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Planning Your Marketing in Uncertain TimesAdapt & Retool for the New World

Meeting in-year targets amidst a global pandemic is the biggest challenge faced by marketers right now. On 14 May 2020, ADA hosted a webinar to address this very dilemma.

First, we looked at how things have changed as a result of the crisis:

How are SEA marketers adapting to the crisis?

Fig 1. Marketing Budget Changes in Response to COVID-19

Budget adjustmentsWe conducted a survey of over 200 ADA clients in early May 2020 who represent mid-to-large brands across a variety of consumer-focused industries throughout South and Southeast Asia. They told us:

• Nearly 50% of Southeast Asian marketers plan to scale down their marketing budget.

• Roughly 24% plan to continue spending the same as before.

• Another 24% haven’t decided how to adjust their budget in response to this pandemic.

• A tiny 2% plan to increase their spends to make up for lost business.

Channel Mix: Respondents also told us that a majority of them will shift their focus to digital channels. Hardly surprising, as digital is considered more budget-friendly than above-the-line channels, and also because of the lack of availability in linear TV inventory such as sports.

Marketing goals and prioritiesWhen asked how they have shifted their activities to reflect new goals and priorities:

• New customer acquisition remains at the top of priorities, both pre- and post-COVID-19.

• However, the biggest shift is now seen in customer insights, which is has the next highest increase in importance. The substantial increase to refocus on customer insights reflect marketers’ desire to learn how consumers are shifting behaviours because of the pandemic, and how to retool their existing marketing strategies.

• Attribution comes up next, as many marketers are more conscious about eliminating waste on advertising channels and audience segments that are no longer producing results.

Now to answer that burning question — Should YOU cut your budget?

Should I cut my budget?

Fig 2. Ability to Serve vs Consumer Demand

For those who are still on the fence about cutting their budget in response to the pandemic, the following matrix can act as a decision-making tool.

The matrix (figure 2) looks at the ability to serve against consumer demand; where ability to serve is defined as your ability to serve your consumers despite the pandemic, and whether your consumers still have the demand for your product/service.

For example, if you are in the aviation industry, your ability to serve is almost none since most airports are locked down, and demand for it is also rock bottom because of travel restrictions imposed by most governments.

On the flipside, if you are in the e-commerce business, your ability to serve is not hampered because of pandemic related restrictions and the demand has gone up because people are reluctant to buy at brick and mortar outlets.

When to INCREASE spend• Consumer spend is either unaffected by the crisis

(in the case of many Consumer Goods businesses) or increased, in the case of e-commerce due to shifting patterns of behaviour. High consumer demand coupled with the ability to serve their consumers because they’re not impeded by physical restrictions or have a complete digital experience means e-commerce businesses are now in a position to thrive.

• We recommend doubling down on their marketing budget, i.e. increase spend to get more market share.

When to DECREASE spendWhen the ability to serve and demand are negatively impacted by the pandemic, it is obvious that you should be making budget cuts.

For example, the automotive industry is experiencing a huge drop in demand because people are not keen on big ticket items during the pandemic. Ability to serve is also hampered because of the physical nature of automotive sales; showroom visits and test drives.

For industries experiencing heavy economic shock, spending should be minimised. They should spend just enough so that they don’t completely disappear from their consumers’ minds.

Why Indiscriminate Budget Cuts are a Bad IdeaWherever you fall on the matrix above, it’s likely you’ll deal with some form of marketing budget cut. The first instinct for marketers together with their CEOs or CFOs is to make indiscriminate budget cuts all across the board. This is the most common approach because it requires the least amount of cognitive strain.

However, it is important to remember that not all areas of your marketing budget has the same impact. Making indiscriminate budget cuts across the board might result in short term savings, but could harm your brand in the long run. The figure below shows how indiscriminate budget cuts would reflect across a wide range of your marketing activities.

Fig 3. Indiscriminate budget cuts can harm your brand

Our recommendation is to adopt a strategic approach with the mindset of not compromising on impact when it comes to budget cuts.

Fig 4. Insights and bottom-funnel working media are crucial for your brand

Firstly, there will be a loss of market share to contend with. Disappearing from consumer awareness for extended periods of time will also make it harder for brands to regain market share and trust once the crisis is over.

Next, by slashing their spend on insights, marketers will be left in the dark during times when consumer behaviour continues to shift drastically.

Insights and analytics are more crucial than ever before, because we are living in unprecedented times. Even the experience of past recessions aren’t enough to help shape how we should react to this current crisis, with many experts predicting that things won’t go back to “normal” for another 12-18 months.

Insights will help you understand how your existing customer behaviours are changing, where your new customers might be, and what resonates with them. Analytics can tell you which channels are not working, so you can eliminate waste and channel your budget towards marketing efforts that will help you meet your goals.

Creatives are a good place for massive cost savings. With the aid of creative and video automation tools, it is possible to produce impactful creatives at scale, and at a much lower cost (as much as 50% cheaper). Repurposing existing creative content and editing long-form videos into multiple, personalised short-form content are other ways to keep creatives fresh, while being cost-efficient.

As for working media, top-of-the-funnel media is a good place for cost-cutting as TV inventory is low at this point, and consumers have shifted to digital channels. Conversely, bottom-of-the-funnel performance marketing channels should be a marketer’s primary focus. Efficacy

Strategically, marketers must quickly take advantage of this situation, as the prices are likely to go back up in the next few months. Early movers who take advantage of lowered costs in digital marketing channels are poised to come out as winners when this crisis ends.

Fig 5. Serving digital ads is now cheaper than ever

of these channels aside, they are now more cost effective than ever.

Based on ADA campaign spend for clients, the average impressions served have experienced a noticeable bump, and yet, the cost for serving these ads have decreased dramatically, by as much as 46%.

Why Insights are Crucial for Impactful AdspendWe recommend that 15% of your budget should go towards generating marketing insights.

These are the 4 essential areas where insights can have a positive impact on Return on Investment (ROI):

Guiding your media planning and creative communicationAnalytics can help you generate creatives that resonate with your audience and identify media channels they spend most time on. According to our own campaign data, real-time data-driven optimisation of audience and media channels generate 20% more ROI.

Increasing your chances of fulfilling marketing objectives Insights can increase your chances of success by keeping your marketing plan flexible, helping you make swift strategic decisions driven by real-time insights.

Helping you adopt an audience first approach As opposed to a campaign first, channel first, or creative first approach, which can be highly risky, an audience first approach will emphasise on creating persona-based segments that are most likely to convert. It considers which channels and platforms enjoy high presence from these audiences, and what type of creatives and campaigns are native to the platforms, i.e. most likely to work on those platforms. For example, if your audience is mostly present on LinkedIn, then you need to pique their interest with well researched content that speaks to them in a professional tone. Whereas audiences who are mostly on Instagram would prefer content that is snappy and vibrant, short enough to turn into Instagram Stories.

Identifying bottlenecks and drop-offs in your customer journeyAccording to a recent whitepaper published by Google, properly optimising a customer journey can result in 2x more conversions for digital marketing campaigns.

How to Generate Impactful Creatives at Half the Cost

With the adoption of data and tech, it is now possible to automate the process of generating meaningful creatives at scale. There are creative and video automation tools that can help you:

• Repurpose existing brand assets into brand new creative content that speak to your audience.

• Edit your long-form videos into multiple, personalised short-form content and enhance this with data-driven insights for better targeting.

• Curate hygiene videos quickly and efficiently, so your brand is always visible.

These tools can also help you personalise your creatives to cater to different personas, generate dynamic creatives connected to multiple data touchpoints, explore different formats, and use the ones that work best. All this can be automated, and rolled out on-demand with the power of data-driven tech.

Key Deliverables to Keep in Mind Before Signing off on a Media Plan

As a client, we recommend you do not sign off on a media plan until these key deliverables have been considered:

REACH TV viewership has already fallen and continues to fall across the ASEAN region. Digital reach is now equivalent to, or more than the reach of TV. Most popular TV shows have ceased shooting because of the pandemic, most live sporting events are cancelled as well, including the Olympics.

COST With more consumers moving to digital channels during the crisis, digital now delivers the same impact as TV, but at 50% less cost. Digital content is also 60-80% cheaper to produce than TV content.

FLEXIBILITY Flexibility is crucial when you are marketing on a tight budget. You should be able to target your consumers based on their interests, intent, and be able to control the context in which your ads might appear. Digital allows you to pick who you show your ads to, i.e. the flexibility to choose audiences based on interests and activities, their job functions and purchase intents, as well as their location and behaviour. For TV, you only have the option to choose the lowest common denominator, and slots that are daytime or primetime. Digital also provides the flexibility to tweak campaign settings based on performance, a flexibility that is missing in TV and other traditional above-the-line channels. In these times of crisis, flexibility of your channel can go a long way in delivering positive impact.

ATTRIBUTION Every campaign/content should come with built-in accountability metrics that match back to your marketing goals. Even brand awareness campaigns should have clear objectives that can be measured. If your agency fails to provide clear objectives and methods of measuring them, do not sign off on their media plan.

Also, another important point to note is to have a clearly laid out customer journey. Have it mapped out before you sign off on the media plan. The best laid media plans and media buying strategies will go astray if a customer is lost after arriving at the landing page.

In a nutshell, analytics and insights are more important than ever, and indiscriminate budget cuts are likely to do more harm than good. Consumers have moved to digital channels — some permanently, and if digital isn’t already part of your marketing mix, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon. While times are tough, there are opportunities to capitalise on and the savvy marketer can always come out on top.

Learn more about data-driven strategies and analysis by ADA Experts at www.ada-asia.com.

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