Ad costs across all media are rising, and the pressure to deliver quality leads is higher than ever. With so many options out there, how can you be sure you’re choosing the right media partner?
Pivoting clients to digital-first strategies is nothing new for media agencies. But it’s getting harder to break through the noise in a world where consumers are bombarded with more than 4,000-10,000 marketing messages daily.
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has been one of the most reliable forms of marketing for years, and its popularity is only increasing as technology advances. And when buying OOH, it helps to find a true media partner to challenge you to think differently and push your brand forward.
What to Look for in A Media Partner
At Wrapify, working with both agencies and brand marketers, we’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to make a strong media partner. Every business has unique marketing needs, but the four attributes below are essential for any quality media partnership.
1. Understanding Your Audience
The first step to an effective media strategy is understanding who you’re trying to reach. Your media partner should be able to help you target your ads based on interests, demographics, and even specific locations.
For example, if you’re an entertainment brand looking to target families, it’s important to step out of city centers and into areas families are spending more time. Like at the park, the beach, or a family-friendly event.
Reaching your target audience often means making a spectacle – or more ideally – a seemingly serendipitous event. This is the exact impact the vehicle SWARMs have provided for brands. Surround your audience, at the right time, to make the most of the opportunity.
2. Trustworthy Inventory
The second attribute of a strong media partner is access to quality inventory. Your media partner should be able to provide you with a list of the varying inventory types available, as well as the reach and frequency for each option.
For example, Wrapify offers national coverage via its network of gig-economy drivers. We can place your ad on vehicles in any city across the United States, and you’ll only pay for the days and impressions that your ad is up.
Media partners usually need capital, creative innovation, and networking to amass good inventory. Thus, finding a media partner with a comprehensive inventory is a valuable way to assess their strength.
But trusting an inventory takes more than just a list of available placements. Your media partner should clearly understand what’s appropriate for your brand. It includes respecting all your sensitivities about the types of environments you want your ad to appear in.
3. Clear and Competitive Prices
The third attribute of a strong media partner is having competitive prices for their inventory. It doesn’t mean you should always go with the cheapest option, but you should ensure you’re getting a fair price for the ad placements you want.
It helps if your media partner can test ads for effectiveness before scaling them. Choosing a secondary or tertiary market to do a pilot campaign can be a great way to get the most bang for your buck. Test, then scale, in the market that matter most to your brand.
Competitive pricing also means being transparent about the prices you’re paying. Some media partners will try to hide their markups in ‘agency fees.’ This upcharge allows them to make a profit on top of the price they’re paying for the inventory.
At Wrapify, we don’t believe in hidden fees. We want you to know exactly what you’re paying for, which is why we include the cost of inventory in our media kits. So, what informs pricing?
It all comes back to your campaign goals.
4. Performance Tracking and Insights
Previously, marketers didn’t have any solid data to justify their ad spending on major billboards in cities and towns. This made it almost impossible to accurately track the return on investment (ROI) of OOH campaigns.
Oh, how things changed!
Now, with newly adapted technology, it’s possible to track the performance of every single OOH campaign you run. This data then becomes useful when optimizing campaigns for maximum impact.
But tracking performance is only half the battle. The other half is understanding how to interpret the data, and use it to improve your campaign. A strong media partner can provide insights and recommendations based on the performance data.
For example, at Wrapify, we use data from our ad campaigns to help our clients improve their targeting, retargeting, messaging, and overall marketing strategy.
We also offer a suite of tools that allows our clients to track the performance of their campaigns. It includes features like:
- Campaign zone heat maps
- Impression reporting
- Net-lift attribution data
Final Thoughts
There you have it: the four attributes of a strong media partner. Keep them in mind as you assess your options and make your decision. We’re confident we have what it takes to be a strong media partner for your brand.
So, look no further than Wrapify if you’re looking for a comprehensive solution that ticks all the boxes. We’d be happy to chat with you about your specific needs and how we can help you achieve your marketing goals. Contact us to learn more.
