Optimizing your media strategy can generate a significant budget release, either for growth reinvestment or return to bottom line.

As your company’s content strategy becomes more sophisticated, your marketing budgets become bigger and more complex, demanding top-notch planning efficiency. Global marketing spend exceeds $1 trillion, around 1 to 2 percent of global GDP and keeps growing faster.
beforehand, this requires stepping back to evaluate priorities and best practices to achieve that, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each type of planning. When blended together, you end up with a highly effective strategy that moves your business forward much more quickly than focusing on a single tactic alone, allowing the investment to be effective. The goal is to be more efficient and by experience, it can be achieved. The key is to progressively incorporate certain practices into your daily planning.

TEST YOUR BUDGET “USABILITY”: FROM CARD SORTING TO JOURNEY MAPPING…ALL YOU CAN EAT UX BUFFET

1-Create a visual spent landscape I used this technique from my storyboarding days and now is a must-use tool in UX design. It’s like pitching the budget to yourself! Take a wall and use as many post-its until you see the full budget ecosystem. It really works.

2-Ensure alignment across units: create an objective analysis of economic, strategic, and marketing-oriented criteria for each brand. Better marketing return of investment (MROI) starts with better and clear objectives.

3-Align your targets: clarify and align mismatched marketing and sales targets, it will bring light into your budget allocation efforts.

4-Consolidate your brand spending: sort your spent in relation to your growth goals and forecast: grow aggressively, grow, sustain, etc.

5-Find relevant drivers of value: made your mission to constantly find new ways to engage and guide customers. New experiences, new channels, research, communications or content, your brand should bring innovation and expertise.

6-Identify the most effective media and channels: spending in the right places will reach more priority customers, whether is online or in-store -or your partner venue- it will most likely to be a hit. Find out where consumers make their decisions. Data-driven media spent is an extremely efficient way to advertise.

7-Country-based budget: Consider the particulars of each country’s multicultural context and shift spending from lower- to higher-priority markets.

8-Generate internal communications: demonstrate to the rest of the organization how the new allocations would benefit the company overall. Every successful planning needs everyone in the company to be involved and supportive.

9-Identify your consumer’s journey: use digital analytics, social media management, in-store initiatives, and post-purchase online service. Understanding the consumer path from research and consideration to purchase and brand loyalty.

 

10-Focus on your consumer’s experience: deliver consistent high-quality content for use across touch-points both online and in-store. This also applies to your partners’ experience, think of them as your ambassadors and evangelist. Create a workshop or a learning event. An online channel exclusively for your partners could be a hit -and a relatively inexpensive- way to get where your audience is.

CONCLUSION:

You can mix and match these UX practices like colors on a palette to create the right vision of your media budget into a successful work of art.

 

Let me know what you think. Thank you!