Paid media and digital advertising playbook

Identify best practices for improving your online advertising ROI

How will this playbook help me and my business?

Advertising has never been as complex as it is today, with your audience having access to their brands and products through many different channels. For marketers planning investment in paid media, this gives the challenge of understanding the benefits and options of each channel and selecting the mix that will best fit your objectives. With the insight about profiles and behaviour available from digital media, there is little excuse for advertisers not to target audiences with relevant messaging at the right time on the right device.

This paid media and digital advertising playbook will provide marketers with a structured approach to paid media planning to help exploit these opportunities while managing the risks.

Our paid media and digital advertising playbook teaches you:

How to increase sales through lifecycle engagement
Reporting on media effectiveness
Targeting techniques
Media planning
Media optimization

Who is this guide for?

This guide is aimed at budget owners in companies managing multiple agency relationships:

Marketing directors and managers who are managing integrated online ‘campaigns’
Heads of acquisition marketing
Digital marketing managers

The playbook will also be useful for agency directors and account managers looking to improve the delivery of their media planning and campaign results for clients.

How is the paid media and digital advertising playbook structured?

The playbook is a highly actionable guide structured as follows:

Introduction: Increasing sales through lifecycle engagement
Reviewing and reporting on media effectiveness
Audience and targeting techniques
Setting objectives and reporting
Offer, messaging and formats
Media investment strategy – budgeting investment in media options
Media planning – maximizing reach and conversion, minimizing wastage
Optimization
Resourcing

What is a Marketing Playbook?

A marketing playbook defines the types of communications, best practices and optimization techniques that should be used to maximize return-on-investment for different marketing objectives. They are designed to help you prioritize where you need to focus your efforts, with quick links to relevant resources to help you in each area.

The concept is based on the idea of Playbooks in sports like American Football and Baseball where the coach agrees different attacking and defensive techniques with their team which can be deployed in different situations to help win against their opposition.

In marketing, media is fiercely competitive with multiple competitors and many communications techniques which vary through time. The larger the team in marketing, the more important it is to have an agreed approach which everyone in team follows including different agencies working with the business.

Resource Details

Authors: Dr. Dave Chaffey and Andy Letting
Last updated: Feb 2024
Format: Actionable and practical playbook format, to help you quickly audit your media channels to improve your integrated marketing strategy, with useful further resources linked throughout

About the authors

Dr. Dave Chaffey

Dave Chaffey

Dr. Dave Chaffey is co-founder of Smart Insights, and since 2000 he has specalized in helping businesses improve results from integrated digital marketing and helping individuals develop their skills. For his full profile, or to connect on LinkedIn or other social networks, see the About Dave Chaffey profile page on Smart Insights.

Dave is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognized by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing.

Andy Letting

Andy Letting

Andy has worked across a range of digital transformational projects where traditional businesses try and adapt to the fast-paced world of digital marketing. His greatest achievement to date has to be the evolution of Sky Mobile TV from a multi-million business to a now integral pillar of BSkyB’s retention armoury, now called ‘SkyGo’.