According to a Hubspot report of 2020, only 35% of marketers believe that understanding the ROI of their campaigns is essential. Though this percentage may have increased in the past year or so, the marketing community must take more concentrated steps to better understand its digital marketing efforts. Digital marketing trends are evolving at a supercharged speed. Brands end up playing catch-up. Digital marketing strategists need a firmer handle on what customers want and the business needs.
This is where a media excellence center comes in.
What is a Media Excellence Center?
A Media Excellence Center is defined as a team of experts brought in to share different strengths and expertise in various aspects of media planning, buying, advertising execution and measurement. They have one goal: to improve returns on ads and digital media investments while enhancing customer experience (CX). Since the Center comprises experts from different niches (think, digital operations, social media experts, product managers, finance heads, and so on), the Center works holistically and with revenue objectives at the core.
A core strength that a Center like this offers is to gauge customer journeys at a deeper level and understand ROAS over a period. When you have a hyper-focused team with varying proficiencies committed to understanding the customer and delivering business outcomes, you adopt a “leave-no-stones-unturned” strategy in your media choices and ad spends.
A Digital Media Excellence Center is also called a Digital Center of Excellence (DCoE). So, if you see both the terms, don’t fret; they are interchangeable.
How to Build a Media Excellence Center
This comprehensive checklist will help you build a result-oriented Media Excellence Center:
Stage 1: Define the business goal
You cannot start thinking about whom you need to add to your Center before understanding why you need one. Goals could include:
- Redefining or narrowing your target audiences
- Building brand awareness using consistent omnichannel marketing
- Formulating a loyalty program
- Boosting return on ad spends (ROAS) and overall marketing outcomes
The goal of the Center needs to be specific; otherwise, knowing how to structure it will be challenging.
Stage 2: Perform a data and personnel audit
Now that you have your overarching objective, take stock of your brand collaterals and personnel. Do you have the required data storage capabilities? What kind of insights has your marketing team been missing? What type of analysis can your competitors do that you can’t? What do their digital ads say, where are they found, and why are these aspects missing in your strategy?
This stage is instrumental because it will help you identify the precise gaps in your current strategies. In addition, it will reiterate the goals for your digital media excellence center.
Stage 3: Identify stakeholders, and create a formidable team
Depending on the first two stages, you would have identified broad areas that need attention. These could be UX, digital marketing, channel-based expertise depending on your brand (social, email, web, etc.), product management, creatives and media buyers. But a robust Media CoE goes beyond core marketing and advertising skills. Other stakeholders include:
Compliance and regulatory experts
Data collection and processing is a complex endeavor. Customers are becoming more privacy-forward in recent times – 86% of respondents in a survey by KPMG expressed concern over their data usage by brands and businesses. Let’s look at this from the brand’s perspective. According to Brad Frager, a Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, “By 2025, 75% of the world’s population will have its personal information covered by current privacy regulations. This reiterates the need for brands to leverage customer data with a deep understanding of customer preferences, terms of service and relevant regulation.”
Finance experts
Boosting your ROAS doesn’t mean arbitrarily cutting ad budgets. Instead, involve financial experts in the funnel to help understand how you can prioritize your ad spends. More importantly, understand the budget vs. revenue outcomes the CFO’s office has in mind to find meaningful ways to contribute to the business.
Quality assurance experts
Include professionals whose sole task is quality assurance. This could be content quality, ad assessment, or outlining brand safety goals, among others. It could also be related to fulfilling campaign guidelines and advertising and data collection regulations.
Ensure that your Center has representation from major stakeholders. Too many people may not be a good idea when you have just started building your Center because it can cause coordination roadblocks. Start small instead. On the other hand, too few people who cannot address all the skill requirements will leave gaps in the results that such a Center can offer. A holistic combination of digital, media, data, finance and regulatory capabilities collectively form a strong foundation for your Digital Media Excellence Center.
Stage 4: Curate your technology stack
Once you have the team, the next step is to set up the technology stack. Your customer’s journey and data are scattered across multiple apps and platforms. Social listening tools and data platforms will help your Center address your customers’ needs throughout the journey with accurate media interventions.
A robust toolbox for your Digital Media Excellence Center must include:
Customer Data Platform(CDP)
A customizable CDP that builds a 360-degree view of your customers through unified customer profiles is vital. It will help your Center understand how to deliver great CX and refine targeting strategies.
A CDP also consolidates first-party and third-party data, building and feeding holistic customer profiles to other tools in your stack for optimal, high ROI campaigns.
Want to meet your customers where they are? Request a demo for ReBid Insights, a customized CDP designed for CX.
Automated Media Buying Platform
Put the finance and digital marketing experts in your Center at ease by including a digital media buying platform that automates media buying. You will also generate a nuanced report of your ad and media spends and other single-view marketing reports.
This tool will also help your Center and CXOs track ROAS, optimize ads and media choices, and gauge marketing ROI.
Empower your Digital Media Excellence Center with campaign optimization, reporting templates and complete control over ad spends. Book a demo for ReBid Buy. today
Demand-side Platform (DSP)
A DSP becomes crucial when a brand wants to embrace programmatic in-housing across various formats like banner, native, DOOH, and others. The bidding process for each campaign can be cumbersome. A DSP streamlines and personalizes this process.
Supercharge your programmatic in-housing strategies with ReBid Desk’s 2 billion user reach. Book a demo today
Master the 4 stages of building a Media Excellence Center with ReBid
A Media Excellence Center can change the game for your brand’s marketing goals, customer needs, and revenue outcomes.
With ReBid, you will get support at every stage as you put together your Center. So bid farewell to fractured digital media workflows with our toolbox.
Unify, integrate, and demonstrate ROI – all of it with ReBid.
