A few years ago, I was reading an article in AdAge about the “golden age of advertising.” Fresh off of the series finale of Mad Men, the article’s author was retracing the series with rose colored glasses, lamenting the loss of a show that highlighted advertising’s “golden age.” In the article, the author interviewed a few people, one of whom countered his idealism of 1960’s and 1970’s advertising as the golden age. Instead, he argued, we are living in the golden age of advertising. Marketing and advertising today provides us with more channels, more flexibility, more narrative and more creative freedom than was ever available 40 years ago.

Living in the digital age of advertising has provided marketers with the ability to continuously improve and adjust strategies as time goes on without a huge cost of time, resources or existing marketing. With that in mind, this week MarketMatch presents three ways to improve your marketing process, free of major upheaval.

    1. Present Opportunities. One of the biggest mistakes we see in our industry is FI’s inability to look past the current campaign or product to present new opportunities to a target audience. Someone may be the “perfect” credit card consumer, but just isn’t biting at this time. That doesn’t mean they aren’t open to more relationship opportunities, such as a consolidation personal loan. Presenting growth opportunities regardless of your current campaign is an easy way to continuously approve and adjust to create better ROI.
    2. Cut the Fat. Often, we think about cutting fat around cutting some of, or entire, channels. Looking to go more digital? Cut the billboards and radio! Emails aren’t working – focus on social media platforms! Jack Welch, the famous (infamous?) former CEO of GE, took a Six Sigma approach to cutting fat from the employment ranks of the company. The result was a much leaner, more efficient, and top performing corporate culture and workforce. The same strategy can be applied to your marketing. Cutting the underperforming aspects of your marketing plan will result in a much more efficient and top performing plan. Take a look at which media placements aren’t yielding results. What parts of your digital channels aren’t providing conversions? What business development efforts aren’t developing business.
    3. A/B Test. A huge advantage of digital advertising is the flexibility to A/B test messaging and ads, and find out what works best. At MarketMatch, we’re a huge fan of the A/B test. Sometimes even the A/B/C test. Another way to approach message testing is to change your approach and messaging based on channel. While keeping consistency between each of the channels, for the sake of branding and campaign messaging (if it applies), vary the message to find out what works best on a video platform versus display, etc.

What are you doing to continuously improve your marketing? We’re interested! Let us know or drop us a comment below.