Forrest Gump said “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your going to get”. Sound familiar when it comes to your Marketing spend? Brands invest money in various marketing channels with the objective for people to see your brand, relate to your brand and to then hopefully buy your brand.

In its most simplistic definition, Marketing is about making your brand known so people buy it. For years brands have invested in several different mediums to build their brand equity via radio, TV, print, outdoor, sports sponsorships, trade shows and more.

Although these mediums have been difficult for brands to measure and track how their marketing spend is performing, brands continue to invest billions of dollars annually in them all.

Marketing budgets are like your mom’s best chocolate chip recipe. You have a ton of ingredients but the one main ingredient that makes the chocolate chip cookie so amazing is…the chocolate chip. Marketing is a combination of all the key ingredients in your mom’s cookie recipe. You have some TV, some outdoor, maybe sponsorship and the newest trend is social media and digital.

The social and digital marketing platforms have changed the way CMO’s and Brand Managers approach their marketing spends. Brands still use TV, Sponsorships and other traditional mediums to build their brand name. However, Digital Marketing is the new way/medium for marketers to accurately provide measurable effectiveness of their marketing spends

Why is this relevant today? Because marketing budgets are being axed, taxed and questioned like never before. CMO’s need to speak CFO more than ever. CFO’s everywhere are asking “WHY” am I giving you this $$, what is our return? What’s the cost of acquisition and more. Sound familiar? Combine that with all that is going on in our economy and brands need to be more strategic with their marketing budgets than ever.

Social media and programmatic are the chocolate chip in the chocolate chip recipe. However, not all chocolate chips are the same! What do I mean by that? I mean what we are seeing today is brands spending heavily in social media, in fact in a lot of cases more than they do on traditional media (TV/Radio). But did you know that Search and Social are just one piece of the digital marketing puzzle? According to GlobalWebinex, US 2021, 76% of a consumer’s daily life with digital channels is spent outside social media channels. See below for the breakdown:

The right digital marketing mix can help you find the right consumer(s), measure the effectiveness of your brand message; find more consumers and help you spend less $$ attracting new customers.  In other words, programmatic can be the best chocolate chip in your mom’s recipe!