Business Case Marketing Agency “Cross media or integrated concepts”

General Description

In general a customer marketing agency can be seen as a publisher. The main difference is that marketeers think of one-off events or campaigns to boost sales. They have no intrinsic bond with paper publishing and are therefore not tied to the paper advertising channel.

The marketeer’s are confronted with a range of advertising possibilities but are still strongly focussed on branding. Off course branding is and will main important. But online in context advertising is gaining force rapidly. This mechanism leaves out traditional advertising agencies. Or at least their role will be minimized. In the 4-step approach their specialism will be used for drawing attention only.

Consumer behaviour is increasingly based on on-the-spot decisions and consequently, so will in context advertising be. Companies will want to do this themselves. Based on intensive logging and tracking mechanisms companies will adjust their adds and products on the spot with no agency intervention

In context search marketing techniques will grow rapidly over the next years and challenge the traditional agency’s ability to generate sales conversion with all types of media.

Facts and figures

Forrester predicts a growth ratio of an average 23% in online add spending over the next 5 to 8 years.

Philips Sense and Simplicity Campaign announced to spend 10% of total campaign budget in online advertising.

Search Marketing takes about 30% of total online advertising spending. And will remain growing with about 15% per year

Strategic challenges

1. To offer both traditional and online marketing specialisms to customers.
2. Acquire technology for E-mail Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Search Marketing, In Context Advertising, etc.
3. Define on-the-spot campaigns for their customers.
4. Acquire valuable search terms for their prime customers and optimize search engine activity and website presence.

Implementation

To offer an integrated media approach agencies should ask themselves how to incorporate the desired knowledge. Cooperation with other agencies with different knowledge profiles in order to be able to integrally service the 4-step media cascade seems necessary.
Contract external resources that service digital campaign techniques (outbound SMS, e-mail, video stream, etc) in an ASP model (external services) and build internal knowledge how to optimize these services.

Every marketing effort should contain all 4-steps of the media cascade.
Contract a site/search optimalisation company to realise search terms and relevant content tags. Be aware that constant measuring of conversion ratios is of utmost importance. Those who neglect the power of number will eventually run into a high cost profile.