Secrets to Successful Integrated Media Planning

By Curtis Tingle

Today’s customer is always connected, opening the door for retailers to influence purchase decisions in the moment. But, as retailers strive to reach and activate customers wherever they are in their daily lives, they must first understand what they are saying with their hands (online and mobile) and feet (in-store).

 Audience and location data serve as unifying factors along shoppers’ complex path to purchase. This data is paramount to a successful omni-channel media strategy – but what’s even more important is the right use of online and offline data to create consumer profiles, isolate geo-targets and identify the best channels for targeting specific messages.

 With this in mind, here are three steps retailers should take for delivering a successful, integrated media planning strategy:

1.       Profile Your Customers with Offline and Online Data

Combining what is known about consumers from both offline and online data sources provides a holistic view of a retail audience. Offline data such as demographics, lifestyle and purchase habits, can help identify high-value consumer locations. Online data captured from digital devices brings real-time, consumer-centric insight, that when paired with offline data, delivers a rich picture of the target audience and how, when and where to activate them.

 2.       Target On-The-Go Consumers

Today’s consumer is busier than ever and receives promotions throughout the day from print, in-store, email, Internet and mobile sources. This has led to an evolution in targeting, redefining geography around a true day-in-the-life of the consumer. Retailers must move beyond just targeting consumers based on their proximity to a retail store; rather, the focus has to be on where a shopper “lives” throughout the day, taking into account the full spectrum of multimedia data sources.

 3.       Consider Media as Complementary, not Competitive

Shoppers today need relevant, multi-media touch-points to inform and accelerate their path to purchase. Linking them by audience and location produces media efficiencies, uniformity in messaging and cross-channel optimization. Rather than competing for a consumer’s attention, print and digital media provide retailers an opportunity for another complementary touch-point throughout the course of the day.

Fostering positive responses that lead to purchases is what retailers hope to achieve in advertising – and integrating print and digital media is proving to be the intelligent way to accomplish this goal. An omni-channel media approach allows retailers to deliver a compelling unified voice across touch-points in every promotion. When print and digital media channels are used together, their impact is greater than the sum of their parts.