Well, let’s compare it to buying a pair of shoes. You can go cheap, but you know those shoes aren’t going to last long. If you only need them for a special event, well, they’ll do in a pinch. Or you can pay more to get higher quality — a shoe that will serve you well season after season. But sometimes you wonder how much you’re paying simply for a brand name or a trendy style. Are you really getting a bang for your buck?
Premium Price for Premium Results
It’s fair to ask that question when trying to allocate your marketing budget. But when you pay for premium marketing services, you’re not wasting money on a brand name. You’re not paying for status. And as you develop your campaign, you’re also not hoping to just achieve a short-term bump to get through next month. You’re trying to drive needle-moving impact and long-term, sustainable growth. Premium services increase your ability to achieve these goals.
Your company needs an integrated approach with highly targeted strategies that enable you to reach the right audience in the right place at the right time. And that approach takes time and resources to develop. True, this approach will cost more, but you’ll get the results you want. Go cheap and you end up going home empty-handed.
Get What You Pay For
That said, smart agri-marketers should assess what they’re getting from a provider’s premium services. Are the services more precise and solution-driven? Do they generate results? Are they rooted in ag industry expertise and a keen awareness of your audience? Do you have a variety of strategic and tactical options available to you? At Farm Journal, for example, we offer a range of programmatic options, such as:
- Quality first-party data
- Ad placement in a timely and relevant ad environment
- Brand safety and security
- Best-in-class programmatic platforms
- Custom execution
- Conversion tracking
- Campaign optimizations
- An in-house operations team
If your provider is charging you for premium services, you have a right expect these options, which provide a measurable return on investment.
The High Cost of Low Cost
Of course, you can take an economical approach to your campaign to lower your costs, but you also lower your odds of success, and you’re unlikely to receive the services listed above. Using look-alike modeling and third-party data might be priced at a lower CPM but will result in wasted impressions and not a good reach of your desired audience. First-party data enables you to target your ideal customers.
On programmatic ad auctions, where you set a dollar amount for your bids in a demand-side platform (DSP), you can set a low bid price to save money. However, it’s much harder to win your customized ad space in the auction with a low bid. Therefore, you can’t target your audience as precisely. You surrender brand safety and a relevant ad environment. Your ad will be seen, instead, by a lot of viewers who don’t care much because it’s irrelevant to them. Meanwhile, you’re not reaching the people you want to reach.
To achieve your campaign objectives, you need a dedicated team of professionals who understand your goals — a team that provides you with custom reports and strategic guidance so you can reach those goals. You want a team committed to your success, not one offering a bargain-bin, transactional approach. The latter might be less expensive, but just know that your campaign — just like those cheap shoes after a few walks on rainy days — won’t make you happy.
