[GUIDE] Programmatic for Small and Medium Businesses 2019

February 24, 2017

Programmatic advertising is one of the fastest growing segments of digital advertising – thanks to its efficiency, flexibility, and scalability.

In short, programmatic advertising allows businesses of any size to compete on a level that was previously reserved for major corporations with massive budgets.

Want to find out how?

Keep reading!

Where does programmatic fit in your marketing strategy?

There are two main ways advertisers approach programmatic media buying; Prospecting and Retargeting. Read on to find out more about each.

Prospecting

Prospecting is used to reach people who have not previously interacted with your brand. 

By placing ads on thousands of relevant websites, you can find new customers in places you might not have thought of before

As an example, say you sell dresses through your e-commerce store and might have previously targeted women between the age of 25-45.

This would be the traditional way of advertising, by leveraging what you know about your main target group to reach more of the same people. 

With programmatic prospecting, you could also potentially reach the mother who is looking for a graduation dress for her daughter, or the boyfriend who is looking for something nice as a Valentines Day gift for his girlfriend.

Artificial Intelligence constantly evaluates and adjusts bids based on hundreds of data points – and optimizes towards where you get the most bang for your buck.

Is Prospecting a direct sales channel?

Usually, prospecting through display advertising serves as part of a larger advertising strategy, to ensure you reach potential customers wherever they are. 

For instance, you might combine your display campaigns with lower-funnel channels like Search or Google Shopping. 

Think of it like this; someone might see your ad while scrolling through the Forbes website. 

They might not interrupt what they’re doing to immediately go and purchase your product – but you’ve significantly increased the chances of them searching for your particular brand when they’re looking for a product like yours. 

Programmatic advertising can be used as a direct sales channel, and the most efficient way of doing this is through retargeting. Read on to learn more.

Retargeting

The purpose of retargeting is to re-engage visitors who’ve previously shown an interest in your brand through some form of interaction but have not yet converted.

On average, 98% of your visitors leave your site without making a purchase. 

Retargeting offers a cheap and efficient way of staying top-of-mind with those visitors, increasing the chances of them returning to your site to complete a conversion.

Here’s an example of a retargeting campaign; Anna runs an online store selling cupcakes for delivery. She’s noticed that her best selling product is a sample basket with 5 different kinds of cupcakes. 

Her least selling product is a plain vanilla cupcake that comes in a pack of 10. 

Now, Anna is looking for a way to bring back the people who’ve visited the plain vanilla cupcake page without buying anything, so she sets up a retargeting campaign with a special offer of a 20% discount for the 5-kind sample basket – and only shows those ads to the people who haven’t made a purchase of plain vanilla cupcakes.

Obviously, her visitors are interested in some kind of cupcake, since they’ve visited her site, but they might not have found exactly what they’re looking for. 

By re-engaging them with a different offer, she increases the chances of those people changing their minds and coming back to make a purchase.

As a small brand, how should we start with programmatic? 

While it may seem like programmatic is only attainable for the bigger brands and budgets, this isn’t the case.

Those with a smaller budget can begin using programmatic by focusing on a retargeting campaign.

When you begin to see an increase in your traffic and conversions, you can shift your strategy towards a “combination campaign”, using both prospecting and retargeting. 

This way you continue to draw new customers to your website, as well as retargeting users if they leave without converting. 

 Once you decide it’s time to raise awareness for your brand, increase your prospecting budget to reach a whole new audience of potential customers.

 At this point in the process, the AI has collected enough data during its learning period to successfully understand and locate your target audience.

 

This is when you will see the most efficiency in your campaigns.

Interested in giving programmatic a try? Visit us at www.match2one.com to find what programmatic can do for your business.