"There is often a lack of thoughtful campaign architecture"

Ivano Celia, Managing Director Media Bros.MK How important are planning and goal setting in online marketing? And how do you support your customers in this?IVANO CELIA Objectives are at the very beginning of any planning. This is no different on the Internet. Getting one's own online channels in order, or creating them for the first time, is also an objective and important.I encounter a good and solid basis of own online channels with very many customers. Everywhere they have optimized for responsive design, mobile and tablet, built social media channels and community management, run Google Adwords, SEO and display advertising. Nevertheless, many companies today are dissatisfied with their online marketing because they realize that all the online measures they have taken so far have had virtually no effect on revenue and sales results. What is obviously missing in most of them is an integrated or integral online strategy/communication.Online marketing starts with the right philosophy, needs structured methods and ends with the pragmatic solution. Everything has to be coherent from start to finish and go in the same direction. This is what we have developed over the last three years. Then we divided our services into three areas. Think, traffic, convert. Everything it takes for successful online marketing.MK The variety of online marketing measures is great. How does a company manage to select the measures that are right for it?CELIA Right after the formulation of objectives, which are marketing-centric, comes the definition of potential customers/users. We call this desired customers. We then develop so-called buyer personas with our customers. Semi-fictional personalities. If you work with such buyer personas, you've thought far and wide about your ideal customers. After that, it's no longer difficult to create offers and campaigns that are tailored precisely to these desired customers. For me, this is the most important basis, apart from the objectives, on which an online campaign should be built.MK One focus of your offering is "programmatic marketing. What exactly does that mean and what are the advantages?CELIA The goal of programmatic marketing is to maximize online advertising for closures, so-called conversions, while drawing on all the advantages that online media offer us. So the online campaign should not be seen by every user and at all times, but only reach the right user at the right time in the right environment. As a result, you don't book fixed placements on advertising medium XY, but plan dynamically, in real time, and as comprehensively as possible, but in measured doses.There are various approaches, such as real time advertising or real time bidding. Re-targeting is also part of programmatic marketing. This works with the help of tools and algorithms. These help to achieve a target as efficiently as possible.MK What are the most common mistakes companies make in online marketing?CELIA Probably the biggest problem is that, due to a lack of knowledge and method, detailed plans for online advertising are made without having first thought about the desired customers, their buyer's journey, logical or contextual offers and alternatives. In most cases, a well thought-out campaign architecture is missing. Very few people think in terms of owned media and paid media. Online advertising alone will not get us anywhere. The main reason for this is that today's users have different expectations and behavior than they did five or ten years ago. The good news is, this can be accomplished relatively easily. Those who rethink their online marketing measures now and adapt them to today's requirements will take advantage of all the benefits of electronic media and gain important competitive advantages.MK On your website you offer a "Free Online Check" an. What is the idea behind it?CELIA The offer is completely new, so we still have little experience with it. But what we can already say is that after less than two weeks of publication, we have 28 percent more traffic on the homepage. The attention is great and confirms our positive experience with customers to whom we have already presented it. Companies that have already done the check are surprised at how accurately we find out everything about their inbound marketing channels and uncover gaps in a very short time. The optimization tips are obviously gratefully accepted and gain us a lot of sympathy because the tips are clear, understandable, concrete and easy to implement.MK What are the current trends in online marketing and which measures will gain in importance in the future?CELIA The budget shift from offline to online media will continue in the coming years. In display/banner advertising, the share of programmatic marketing or programmatically planned campaigns will increase massively by 2017 and, according to forecasts, reach USD 37 billion in revenue worldwide. Publishers will develop strategies for dynamically marketing their inventories - in addition to their fixed placements and direct marketing - via RTP (Real Time Pricing) in a completely globalized market via so-called SSPs (Sell-Side-Platforms) worldwide and in real time (i.e. like on the stock exchange).Another megatrend is the massive shift from paid advertising - also called Paid or Bought Media - to owned and Earned Media. By 2020, software spending on marketing tools by marketing and communications departments will also be higher than that of IT departments.And finally, Programmatic TV, the programmatic planning and scheduling of TV advertising, will also take hold, namely everywhere where digital TV and corresponding set-top boxes with an Internet connection are available.Interview: Simon Wolanin