do and could say in this time:

1. Be Helpful, if it's relevant to your business.

An interiors business telling you the technology to use to work from home might sound a little odd.

However, offering tips and advice on how to create a great office set up for one person, or if you're currently now sharing a space with your partner or family might help.

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2. Be Fun.

Sharing memes that sit in the same cul-de-sac as your business vision and strategy will work.

Being flippant, muscling in on a topic irrelevant to you, or trying to gain traction for your brand in a way that is inauthentic don't.

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3. Be Flexible.

Does that video have to go out right now?

Do emerging events now mean part of it isn't relevant?

Consider what content might last beyond the next Government Announcement

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4. Be Open.

Be clear with what your business will now do, and what may change.

Update as this changes.

Give useful information your competitors might not consider worthwhile sharing.

Be that brand that in times of stress for your customers were helpful, open and honest.

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5. Be Good.

Be good to your staff, be realistic with what's achievable in this new world, be kind, and be reasonable.

Resist the panic.

Be good to your customers, give them time to come to terms with what's happening, don't pressure sell, sales will still happen, conversions might drop a little.

Be good to society - being a responsible company is good for your brand. Offer help (see point 1), support, guidance, offer without necessarily expecting anything in return. Things feel frantic, so be the calming influence, don't add to the noise.

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6. Think ahead.

All those boutique fitness studios offering free classes might feel like "goodness they're doing a lot for nothing right now".

But think ahead.

Grow your brand, get people to love your classes and they're more likely to come and join you for the real thing.

Plus, and this is a key thing to remember: the more views your Facebook video gets, or visitors to your Instagram Lives, or any interaction means - and this is important - you can retarget them later. 

So you have a lovely, warm, engaged audience, travelling down that funnel, from awareness, to consideration, towards conversion, so while they might not be giving you money right now... they are much much more likely to than if you hit go on your spend when everyone else is going to.

7. Stay on top of it.

Things change. So last week's post about staying open, to a new viewer of your feed suddenly looks out of date.

Remove old posts as you work through things. Update and tweak those that still stand. Remember - new visitors will check out your profile, so keep it up to date.

You got this.

Tips to manage your marketing throughout COVID-19

These times are unprecedented for businesses, small and large.

However if you think on your feet and react to the emerging news and advice as things evolve, there are opportunities to stay ahead.

1. Communication with customers - how you will be helping and supporting staff: a responsible business is a good business.

2. Update often - reduce ambiguity & over communicate. Fake news and rumours will happen, so stay clear and concise with your comms - and authentic.
   
   

3. Tone of voice - should be clear and empathetic. Be careful if your brand tone is ‘challenger’ - toeing the line between straight talking and flippant.
   
   

4. Communicate & collaborate with your peers in ‘competing’ or complementary businesses - coming together to support, share learnings, challenges and ideas in this time is better than putting the walls up and struggling alone - are there ways that working together might help everyone out? Eg the UK’s major supermarkets coming together to issue the joint letter over the weekend.
   
   
   

5. Encourage & reward loyalty - consider subscription models or vouchers, or forward booking discounts. Who Gives a Crap are prioritising their existing, subscribing customers. Independent businesses in Bristol are offering vouchers to use at a later date to support their cash flow now.
   
   
   

6. Be creative (don’t cynically capitalise). Your audience are - or about to be - spending a lot more time at home, so think about the channels they might be interacting with more than before. How can your brand help in an authentic way? Printable kids activities for example if you're a family brand, tips on self-care if you’re self-isolating if you’re a beauty brand.
   
   
   

7. Stay front of mind - This is the time to invest to keep your content front of mind for your customers. There will be an ‘after’, so staying in your customers’ minds throughout will help your brand in the long-term.
   
   
   

8. Redeploy budget - If your audience are going out less, then consider the marketing channels that might be best placed to maintain your Share of Voice. Paid Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, Video On Demand, YouTube, Display ads and TV advertising. Smart use of outdoor like digital ad vans or bus advertising might be relevant to those where buses route through local communities, or where there is a natural ‘hub’ where people will have to head to buy their essentials.

Working from home, for marketing teams

Now, we don’t like jumping on the old bandwagon, but with the unprecedented change in the way companies need to work while we are under measures to stop the spread of COVID-19, our founder Victoria wanted to share some of her insights from working remotely, internationally and onsite with teams over the past few years. We hope this helps you, as a marketing team, if you suddenly find yourself working from home..

“I’ve worked on projects where the team, having never met IRL, been scattered across Western Europe, Australia and up and down the UK. And it’s very possible to deliver great work, when the team has the tools they need to communicate, and you all sign up to communicating in a more structured way. In some ways the enforced distance can give you some time to ruminate on things a little more, so you get to refine your thinking before you sit in front of others.

This new way of working will be an adjustment for some, so if anything, sharing my learnings might be a little helpful to any teams navigating this ‘new normal’, no matter how short term.”

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Marketing Planning

Your marketing plan is the roadmap and direction for marketing teams and key stakeholders.

But it is a constantly changing, fluid document. You just need to evolve it to make sure that it is still useable when you, your stakeholders, and your clients, are working from home.

Have you considered changing up your software? So, rather than relying on version control for a spreadsheet, consider moving to project management software like Trello or Notion.

Software like this also lets you upload visuals and set up a calendar view, so you can track what goes live, on what day, and assign owners, so that each of your team can keep on top of who’s doing what, and what they need to do next. 

Also you could consider setting up approval labels so you can mark campaigns through different phases.

Clarity of ownership, SLAs for feedback and approvals (set up ahead of time) will help you to stay on track to deliver your campaigns on time when everyone is remote.

You might need to get a little ahead of your planning, so you have adequate time to get the feedback (and buy in) from your senior management, finance team or product teams for delivery, but a sketched out forward plan can be firmed up closer to the dates.

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Media Planning

Consider how the platforms mentioned above could also help you to show your different planned media weights, alongside narratives for clear cast clearance, and more.

Where you might have usually expected meetings in person as a media brief response develops, consider how these developing responses might be shared - either as a live, ‘work in progress’ with notes to your stakeholders (or client) as or as static snapshots that you capture at key points as you proceed.

For the short-term, you might consider switching out some media channels in your plan to adjust for the changes in your consumer behaviour - investing more in digital rather than on public transport, for example, as more of your audience start to spend more time at home.  

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Creative

Platforms like Figma allow for creative feedback to be collaborated on directly within a document. This means that you avoid that rather painful trying-to-signpost-to-the-thing-you’re-feeding-back-on as well as writing out the actual feedback in a document where images aren’t easily embedded (hello Word and Powerpoint) suddenly can disappear.

You’ll still need a feedback owner, someone in charge of collating such feedback and keeping everyone on track, but you can distil this into actions for your design team pretty easily.

Figma also embeds into Notion - so you can create something like this example of a pre-made board.

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Content & Copy

For your content strategy, you’ll probably have a way of showing all of your content in plan, but your visuals might be somewhere separate.

Why not use this as an opportunity to move away from sheets and sheets of info, and move to a platform that lets you view and approve in one place? Social scheduling tools like Sprout Social and Planable let you do this - and are, in my view, much better for team collaboration than Hootsuite, but if migrating is a step too far at this stage, then perhaps carving out a separate place to manage your content approvals from your overall marketing plan is a good idea. It could be a mirror Trello board, for example.

Chances are you’ll be using the 80:20 rule for your planned vs reactive content, so it’s probably a good idea to review, and make sure everyone is familiar with your social media policy.

Over-processing social can be the killer of creativity for some teams. Rather than making your team wait on approvals (while some big news breaks, something goes viral that you want to jump on or while you clarify the context of a meme), make sure the whole organisation is signed up to your social media terms and apply, a little bit of trust and flexibility.

It is also a good idea to make sure that your social media teams know how to be reflective of your brand tone, and ensure senior management is aware of how this will work going forward.

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Over-communicate

From C-Suite, to marketing heads, to product marketing managers, to marketing assistants, this new way of working will be weird. If you’re a manager, it can be hard to balance the feeling of being able to check in with your team without feeling like you’re losing sight of what’s happening - and, on the other side of the coin, making sure that you’re not micro managing.

Working from home for marketing teams can feel quite daunting, especially if the rest of the organisation needs clarity on what you’re doing at the moment.

So if in doubt, over-communicate.

You might forget how much those little conversations with your team can shape the direction of what you’re working on, when you’re physically all in the same room, so creating space to talk, share ideas and collaborate is really important to keeping a happy team, while working from home.

And use tech to help you - perhaps it’s Slack, perhaps it’s Microsoft Teams, perhaps it’s regular updates on Whatsapp and group video conference calls.

Explain what you’re up to, maybe you could provide a brief update to your leadership team on what’s happened that day, or that week, as everyone adjusts to being less visible.

If you’re managing a team, actually having everything down in writing can be useful too, so you and they know exactly what ‘s expected, and what they need to be focussing on.

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And while we’re on the subject, video calling

Make time for video check ins and catch ups, but while you do it:

• Be on time

• Be ‘in the room’ - put your phone on silent and close other browser windows

• Pop yourself on mute when you’re not talking - if you’re taking notes the sound of typing could be pretty annoying for the rest of the callers

• Find your lighting: you know the rules you have when it comes to selfies? Apply them to video calling too - pop a light behind your camera, not behind you, so you’re not a big old blur for the rest of your attendees

• Send a quick text, slack message or email beforehand checking with the person they’re good to jump into video. Avoid the ‘X is trying to call you’ panic search for headphones, brushing crumbs off yourself, putting something presentable on, frantically brushing your hair if you’ve added another dry shampoo day…

• Agree where you’re going to video call from and share a link with the group, there are SO many options these days: Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, Skype, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans…give them a go and see which works best for you and your clients.

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Keep up with your non-colleagues too

Keep up with your network - if you’re not going to see them so much for a drink after work, at events, conferences or meetings, then keeping up with each other online is super important too.

Humans are sociable creatures - and us marketers are especially geared towards being people-people, as it’s part of our job. We know that social interaction can be so important for wellbeing, happiness which both impact your ability to work for your team, your busines, brand or clients - so make sure you take the time to reach out and chat.

Talking things through with someone in a similar boat to you can make a challenge that did feel monstrous, suddenly feel achieveable, so reach out, we guarantee it’ll help.

We’ve created a Slack just for this, just for marketers, so fill in this form to join.

Media Buying Q&A: Outdoor Media

Lisa is our media buying extraordinaire.

She’ll wrap anything that moves in your brand, buy up space on Europe’s biggest motion billboard (that’s in London Waterloo Station, don’tcha know) and plan a killer radio campaign for you.

Outdoor and Above The Line can feel quite scary if you’ve never done it before.

Here she shares some of her valuable media insight to help you get started.

Q: How’s best for a brand to get started in outdoor media?

For me it always starts with the audience and what your desired outcome is.

As well as matching your target audience to the right formats in the right locations – we need to look at the activity you are currently doing across digital or offline channels to determine the best strategy and campaign to match.

Q: When’s the right time to invest in outdoor media?

The age-old question – is there ever a right time?

Do we capitalise on our busy periods or do we advertise when we need a push?

The ideal answer is both!

Budgets tight?

By using above the line formats like outdoor, to support your other campaigns at key periods across the year – you will create a longer-term multi-layered campaign affect.

This will maximise your budgets and create an ‘always on’ feeling to your brand, with spikes to support when you need it most.

Q: What’s the difference between a Digital Billboard and a Traditional Billboard?

Simply put, a traditional billboard (known as OOH) is essentially, a massive poster.

These are static and come in a variety of sizes and ratios. You’ve most likely seen these on the side of the road, at a bus stop or on the platform of a train station.

These are bought in two-week blocks (or longer), and have a fee related to the production – for the physical printing of the poster creative.

Digital billboards, or Digital Out Of Home (DOOH), as the name suggests are digital screens in same sorts of locations.

These are growing in popularity and in number, and allow advertisers to plan against the number of times the ad is seen – impacts, or impressions. These can be bought by day part – in the morning, lunchtime or evening, or throughout.

Because the screens are digital, there is no additional spend needed to produce the content for these (unless you want to run a specific campaign of course). The creative can be static, or full motion (with audio in some areas), so with digital, you can run many more options.

Q: What format would you say is the best for a brand to dip their toe into an outdoor campaign, without committing to a long period or a lot of money?

Outdoor has come a long way in the last few years and digital formats now offer clients the opportunity to run last minute video content. Sometimes even with audio.

There are no production costs to move your existing video content to a digital outdoor format, and your creative can be super targeted depending on the location of the site – you could even tie creative into the weather, local and regional news stories or trending hashtags!

With this format you can buy the media in impacts (ie the number of times it’ll be seen) rather than committing to longer term campaigns – meaning less wastage and more for your budget.

There are some amazing sites in great locations like train stations, arenas and supermarkets, so you not only get huge footfall (and opportunities to be seen), but you can deliver highly contextual creative for the location.

Have a new FMCG brand launching? Consider in supermarket digital outdoor campaigns to support the launch alongside your stockist activation plans.

What about a podcast that is perfect for the commute? Why not buy commuter impacts in train station locations?

Q: Is it true that it’s easy to pick up cheap, or even free outdoor space last minute?

Shhhh… Don’t tell anyone but yes.

As we work with all the main suppliers and have great relationships that have been built over the last 16 years there are opportunities sometimes to bag a great deal.

If you are looking for last minute space, it’s always best to have artwork ready to go for the format you desire.

Free space is never a guarantee but we work really hard to gain overshow (ie your ad is shown, over and above your booking times, so you get more for your money), and added value for our clients and their campaigns.

Of course, if you have your heart set on a certain site, location and date to run any campaigns - it’s best to book in advance.

Some of my clients book their desired sites over 2 years out!

Often large advertisers will place a hold on a number of sites, so it’s about pushing them for a confirmation on those sites. With outdoor, once it’s gone its gone! 

Q: What do clients often forget about when they’re thinking about their campaign?

Most clients when designing their creative often forget the format that the message is going on.

A lot of creatives design the same creative to match the other activity and content across other channels.

In theory each format should be designed in a way to reach the right audience and consideration should be taken for the length of dwell time and also the correct font sizes.

Taking outdoor as an example, the simple messages are always the most effective with just 1 call to action and imagery to match.

Q: When are you most likely to be affected by seasonality?

TV campaign costs are affected by seasonality due to viewer figures, as well as National Magazines.

With most other formats like Outdoor, costs will not change due to the timing across the year but due to availability, sites will get heavily booked up at certain times.

If you are an education client for example you will struggle to get any bus, billboard or press exposure in your desired locations if you book less than 9 months ahead of September activity.

Q: What about major events in the year?

This is at the discretion of the main suppliers and certain sites may warrant a premium from time to time.

I can’t stress enough how booking early is always recommended.

Some clients think that it’s a sales tactic to book so far ahead but its genuine and most of them learn this by trying to book too late!

Q: For Digital Outdoor formats, do I have to create videos?

You don’t have to create video content, but research shows that movement in your advertising will generate a more effective and eye-catching campaign.

You don’t have to create a full video – even if you add small GIF’s and animations into your static imagery it can create a difference.

Digital formats allow you to play with your creative and you should have some fun with it.

Q: What format do you expect to see huge growth in from client spend in the next year?

Digital outdoor is growing and static billboards are being dismantled and replaced by digital at a rapid pace.

As buses now look to carry digital formats too – digital transport media is one area that is one to watch along with interactive digital screens.