Welcome to the very first edition of Impression Picks! This digital marketing roundup serves as some food for thought for you from Impression’s experts and the wider marketing community. Each month, we will highlight an interesting article, insight and campaign of the month.
This month features thoughts from Senior Digital Strategist, Laura Arens and Digital Strategy Consultant, Isabella Smith. As always, we hope you enjoy the content and insights we provide as a part of our monthly roundups.
Brands need mid-funnel magic to thrive during economic downturn
Within the past years, we have faced many economic-altering circumstances. From COVID-19 to the war in the Ukraine and now what is predicted to be one of the worst and longest recessions for the UK, it has been a challenging time for businesses.
Many conversations are occurring concerning brand marketing and whether to maintain marketing spend at the top of the funnel in order to ensure maximum long-term return. But, could switching tactics drive better results? In his article, “Brands need mid-funnel magic to thrive during economic downturn”, Dan Bowers, Chief Strategy Officer at TMW Unlimited, discusses an alternative idea of how brands thrive instead of just scraping through times of recession.
Dan takes a more unique take on the situation saying we should start in the middle of the funnel. Focussing on end-to-end connectivity of the created ads, ensuring the ads can stretch up the funnel as well as down.
This is a compelling approach that we’re discussing with many of our clients as it can often be overlooked in terms of priorities. We recommend reading this article to see how you could make your own middle-funnel magic.
Read the full article on The Drum
Article reviewed by: Laura Arens
The rise of programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising is one of the most up-and-coming channels within digital marketing.
The UK is leading the programmatic advertising market in Europe and overall advertising spend is predicted to grow to $40.47 billion U.S. dollars by 2026 (Statista, 2023). With more UK businesses looking to explore this channel, you can also look to enrich your marketing mix with advanced targeting capabilities across the entire funnel, creating more touch points across the user journey. This will allow you to reach larger audiences across millions of sites through diverse ad formats.
We are seeing great results with our programmatic clients, for example, a 16.1% uplift in Ad Recall and a 10% uplift in consideration, taking their marketing strategy to the next level. I am excited to see how this space will develop further and which memorable ads we are going to see on our screens soon!
If you’re looking to learn more about programmatic advertising – click here.
Insight by: Laura Arens
easyJet holidays launches ‘Beach In A Box’ kit to sun-starved Brits
After researching the attitudes and behaviours of British consumers towards holidays, easyJet holidays launched its tongue-in-cheek “beach in a box” campaign to bring a bit of summer sunshine to the dark days of winter.
The study found that 65% of adults suffer from the January blues, with 61% finding themselves longing for a beach break and the average Brit spending 3,332 hours per year dreaming about getaways. easyJet’s answer to this was to offer customers the opportunity to build a beach in their living rooms with a DIY beach kit, complete with 20kg of sand, a UVB lamp to simulate the Spanish sunshine, a cocktail kit and a backdrop with the Mediterranean coastline.
By leveraging these insights, the company has helped people to dream about the joy of holidays during the gloomy winter months, while also building engagement in the build up to their Big Orange Sale. This is a fun and creative example of how brands can maximise sale campaigns by using out-of-the-box ideas to build awareness and draw consumers into the top of their funnel.
Things I like
An entertaining campaign driven by research-led insight which gets customers thinking about their summer travel, with easyJet front of mind.
Things I don’t like
Does anyone really want 20kg of sand in their living room?
Campaign reviewed by: Isabella Smith
Look out for our next Impression Picks in April for more digital marketing articles, insights and campaigns to inspire your digital strategy. Have any further questions? Get in touch!