Utilizing Paid Media Channels

Channel Selection, Brand Objectives, and the Marketing Funnel

Marketers have been using paid media, such as television, long before the advent of digital technology. But the number of paid media channels available today has exploded. This landscape is complex and fragmented, making the task of allocating budget across various paid media channels far more complicated.

And as more and more competitors pour resources into paid media, customer acquisition through this approach is becoming more expensive. So, marketers need to be extremely thoughtful in deciding how to allocate their budget across different paid media channels.

The choice of paid media channels starts with your marketing plan—your objective, your target audience, and your value proposition. It also depends on which stage of the customer journey you want to influence; do you want to focus on the top of the funnel, the middle, or the bottom of the funnel?

Let’s explore this further and examine how OOFOS should choose paid media channels. Here is the summary of OOFOS’s marketing plan that you saw earlier.

OOFOS wants to increase its brand awareness, which is currently only 9%. At the same time, it wants to increase its sales 3–4 times. In other words, it wants sales growth in the short run but also wants to build the brand for the long term. To achieve this dual objective, it must appeal to consumers across all stages of the marketing funnel—awareness, consideration, and conversion.

Your choice of paid media channels should be governed by your marketing plan. Below are some common paid media channels.

For insight into how a company thinks about the relationship between its objective, funnel stage, and paid media channel, here is Kate Laliberte, Head of E-commerce at OOFOS, on the types of paid media OOFOS prioritizes at each stage of the funnel.

If we're looking to make sure conversion is fully funded, when the customer is ready to convert, we're making sure that we have a strong presence in paid search. Making sure that our brand search is fully funded, making sure we're funding shopping. Those low funnel converting channels, we want to make sure that we're there when the customer is ready to convert. So we usually start there and then build up from there.

If we want to engage with our customers, we're making sure that we're investing heavily in paid social. So we have very strong and efficient remarketing campaigns in paid social. And then we couple that with prospecting campaigns to make sure that we're hitting them. Once they've learned about the product, and they're starting to engage with it, making sure that we're always there.

And as we go even higher, building that brand awareness, that's where we spend–it's a more expensive channel with linear TV there. But with the always-on strategizing, we're seeing that it's really paying off. We're investing dollars there. We're finding more new customers coming to the brand. And we're finding that our brand awareness is starting to grow.

The OOFOS team found the following results:

• TV was a successful method for raising awareness at the top of the funnel
• Paid social campaigns were good for engagement at the middle of the funnel
• Paid search (SEM) was most useful for conversion at the bottom of the funnel

Kate described how OOFOS uses paid media channels to target particular funnel stages. However, we must remember that the relationship between digital marketing channels and customer acquisition is complex and multifaceted. Many paid media channels can often be used in coordination to impact multiple parts of your marketing funnel.

For example, you can leverage SEM to generate awareness for your brand by using generic keywords. Perhaps a novice gardener is searching for weed management strategies and discovers a new brand of herbicide after searching for most effective weed killers. Similarly, display ads can be useful further down the funnel by retargeting consumers who have already visited your site or otherwise expressed interest. Such advertisements might focus the creative on discounts or other content to convert interested users.

In addition, investment in one channel can help the effectiveness of another channel. For example, ads on TV increase awareness, but they may also drive traffic to your website and eventually help improve conversion. Often, the best way to ensure effective allocation of resources is to start by mapping media channels to the appropriate stages of the marketing funnel, and then adjust the allocation by testing and learning. Case in point, OOFOS has found that paid social, although particularly effective at the consideration or engagement stage, is quite useful across all stages of the funnel, as Kate will explain.

It's really test and learn, and it really depends on what tactic or area we need to optimize. We invest heavily in paid social because it crosses so many different parts of the funnel. We're using paid social for engagement but also for conversion and retention.

We've increased our spend as digital marketing placements have become more expensive. So we look at what our target is for the year from a revenue standpoint, and we make sure we're spending dollars correctly that we're going to cover those needs. We try to look at things to say, OK, paid social, for example, is getting much more expensive.

We'll continue to invest in paid social because we know that channel performs for us. But we'll look and try to be more cautious or conscious of where we're spending our dollars and saying, OK, can we take those dollars–some portion of the dollars we are spending on paid social? And do we want to shift them to new channels where consumers are going that may be less expensive, like new social platforms?

Considering rising costs for paid social, Kate may want to think about shifting some of her paid social budget away from that channel. She has a couple of options:

• Shift some paid social dollars to less expensive social media platforms
• Shift some paid social dollars to other, non-social media channels (SEM, display, OTT video, linear video, audio)

What factors would you want to consider for each of these courses of action before you advise Kate on what to do? Remember to keep OOFOS’s marketing plan in mind here.

In your responses to this question, you may have noted OOFOS’s target audience as a factor. In addition to your objectives, your target audience also informs your channel selection. We’ll go into this topic next.

Channel Selection and Target Audience

The choice of paid media channels should be guided by the audience you're trying to reach and what stages of their decision journey they are in. Let's recall the discussion of OOFOS' target audience.

The average age of OOFOS' current customer base is over 55 years. Many of them are either pain sufferers, customers with chronic medical conditions that cause them frequent foot and joint pain, or people with active occupations, such as chefs, teachers, or healthcare workers, who spend much of the day on their feet and want a product to help relieve strain on their feet.

However, OOFOS hopes to expand its customer base towards a younger, more fitness-minded target audience that they call "Workout Warriors." The primary focus of this segment is less on pain management and more on optimizing their performance through active recovery after a tough workout or intense sports activity.

OOFOS faces the dilemma of attracting younger consumers while still retaining its current core consumers in the 55-plus age group. This is a challenging task since the needs of these customer segments are quite different. This requires careful selection of paid media channels, as well as a thoughtful approach to the creative and messaging aspects of the ads.

As we learned earlier, Pain Sufferers are already well-represented among OOFOS’s customer base and are likely to be actively searching for a solution for foot pain. Therefore, it makes sense to target them with search ads. Since OOFOS’s brand awareness is low, it might be better to use generic keywords (e.g., best shoe for foot pain) in the search ads.

Workout Warriors, on the other hand, are an audience that OOFOS is trying to build. They are less likely to be actively looking for recovery footwear. Therefore, OOFOS should use top-of-the-funnel media (i.e. display ads) in order to make these consumers aware of recovery shoes and OOFOS.

The question of how to balance the Workout Warrior and the Pain Sufferer audiences has been an ongoing debate for OOFOS, as we observed in the previous articles. Here Darren Brown, whom you met before, will tell us how OOFOS tries to develop customer acquisition strategies for these two groups. As you go through this, take note of which type of media Darren feels is best suited to each segment.

Darren Brown, OOFOS, Head of Marketing:

The more somebody needs you, the less you have to convince them. And so when I think about people that move closer to a need state of having to have something like OOFOS, we're in existence and have created a product that's completely aligned with what they need and what will help them feel better.

When I need insurance, I go to an insurance website. I know where to go to find what I need. And so I think what we've done is we've very strategically and very well set up—whether it be through SEO, through our website, through some of the programs we have—an easy ability for people who need us and who desire that kind of a relief, whether it be the orthopedic side, et cetera, to be able to find us. And there's much more we can do there, and we will continue to invest there.

It likely won't always be in the same channel and mediums that we invest to target some of those other consumers, but clearly, that's the group that's adopted us early and has found a lot of relief and a lot of benefit from the brand.

It's the consumer that you go after that is further from the need state with your brand, that you have to convince how much they could really benefit from you, that you almost have to speak to more directly and more often if they're ever going to adopt you. And so that's the balance for us.

The balance for us is ensuring that we never alienate that need-state customer and that we are serving them with exactly what they need, and we're making ourselves available and visible to them. But also understanding that there is a big consumer group out there that is going to take a lot more direct connection if they're ever going to get to that trial and experience level.

To serve customers who have a clear need for OOFOS' product, such as pain sufferers, Darren believes that owned media might be sufficient. Search ads could also be important for reaching these consumers as they are already actively looking for a pain management solution and are closer to conversion.

Darren wants to focus OOFOS' paid media to reach and convince "Workout Warriors" who are further from what he calls the need state. He believes that paid media is more relevant to convince skeptical consumers who are not thinking about the brand or the product category. However, companies also often use paid media for retargeting consumers who are considering your product category or brand but have not yet bought it.

In summary, it's important to choose paid media channels that are relevant for your target segments and the stage of their decision journey. If your audience is unaware of your product, or you need to educate them, top-of-the-funnel media, such as linear TV or OTT, might be useful. If your audience is actively looking for a solution, then paid social or search ads may be a better choice.

Target audience and the customer’s decision journey are essential for selecting paid media channels. Additionally, you also need to consider another key component of your marketing plan: your value proposition.

Channel Selection and Value Proposition

Next, let's consider the role that a company's value proposition plays in the design of its paid media strategy and the selection of paid media channels.

When we first introduced the concept of value proposition, we stressed an important point: creating a value proposition typically involves carefully selecting two to three key benefits that you can credibly offer to your consumers that differentiate you from your competition. These benefits could be functional features, such as a longer-lasting battery for a smartphone, or they could be lifestyle or image-related. These benefits should form the basis for your message in the ad.

As we discussed, OOFOS could choose its value proposition along two dimensions: comfort versus recovery and functional versus lifestyle. Ultimately, the OOFOS team decided that they would position their brand for the "Workout Warrior" segment as a recovery shoe based on its proprietary OOfoam technology.

This value proposition, however, poses a challenge for OOFOS. Recovery shoe is a new concept that most consumers do not know or understand. Studies show that consumers typically think of comfort when buying a pair of shoes. But OOFOS wants to distinguish itself from competitors by highlighting its product as recovery, not comfort shoes.

In other words, the company needs to educate its target audience about the concept of recovery shoes and not just comfortable shoes. This challenge is further complicated by the fact that OOFOS' brand awareness is very low.

The lack of awareness of the recovery shoe category and OOFOS' brand suggests that it needs to work at the top of the funnel to educate customers about the concept of recovery and why OOFOS is uniquely positioned in this area. It also needs to enhance its own brand awareness in this new category.

But it is difficult to educate customers about a new concept with a short display ad. The education process requires a fair amount of explanation, ideally, from credible sources and not just from OOFOS.

In the process of forming its strategy, OOFOS found that it had attracted several high-profile public figures who loved its products so much that they were willing to become its brand's ambassadors. The company decided to use their stories as the basis for a paid media campaign. They call these people their mOOvers.

These mOOvers consisted of professional athletes, such as former NFL quarterback Alex Smith, former professional basketball player and coach Dawn Staley, and several others. OOFOS decided to use TV to tell their stories and educate its target customers about recovery shoes.

You might wonder if TV is the right choice to reach young and active workout warriors. Despite its image, TV still has a wide reach with young audiences. With the advent of connected television, traditional TV shows can be streamed on multiple devices. And you can always choose TV shows such as live sports events that attract a young audience.

Here is Steve Gallo discussing the mOOvers campaign in more detail.

Alex Smith, who was the number one draft pick in the NFL and then had a horrific injury in a game. His recovery was very, very challenging. He went through some very difficult times healing his leg. And when he made an announcement that he was coming back to play in the NFL, we noticed that he was wearing OOFOS. He was in his backyard with his family, and they were popping champagne celebrating the fact that he was coming back to the NFL.

We reached out to Alex, and he said, oh yeah, I found OOFOS in Hawaii. They were recommended to me by some friends. And we started a partnership with him. We captured his journey, if you will. And he became the NFL Comeback Player of the Year. He's a fantastic influencer for the brand.

The other one is Dawn Staley, the women's basketball coach at the University of South Carolina. Dawn was an Olympic player as well as an Olympic coach. But she still works out every single day. As she'll tell you, the aches and pains as you get older become more prevalent and more pronounced. She found OOFOS through a friend.

Dawn had bought about four or five pairs and had them in her car, had them in her office, had them at home. She said, when I'm not working out, I wear OOFOS because it provides incredible comfort and relief from the aches and pains that I have in my knees and ankles. We've used Dawn in our mOOvers campaign as well.

The third one is Olympic athlete Ashley Caldwell. Ashley is an aerial ski jumper. She recently won gold at the Beijing Olympics. She found OOFOS, again, through a trainer that she worked with because Ashley's had a lot of aches and pains and injuries along the way. That's a very high-impact sport when you're jumping that high and landing on compact snow, or they train actually in pools.

OOFOS gave her great relief. And as you know, wearing ski boots all the time can be pretty painful and not the most comfortable products to wear. She wears OOFOS anytime she's not wearing her ski boots or her running shoes. She came to us, and we did a great spot with her around what OOFOS provides her, the benefits OOFOS provides her.

The OOFOS team decided to utilize the mOOvers by creating video content with them and running the ads on TV. Here are some examples of these ads with Alex Smith and Dawn Staley.

Alex Smith, Former Pro Quarterback:

We all have obstacles, challenges at different points in life. I still push myself every single day. And the harder I push myself, the more I find myself drawn to wearing OOFOS.

The first time I put on a pair of OOFOS, it was like someone released the pressure. It was so crazy. When you are recovered and can do more, that has a compounding effect on all aspects of your life.

Stepping into a pair of OOFOS, they're truly one of a kind. There's nothing like them.

Yuma Haidara, Veteran, Marathoner:

In the navy, we had to be combat ready at all times. We were trained for every situation. Marathon training was four months of pushing my body and mind. But within a mile of the race, I knew something was wrong. The pain I was feeling was so excruciating, I needed my friends to bring me my OOFOS.

Never in my life did I imagine making it to the finish line in recovery sandals. When I had my OOFOS on, the way my mind, my body, and my feet felt was incredible.

Dawn Staley, Pro Basketball Legend:

Everybody sees the success. Nobody's mind really goes to what it took to be successful. As an athlete and as a coach, I work out every single day. I wear OOFOS because it provides recovery. And once you try them, you'll never wear another slide a day in your life. They are seriously life-changing footwear.

As Bianca will now share, Rain believes that emphasizing the recovery dimension of the value proposition will appeal across all OOFOS’s audience segments. She also believes that emphasizing people’s authentic recovery experiences through the mOOvers campaign will continue to resonate across all audiences, even as competition intensifies.

Our message to that foot pain audience is still active recovery. I don't think any consumer wants to hear, I'm in pain, so let me sit down. They want to hear, I'm in pain and I want to get back to my life. And so part of what we do with the OOFOS messaging is to say, yes, we acknowledge that you have foot pain. But rather than leaning into foot pain, we lean into the solution of foot pain.

It's not the audience that maybe is the most fun to market to, but it's the reality of who's buying the product. So it's a combination of aspirational creative matched with that media targeting as well.

As more competitors get into the space and as we raise the brand awareness for OOFOS, we have seen this space get a little tighter. And I think part of our approach is really to continue to lean into what makes OOFOS unique. So part of where we've seen success is by leveraging the mOOvers. And their authentic testimonials have really helped us maintain that authenticity in the space and stand apart from our competitors as well.

Now, that's not to say competitors won't copy that strategy at one point, but for this year, it's truly been a driver.

Here are Bianca and Darren reiterating the belief that this message works across target segments.

Bianca Reed:

But what we're finding is the commonality between those groups is the desire to stay active. So whether you're 15 and just starting into a sport, or whether you're 55 and have been in a sport a long time or you're just trying to get back into running, the commonality is you want to recover fast and be able to get back to your sport.

And so we've found, by leveraging mOOvers - and mOOvers are OOFOS's influencers, like Dawn Staley - who would be considered, in some cases, an older influencer, but she reaches both a young audience and a more senior audience because it's more of the respect of that longevity in the sport. And that's what we found is a commonality between those audience groups as well.

Darren Brown:

Historically, we have had a focus on an aspirational consumer for the focus of our messaging. Now, I challenge that we've always lived in that space and not also celebrated our core consumer versus our focus consumer when we have things like the Alex Smith and the Dawn Staley spot.

I think we've got a good mix that we've put out there and shown the breadth within kind of an athletic mindset and within an active-minded mindset. Alex Smith's spot was all about everything he can do now. He's no longer a football player, but he's still a super active guy. He's a dad. He's a husband. Same thing with Dawn. She was an athlete. She is a coach. She's still hyperactive.

But we're also partnered with the principal dancer of the Boston Ballet who is in the back half of her career but highly talented, young, energetic, and is already understanding that she's trying to elongate where she is right now. So I think we've done a good job of mixing it.

I also think we've done a good job of starting to test into targeting our media at that target consumer and not just leaning into, which has been the revenue-driving consumer in that 40 to 55 age range.

By now, you should recognize that your paid media strategy and the choice of media channels are guided by your target segments, your value proposition, and the stage of the marketing funnel that you want to influence.

OOFOS has the challenges of appealing to multiple segments and creating a new category of recovery shoe that most consumers are not familiar with. These challenges drove its decision to invest in the top of the funnel and use TV along with other paid media channels.

Messaging and Creative Choices

The approach OOFOS has taken with its mOOvers campaign—the emotional appeal of recovery and relief emphasized over the functional appeal of the technology enabling that recovery—may appeal to all target audiences, at least for now, but does it work equally well for all funnel stages, too? Remember that the mOOVers campaign is primarily designed to generate awareness—that is, it targets the top of the funnel.

While the goal at the top of the funnel is to create category and brand awareness through authentic testimonials, during the consideration phase, OOFOS must highlight why consumers should consider its shoes instead of a competitor’s, such as HOKA’s. Therefore, at this stage, OOFOS might want to emphasize its unique OOfoam technology that differentiates the brand from competitors. When people are ready to buy at the conversion stage, price, design, and availability might become more important to highlight in the messaging.

In the process of evaluating the messaging of the value proposition, the OOFOS team made some interesting observations about the type of messaging that resonates with consumers at different stages of OOFOS’s marketing funnel. Here is Bianca explaining more about what they discovered.

Within digital, within display, we have different messaging for prospecting and retargeting. So, for example, for retargeting, we've found that technology is the better way to retarget them. Where with prospecting, it's better to introduce them to the brand at a higher level. So we're just changing our approach based on what stage of the funnel they're in as well when it comes to creative.

The terms that Bianca refers to here - "prospecting" and "retargeting" - refer to two different tactics for consumers at different stages of the funnel.

Prospecting is the process of finding, understanding, and building brand awareness with new consumers - to get them at the top of the funnel. In this process, it is very important to present your value proposition in a clear, simple, and compelling way. As Bianca mentioned, for OOFOS, this means introducing the product and its key benefit of recovery without emphasizing the technology.

We have mentioned retargeting already, but it may be helpful to spell it out once more. Retargeting is the process of re-engaging consumers who are already aware of your brand or product. This tactic is therefore more of a middle-to-bottom of the funnel approach. As Bianca suggested, for these consumers, it is more important to emphasize the technology or the functional aspect of the value proposition to convince them that OOFOS is the best recovery shoe.

The important takeaway is that marketers need to consider which dimensions of the value proposition are more likely to resonate (or be deal breakers) at each stage of the customer journey.

Let’s turn to Darren for some closing thoughts on what OOFOS should do to ensure that its value proposition continues to deliver for the company.

There's one key component that I would say is even more imperative than where you focus your dollar. It's that you own the definition of what recovery footwear is supposed to do, and you have the most validation that your product actually delivers. And that's one of the things I think that we've spent a lot of time doing.

It's not necessarily at the forefront of what we have now. I love when other people talk about the recovery footwear category because I know we have the highest-performing product within it. And when the time comes that there's a plethora of options available, having the validation of that pinnacle persona for recovery, as well as having the validation of performance, research, and technology that we have that differentiates us from everybody else, I think that's where we'll be able to win.

Not only by getting the top-of-the-funnel fill rate that increases, but then as people start to look through the funnel and go through consideration, they start to look at, OK, I've got this option or this option or this option. We can elevate ourselves based on having defined recovery footwear for what it should do, as we're the ones that do it best.

Testing and Learning

Keeping your marketing plan in mind, with a careful analysis of your objectives, target segment, and value proposition are critical for the pay channels you choose and the message you hope to convey through them. However, digital marketing is dynamic, and it is important to test and learn to update your assumptions and refine your approach.

For example, the management team at e.l.f cosmetics assumed that a channel like TikTok would be mainly a place to target younger consumers, but they quickly found out that older consumers were also actively engaging in this channel. No rule remains a rule for long in digital marketing, as innovation continues to shake up commerce, and with it, consumer behavior.

In addition to testing which channels are best suited to your target audience, you should also test which creative approaches are most likely to resonate with them. This test-and-learn approach often requires committing a sizable share of your resources for experimentation.

Bianca will explain the approach OOFOS uses so that they are prepared to test their assumptions and make changes accordingly.

It's definitely a process. There's a lot of data that goes into the creative we develop, so a lot of that audience work, a lot of what messaging resonates with each consumer target. We do a lot of versions of creatives.

For example, we'll go to a shoot, and we will shoot for 12 hours. We'll jam in as much as we can. But out of that 12-hour shoot, sometimes we have 60 assets that come out of that. And I say 60 because we would do 10 different versions of TV and video spots, whether that's OTT digital video, and then we pull a lot of digital assets out of that.

So our goal is to test, learn, get insights on that, change messaging, use different cuts of the testimonial to really maximize that creative. But it's definitely a test-and-learn process. And then each new shoot that we go into is an evolution of what we've learned from the previous campaign. So it's definitely a very dynamic process when it comes to creative as well.

OOFOS believed that the video campaigns with mOOvers were the best way to convey the emotional appeal of recovery to its audience.

But as Robyn Wysk explains, some of the channels that performed well for OOFOS were a surprise.

Robyn Wysk, Rain the Growth Agency, Former Director, Media Planning:

For OOFOS, we'd originally thought that for a shoe product, an apparel product, that, typically, someone would want to see the product. However, through a series of opportunities that have come up for OOFOS, we had the opportunity to start testing into audio with Dawn Staley. She had her own podcast.

And that allowed us to see that it wasn't necessarily that there needed to be a visual, which is why a test-and-learn approach is so important and so key for any growing brand. You need to be willing to try something new, and you need to be willing to set aside your previous assumptions so that you can find where the next best place is to put your dollar.

And consumers are a lot different than you might think that they are. Everybody is different. So figuring out where the brand's consumers are and how they'll be responding is really critical.

The effectiveness of audio podcasts showed that OOFOS’s target audience defied expectations about the best channel to communicate the value proposition.

Rain was worried that a channel like audio alone might not be able to convey the recovery benefits of the OOFOS foam technology as effectively as other channels that involve a visual component, such as video.

This example is a reminder to be mindful about testing your assumptions about how your value proposition shapes paid media strategy, and you must be willing to adjust accordingly.

Now that you’ve learned how different aspects of a company’s marketing plan—objectives, target audience, and value proposition—affect paid media decisions, we’ll move on, in the next article, to examining how marketers should understand and interpret the success of these paid media campaigns.