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What is a Media Mix & The Most Effective Types [HubSpot Blog Data]

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What is a Media Mix & The Most Effective Types [HubSpot Blog Data]

I’m willing to bet that today, the typical campaign at any brand uses a media mix.

This refers to the process of using multiple channels to meet marketing goals. The question is, how exactly does it help brands better plan campaigns?

Let’s dive into how it works, review some stats, and see some brand examples.

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A media mix is another term for an overview of the channels businesses choose to execute their marketing strategies on. Ultimately, media mix optimization is the process of analyzing the performance of those channels.

Think about the last campaign you saw from one of your favorite brands. What did they do differently that really clicked with you? By incorporating a media mix into your yearly planning, you can narrow down what resonates with your audience.

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Media Mix Example

To see how a media mix works for a campaign, let’s use makeup brand The Lip Bar’s latest campaign: “Something BAWSE is coming.”

To build anticipation around its latest product launch and celebrate its 10-year company anniversary, The Lip Bar launched a multi-channel campaign that reached audiences both online and offline.

First up, website.

media mix example showing makeup brand's campaign on their website

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When you land on the brand’s homepage, you’ll see an image of the CEO with the following sentence “Shark Tank said no, 12,000 5-star reviews later, 100% that bawse.”

Upon clicking on the image, you’ll arrive at a landing page that has a timeline of the brand. From launching in 2012, to opening its flagship store in 2019, then expanding to 1500+ stores in 2021. Once you get to 2022, you see the tagline “Something Bawse is Coming.”

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As you continue scrolling, you reach a section that offers a launch date and time for the brand’s newest product.

The second digital channel the brand leveraged for this campaign is YouTube, publishing a 45-second video showing the CEO’s journey over the last 10 years.

Moving offline, the brand also published billboards in five cities to continue the campaign.

Note how the billboard didn’t use the tagline we saw on social media platforms.

media mix example showing makeup brand's billboard campaign

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The benefit of using a media mix is to leverage different strategies to see which tactics work and lead to better conversions.

The Lip Bar’s latest campaign is a great example of how any brand can leverage channels differently to reach the same marketing goal.

Media Mix Stats in 2022

In January 2022, we surveyed over 600 media planners to discover their strategies, goals, and challenges. Here are some interesting findings:

  • 84% of media planners surveyed leverage a mix of organic and paid media.
  • Email marketing is the most leveraged media channel, used by 1 in 2 media planners.
  • 41% of media planners surveyed will change their media mix in 2022, while 45% will keep it the same.
  • 14% of media planners currently leverage non-fungible tokens (NFTs) while 16% plan to use them for the first time in 2022.
  • 39% of those who use NFTs in their media planning say they have the best ROI of any channel in their media mix.
  • 39% of marketers surveyed say determining the most effective media mix is the biggest challenge of media planning.

Media Mix Optimization

Media mix optimization provides businesses with an understanding of how their messages are coming across to customers. It allows a brand to invest more time and money into marketing strategies that are best suited for their audiences.

Marketers might consider optimizing their media mix if they want to gain some helpful insight into what time and capital is needed to target their audience in a way that gives customers a personalized experience.

But, while media mix optimization is a powerful opportunity for methodizing data collection online, it’s not the best strategy for marketers who employ a lot of traditional marketing techniques, since you can’t really measure the success of a billboard or newspaper ad.

However, to make guided decisions such as what font to use in creative design, when to publish social media posts on various channels, or where to invest resources, this method can be helpful.

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Optimizing a media mix means looking at the analytics and ROI of various marketing strategies. This can be anything from engagement data of social media platforms to views on the newest commercial.

That’s where media mix modeling comes in. If media mix optimization is the “what,” modeling is the “how.” Every model can (and should) look different, depending on your marketing and broader business goal.

Media mix models can be used to analyze the relationship between a dependent variable and an independent variable.

For instance, let’s say a business has a question like, “How did paying for a sponsored tweet affect overall blog traffic?” The business’s media mix model should then accurately depict how a dependent variable – like overall blog traffic – relates to an independent variable, such as investing in Twitter.

For businesses still deciding if a media mix optimization is a good idea for them, we’ve put together key tips to guide you when creating a media mix model. Let’s explore those, next.

Tips for Optimizing Your Media Mix

1. Collect personal level data.

The goal here is to find and focus on analytics that will help provide an accurate picture of how customers engage with your media mix.

Analytics software is expansive and offers an array of tools for use. If you’re in the market for one, the HubSpot Marketing Hub is a great place to go.

Having too many metrics can be confusing and lead to inaccurate data. The best plan is to have an idea of which metrics need to be tracked so they can be right at the beginning.

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A normal media mix optimization process can take anywhere from a few months to a year. So, collecting the right information at the beginning contributes to getting the most accurate information overall.

2. Have a robust reporting process.

When using a media mix, you often combine online and offline strategies. With this in mind, it can be more difficult to measure the impact of a billboard compared to a paid social ad.

That means you’ll have to think outside of the box when evaluating your media mix. For instance, while an online ad will have clear conversion rates you can find, a billboard may require some creative tracking.

Perhaps, you can track the uptick in branded search volume or improved brand recall.

This requires having a robust reporting process that accounts for the events you’ll be tracking – both online and offline.

3. Choose the right platform.

Marketing teams that use CMS or analytics software are already ahead of the game. Software like this is essential to optimizing a media mix because it can give you numbers that would otherwise take some time to figure out manually.

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A brand can analyze its media mix with the use of platforms that collect engagement data in real-time and compile that data into tracking reports.

Look for a platform that can give a holistic view of results across the board, so results will maintain consistency. It’s also good to choose software that specializes in the marketing channels being used at the time.

Because optimizing is measuring a lot of different data at once, stick to as few systems as possible.

For businesses that are in the market for a CMS, HubSpot offers tools that are easy to use for brands of any size.

4. Analyze the data.

We’ve been talking a lot about the kind of data and analyzing that needs to be done in a media mix optimization, but another important factor is being able to interpret and understand that data.

It’s no secret that in the marketing world, there is an abundance of processes and acronyms floating around. While first getting into the groove of understanding them and what they mean can be intimidating, it’s important to know the data being collected and how to use it to your advantage.

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For instance, if a marketing team had especially high click-to-open rates for weekly newsletters, that’s useful information to infer that the next campaign could benefit greatly from an email-marketing rollout. Alternatively, if a marketing team has no idea what a click-to-open rate is, those numbers aren’t going to be helpful — just a little confusing.

Reading data to understand its usefulness is just as important as collecting it.

5. Consider public perception.

Knowing how the public perceives your brand can help fill in some interpretation gaps during the modeling process. In the media mix model, think about how to fit in customer opinion. That way, the numbers will have some customer opinions to define them.

There are a couple of ways to do this.

To better understand your brand perception, monitor your brand mentions on social media. Take note of the positives, the negatives, and the questions. You can also create a survey to know how your customers feel about your company and its services and use a net promoter score.

An NPS asks customers how likely they are to recommend a business to a friend. Knowing this will aid in figuring out how a business fares among the competition in the market. It will also assist in future marketing endeavors.

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For instance, if customers fill out your survey and ask for more personalized Instagram stories, your team could take that knowledge and include it in your next campaign.

This method ultimately gives the media mix optimization reigns to the customer.

Media mix optimization can help your marketing team figure out which distribution channels will best promote an upcoming campaign, and can ultimately help strengthen your marketing strategy as a whole.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Feb. 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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