bISME
THE
Advertising Focus
Insights & advice for 2021 (Part 1)
Fergal O’Connor, CEO, Buymedia
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future. Niels Bohr With this caveat in mind Fergal O’Connor CEO in Buymedia looks into his advertising crystal ball and give us some insight and advice for those considering advertising in 2021. Buymedia has developed an online advertising platform and a set of simple tools to help SMEs plan, purchase, manage and learn from their advertising campaigns Their ethos is to help SMEs compete against bigger brand advertisers by using the same insights and data available to big brands, so SME advertisers can target the right customers in the right place, reducing wasted advertising budget.
From our experience, dealing with hundreds of SME advertisers, we’ve discovered there are 4 key pillars of successful advertising – planning, purchasing, management and learning. If a business can make small improvements to each of these 4 areas it has a massive Impact on the return on advertising investment. In this issue, I’ll be looking at the first 2 key pillars, planning and purchasing and will discuss management and learning in the next issue.
While COVID-19 continues to be the dominant ‘c-word’ of 2021, businesses considering advertising need to be aware of the other dominant ‘c-word’ when advertising to customers – change.
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Step 1
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Plan
Do the research – research companies are paid a lot of money by big brands to give them the latest consumer and media insights. This means that they are forearmed to make better data driven advertising decisions. SMEs on the other hand tend to use limited experience and gut instinct as their planning insights – neither are a good way to achieve the best return on your investment. Buymedia partners with Kantar, Nielsen and the IPA Databank (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) to bring the latest consumer and media research to your planning process. McKinsey in its report, Trends that will define 2021 and beyond, discovered: in nine of 13 major countries surveyed, at least two-thirds of consumers say they have tried new kinds of shopping, with 13, 6% saying they intend to continue to do so.
ISME Member gives us their ideal target customers. We develop a persona and input that persona into Kantar, Nielsen and IPA Databank to generate a media map of what media their ideal customers consume.
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• Don’t buy advertising until… not one euro should be spent on advertising until you have a media map of your ideal customer(s). This used to involve weeks of research, matching your ideal customer against consumer behaviour data and media consumption. At Buymedia we’ve
T H E B U S I N E S S O F I R I S H S M Es
When we look at consumer and media data and insights for 2020, we see shifts in consumer behaviours and attitudes to purchasing a variety of goods and services. There are a number of these behaviours that will continue throughout 2021, regardless of lockdowns. For SMEs considering advertising, your planning process should include some sort of analysis of these changing consumer habits, as they can have a serious impact on the success or failure of your advertising.
Pillar 1 – Planning
