Effective targeting paves the way
When most businesses fire up a marketing campaign, they’re looking at it from a cost standpoint. What’s the budget, and what are the expected results for that spend? But while the budget might set the framework for a campaign, it shouldn’t dictate capability. Defining budget isn’t about landing between two pennies at the end of the month: it’s about stretching every dollar as far as it can go throughout the duration of the campaign.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and this couldn’t be more evident in “set it and forget it” marketing campaigns. You can define your budget and pick your parameters, but without hands-on management throughout the course of the campaign, it’s difficult to tell if you’re truly getting your money’s worth. You’ve managed your spend… but have you maximized it?
The transitive property of marketing
Flashback to high school math and you might remember learning the transitive property: “if A=B and B=C, then A=C.” When it comes to marketing campaigns, the transitive property is hard at work. Think of it this way: “if Targeting=Conversions and Conversions=ROI, then Targeting=ROI.”
Let’s simplify it even further by saying that the more effective you are in your targeting, the more efficient your budget becomes. It adds up to greater ROI, made possible through precision spending, made possible through a granular, evolving approach to targeting.
Targeting isn’t cast in stone. At JXM, our targeting packages can be comprised of over 30 different variables, adjusted as the campaign proceeds over the course of the weeks and months. In knowing who we’re targeting, how we’re reaching them, and what we’re spending to get these results, we can identify often-overlooked efficiencies that occur when marketing spend is aggregated monthly or after the campaign concludes.
Active, effective targeting reinforces the key transitive variable in the marketing equation, to improve spend at the other end of the formula.
Spend with efficacy top-of-mind
There’s a big difference between efficiency and efficacy, and it’s easy to confuse the two when it comes to optimizing ad spend. Brands want to be efficient in how they spend money, but over-optimizing or an aggressively conservative mindset can hamper the efficacy of a campaign. The foil is a lean mindset: one that offers flexibility.
Flexibility in targeting is critical in maximizing budget because it allows campaigns to evolve mid-execution. Brands can adapt based on what they learn not after a campaign concludes, but during the campaign, in real-time. It might mean jumping channels to follow a more willing audience; or, it might mean simple tweaks to messaging to improve the conveyance of key value propositions. No matter what form adjustments take, spend needs to follow trend.
Creating the flexibility to adjust targeting mid-campaign starts with how brands approach campaign design. At JXM, we rely on tactics like aggressive ad strategies to help us better-understand what’s happening during a campaign and how to make precision adjustments that optimize spend. This, combined with a penchant for waste reduction and spend scrutinization, balances the scales between efficiency and efficacy.
Spend isn’t about dollars; it’s about results
The concept of precision spend is one deeply rooted in everything we do at JXM. It doesn’t matter if your campaign budget is $10,000 or $10 million—what matters is the ROI you’re able to generate from efficient, effectual spending. Our approach looks at the catalyst for spend: targeting. We’re not just asking “how much?”; we’re also asking “who, what, where, when, and why?” throughout the duration of a campaign, to ensure we’re putting your dollars to work in a way that maximizes results.
For us, precise spending isn’t only about staying within budget. It’s about creating a high level of targeting accuracy that ensures we can measure spend performance over the life of a campaign, even as numerous variables adapt and change to effect results. You’re not throwing money at a campaign: you’re making a thoughtful investment in ROI.
Ready to make your budget go further with precision spending that stretches every dollar to its limit in pursuit of ROI? Tune into JXM today and let’s talk targeting.
