What is Programmatic and should you use it
If there is one thing that you learn from dipping your toes in the entrepreneurial world, it is the fact that “advertisement is king”. This is a simple concept – if no one knows about your products, no one’s going to buy it.
The way advertisement used to work was, essentially, throwing mud to the wall and hoping that some of it would stick. Back in the day, advertisement was meant to let the world know about your product, while trying to convince potential customers to buy the mentioned product.
As technology progressed, things became easier. Now all it takes is to launch an ad campaign is a few clicks. And programmatic is one of the last the latest developments in this regard. It is fun to think of programmatic like this: If in the past you had to convince people to purchase your product, programmatic finds you potential customers who are already convinced about buying your product.
Programmatic 101:
The way online ads work used to be rather rudimentary. Let’s assume that you are selling motor oil. Initially it may sound like a good idea to be buying ad space on a website that sells cars. You hope that some of the people who are buying cars may need oil for their motor.
Programmatic gets rid of the hoping part. Instead of focusing on the website, programmatic focuses on the audience. Targeting your audience based on their preferences means that your ads will be seen by people who like or have shown interest in products like yours. The site doesn’t matter as programmatic will place your ads on any website, as long as the viewer has shown interest in the specific kind of product.
What is programmatic marketing?
Programmatic marketing is a modern marketing strategy that focuses on audience data, to find users who have a higher potential of needing a specific product. Programmatic marketing uses real time bidding, to buy ad space in different websites, where said audience is.
The programmatic marketing system has also changed the way you bid radically. For example, Google has recently introduced Outcome Based Bidding, which allows you to pay for results (outcomes) you want to achieve rather than CPM (cost per impression) and having to optimize yourself. Thus, making it possible for you to customize your ads and bidding to a very precise and meticulous degree.
These tools for programmatic marketing are not only immensely powerful, but they are becoming the norm.
Should I use programmatic?
Implementing programmatic into your marketing strategy is seeing more and more use. That is because programmatic marketing works. If you have well-set goals, and know your customers and their desired buying behavior well, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”.
You will mostly likely need to work with the marketing vendor for the design and implementation of the campaign.
Another point not to miss is to really know your customer – who buys what, when and how, what their objections are, and what’s important for them in relationship with your company. You’ll need to pull the data from your operational systems, review and analyze marketing, sales and customer success team’s data to maker sure you are instructing your vendors right. Ideally your CRM would have been set up to pull this data into one place and help you optimize business every day, not only for the programmatic campaign’s sake.
However, learning in-depth programmatic can be a bit challenging at first. Fear not though, for we have just the right thing for you. Check out Kira Tchernikovsky’s interview with Lachezar Arabadzhiev who explains the latest developments in programmatic with real life examples.
