Feb 10, 2023
Due to national security concerns, the United States Congress has decided to ban TikTok from federal government devices in late 2022. The video-sharing app generates staggering amounts of data on a daily basis, with an American user base of about one hundred million.
This raised a larger question in politics, media, and society at large. Some on Capitol Hill are also proposing a full TikTok ban in the United States altogether. While we’re not in the business of politics, and we’re not going to start here, we would be pulling the digital wool over our eyes if we did not recognize the concerns this could raise for ad agencies.
While the likelihood of a complete TikTok ban across the U.S. is unlikely to happen, the discussion does bring a rather important reminder into the spotlight: diversified marketing.
As long as platforms like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and TikTok dominate the digital landscape, advertisers are forced to play by their rules and work within their technical frameworks to drive the best possible results for their clients. Whenever a new update drops on any platform, it could require your strategy to shift completely from one day to the next.
For example, when Apple released its iOS 14.5.1 update in 2021, iPhone users were granted the ability to opt out of cross-platform tracking. Did digital advertising become extinct as a result? No, but agencies had to adopt a new paradigm for approaching their campaign strategies for their clients.
When you put all of your efforts into a single platform for any of your client’s digital campaigns, there’s an implied risk that performance hinges on the one platform remaining reliable and consistent. If something were to shift rapidly and unexpectedly, would you still be able to continue using that platform as you did before, or would it severely impact the results you’ve expected and projected?
In an era where marketing platforms are constantly innovating and evolving, having a diversified and holistic strategy should not be offered as a luxury. It’s essential.
Today, we’re going to highlight some benefits of a diversified marketing strategy and offer tangible tips to create one for your own clients at your agency. Let’s dive right in.
7 Benefits of a Diversified Marketing Strategy
1. Reach More of Your Target Audience
Implementing a diversified approach to digital marketing opens up more channels for reaching your client’s target audiences. By increasing the number and diversity of outlets used to connect with potential customers, there is an increased chance that your efforts will be seen by more people who may be interested in what your client has to offer.
For example, if you are only running an advertising campaign on TikTok, you could easily extend it to Instagram Reels, which follow a similar format. This could enable you to also reach similar audiences on the platform without having to go through the process of strategizing new creatives from scratch.
2. Diversify Your Risk
Diversifying campaigns also diversifies risk by allocating resources across multiple channels. By spreading out spending over several outlets, agencies can better manage their finances while still investing in quality campaigns that may be more costly but bring greater results than cheaper options with little potential return on investment (ROI).
When diversifying your risk, you’re also creating more financial flexibility for your client’s budget. If a major platform change happens on YouTube that affects your ads’ performance, you can scale back your spend and reallocate more of that investment where you are seeing steadier growth on Facebook.
3. Collect More Data
A diversified approach allows for greater data collection and analysis of customer behaviors across multiple channels. With access to more information from a variety of sources, your agency can further develop its knowledge base about customer demographics and interests which can then be applied to elevating performance for future campaigns.
Gathering data from different platforms also makes it easier for agencies to recognize trends across multiple industries or markets that might not have been detected using only one outlet alone. Depending on the mix of platforms you’re running campaigns on for your client, some may generate metrics that others do not, which you can combine into a single report for a more holistic picture of your ideal customer avatar.
4. More Advanced Tactics
Leveraging a diverse range of platforms grants agencies access to more advanced tools, which can provide greater accuracy when targeting desired segments within audiences based on various criteria such as age group, location, gender etc.
Agencies are also able to better utilize retargeting methods by gathering information from different sources and combining them into one cohesive message or campaign tailored specifically towards groups that have previously engaged with their content or services before. This ensures that each segment reached is provided with relevant content at just the right time during their journey, which encourages further engagement and ultimately leads to an increase in performance.
5: Improved Frequency of Impressions
When you run the same campaign across multiple platforms, you’re also increasing the frequency of impressions that an audience might receive. If they have clicked on your client’s paid search ad and later receive a display retargeting ad later, the brand name and message will continue to persist throughout their entire online session rather than just on a single channel.
6: Greater Upsell Opportunities
With a diverse portfolio of digital products and solutions, your agency sales team can also more effectively land and expand accounts and scale more rapidly. When the client experiences success on one or more channels, this presents an excellent opportunity to upsell to a new channel to further increase visibility to more audiences on new platforms.
7. More Credibility for Your Agency
When your agency has a full product suite that you can offer to your clients, this establishes your brand as credible and authoritative in your industry. Potential clients will view your team as true experts that they can trust as a growth partner, which can then generate more interest in your brand that can ultimately result in more qualified leads.
It’s important to note, however, that we’re not suggesting running a single campaign across 7 different platforms simultaneously if the budget is too limited. Trying to cover too many platforms without the budget to support it could end up negatively impacting a campaign.
For example, if you are working with a $2,500 budget in a large geographic area, running paid search, social, OTT, and display could prove too many platforms at a single time. Instead, focus on the top two that are generating the most return. With the other platforms, you could allocate a small portion of the overall budget for testing to see if results start improving over time.
However, testing, diversifying, and creating an effective “Plan B” strategy for your client are all key components of any successful ad campaign.
How to Implement a Diversified Marketing Strategy for Your Agency
So now that we’ve covered the benefits, how do you actually put them into practice? Let’s start with the first step: Playing to your strengths.
1. Recognize Your In-House Strengths and Weaknesses
Agencies often specialize in one or a few digital services. While one might excel at email marketing and social media, another might brand itself as programmatic specialists.
Take a moment to review where your agency drives the most success for your clients. Are there any services that you currently do not provide and also lack the means to implement at a high level? If you’re looking to expand, start with new products and services that are most adjacent to your in-house offering.
For example, if you are already dominating Paid Search, you may want to consider adding another Google product like YouTube or to dive deep into search engine optimization (SEO) to reach users through organic search listings.
2. Re-Examine Your Supportive Infrastructure
If you want to expand into new services to round out your offering, do you have the internal resources available to do so? From physical equipment to software and team members, take some time to identify what will be needed to make this a reality.
With new clients also comes a strain on internal capacity and bandwidth. Can your team handle another in-house product offering with its current size and workload? If not, you may decide that you need to hire or seek help from a partner.
Beyond resources, use this time to also dive deep into your current processes. Are they designed for scalability or have they been slowly developed over time with no rhyme or reason as your business evolved? Having repeatable, transparent, and timebound processes builds your agency for scale.
3. Train Your Sales Team
New products and services introduce new information and can raise questions from clients. Will your sales team have the confidence to successfully generate new business through your diversified marketing suite? If not, seek out quality sales materials and training to help them develop new opportunities with confidence.
4. Monitor Performance and Gauge Success
Are your new products and services actually contributing to your agency’s success? As you start running new campaigns across a larger suite, monitor your team’s performance against benchmarks that you’ve established for your agency to determine whether you need to make further adjustments to your processes and infrastructure to help ensure profitability and scalability.
5. Want to Skip the Above? Work with a White Label Ad Operations Partner
A white label ad operations partner acts as an extension to your in-house team to outfit your agency with a full suite of digital products and services. Instead of having to build the infrastructure yourself, you can instantly onboard new campaigns for your partner’s own team to manage under your agency’s brand.
When you’re vetting white label solutions, you’ll typically encounter three types of providers: platforms, vendors, and partners. A platform usually involves heavy usage of software and requires some pre-existing expertise to use most effectively. On the other hand, a vendor will provide high-level services but usually only within a single product category, such as SEO or social.
On the third hand (that’s a thing, right?), we have partner. The primary difference between a partner and a platform and vendor is that a white label partner is fully invested in campaign performance and works in lockstep with your agency to provide the infrastructure you need to confidently say “yes” to opportunities that may require services outside of your internal scope. Partners also bring a holistic suite of scalable products to your agency so that you can always prepare to meet your clients’ digital marketing needs.
Say “Yes” to Better Diversified Marketing with a White Label Partnership
At Conduit Digital, we serve established and successful agencies in North America as an elite white label ad operations partner. Outfitting your agency with a full product suite and an infrastructure built on communication, performance, and reporting, you can pursue bigger and better business development opportunities with the confidence that you will have the support you need to deliver results for your clients.
To start your path to partnership, schedule a 20 minute call with us today.
