Do I Need a Programmatic Marketing Strategy?

We won’t make you wait for the answer – yes. If you own a business selling any sort of goods or services, and whether you are a small business or mid-sized, you need to learn about, plan for, and invest in programmatic marketing, which is largely composed of programmatic advertising. 

Programmatic marketing means that you rely on any sort of technology (whether it takes the forms of algorithms, various websites, software, artificial intelligence, and platforms) to perform key parts of your marketing strategy.  

Programmatic, however, does not mean technology makes the decisions. It’s not some futuristic robotic or AI.  Humans make all of the decisions. Technology simply does the mundane tasks so that you can free up your time to focus on higher level business decisions.

So if you’re asking yourself, “Do I need a programmatic marketing strategy?” The answer is simple, “Yes. You do.” 

Here, we’ll explain everything you need to know to get started. And if this is too overwhelming to you, reach out for a consultation. We’ll tell you how SEO Design Chicago can manage your programmatic marketing needs with our “Active Pixel Program”,  a one-of-a-kind system we’ve developed to help our clients get their ads on websites, search results, digital billboards, apps, and streaming services. Our Active Pixel Program helps you get your ads seen in these places for the least amount of money possible. 

 

What is Programmatic Marketing? 

Programmatic marketing tools are ones companies use to have technology increase brand awareness and interactions with potential clients through advertisements.  It’s the systems that allow for the purchasing and selling of digital advertising space in real-time using algorithms and data.

Traditional marketing and advertising – like the kinds of settings you see on TV shows and in movies – involves tons of people negotiating with people, wining and dining, office politics, phone calls, cross country meetings, and more. While that makes for good fiction, in the real world, these types of relationships are very expensive and very time consuming. And unlike what you see on TV and in the movies, the wining and dining is really a lot more whining from various people in boring offices. 

Programmatic removes a lot of the “whining,” a lot of time wasting, and a lot of expensive meetings and travel by relying on technology to handle the negotiations over the purchasing and selling of ad space.  

With programmatic marketing, a company uses technology to set the maximum amount of money they’re willing to pay for their ad to appear on a specific platform (websites, in-apps, before streaming videos or audio, digital billboards, social media and so on) to a very specific audience (based on demographics a company can choose between) and at a very specific time (when people search for certain terms on a search engine, before they watch a certain streaming video or listen to a specific streaming service and more).

At SEO Design Chicago, we have been experimenting with programmatic marketing since it first appeared in the early 2000s. Our in-depth understanding of programmatic marketing helped us brainstorm and invent “The Active Pixel Program,” a proprietary tool that we offer to our clients to set up programmatic marketing dashboards and run regular reports so you can change your digital advertising strategy when you’re not seeing the results you want.

Our Active Pixel Program includes in person or online training on how to use the system, a CRM that regularly updates, ad campaign management, and data reporting. 

 

Who Uses Programmatic Marketing? 

If you’re wondering if you need programmatic marketing, it makes sense that you’d want to know what kinds of companies have comprehensive programmatic advertising campaigns. We did some research and found that companies in nearly every industry have incorporated programmatic advertising into their marketing plans. Here are some brands and companies that use programmatic marketing:

• Beats by Dr. Dre
• Sephora
• J. Crew
• Mattel
• PayPal
• Nestle
• Audi
• Gerard, Hungarian roof manufacturers
• Kellogg

You may not be as big as some of these companies, but if you offer goods and services remotely like them, you should consider programmatic marketing. 

 

 Benefits of Programmatic Marketing

 

Super precise targeting of customers who have some indicators that they would be interested in your brand

 

Programmatic marketing allows companies to target specific groups of people based on indicators of age, income, zip code, marital status, and more. You can even target people who have visited your website before or those who search for terms related to the goods and services you offer. You can also target people who watch specific TV shows, or types of TV shows that stream (and you can also target those who listen to specific types of music or podcasts on streaming audio services).

You can also see what they do when your ad surfaces in front of them. These actions can include clicking on an ad, making a call, doing nothing at all, making a purchase, adding an item to a cart, or inquiring about services or goods. When we talk about targeting, we mean laser focused precision. 

For example, you can target your ads to appear on certain websites to women over 40 who have bought gardening supplies within the last three months. You can show a video ad advertising back to school supplies before a Hulu show to households with college age students.  With programmatic advertising, only the specific customers you’d like to target see your ad. It eliminates the old way of showing “one ad” to “everyone.” And you pay less for more precise visibility. 

You can make fast changes and see real time results

 With real-time data access, companies can change their ads in minutes. That means you can quickly change the people you are trying to reach,  the ad itself, and your maximum bid price.

For example, if a roofing company knows a big storm tore roofs off homes in a specific zip code, they can target companies in a specific zip code with an ad that offers free estimates, 10% off services, or same day estimates. Likewise, if companies are winning every bid, every time, they can experiment with lowering their maximum bid price. You may be overpaying. 

 

Programmatic Advertising is extremely efficient and saves time

Automation makes the ad buying process less taxing for people. The old way involved phone calls, in person meetings and emails, which means your talented staff couldn’t focus on larger issues, like monitoring your online presence or responding to clients.

With programmatic marketing, companies can let technology run ads while they do the things only real people can do really well – like dealing with customers, coming up with great content, making sales and more. 

 

You’ll see a better ROI for a lower price

Programmatic marketing often leads to a higher ROI compared to traditional ad methods. Many studies cite that for every $1 spent on Google Ads, for example, companies see a $2 ROI. That return isn’t always sales 100% of the time. But increased web traffic and phone calls indicate people may be getting ready to make a purchase. And programmatic ads cost way, way less than traditional ads that run on regular tv, or in newspapers, or on websites.

These ads are shown to EVERYONE who tunes into that channel or clicks on that site. There’s no reason to pay a lot to show your ad to everyone in the world, when you really can only sell your goods or services to people in a certain area. 

 

So Do I Need Programmatic Advertising? 

If you’re still reading, and we haven’t convinced you yet, let us be very clear. Yes, yes, yes = you need programmatic marketing. We get that technology can seem scary or too fast paced. It seems like every week, there’s some new app or tool that everyone is using. 

Some tech trends do disappear. Remember when AOL was the top search engine? 

But programmatic advertising won’t go away. Companies need to understand it, and play the programmatic game if they want their business to survive, and more importantly, grow and thrive. 

Studies show this is a fact, not our opinion. Experts have estimated that programmatic advertising will account for 87% of global digital ad spend by 2026. 

So reach out to us for a consultation about programmatic advertising and our unique solution. We call it the Active Pixel Program. We can tell you more about it when we talk. We don’t want to reveal everything in this post – we don’t want our competitors to steal our great idea. But we do want companies out there to benefit from our Active Pixel Program.