As the dust settles on 2022 and we start adjusting to this new year, marketers everywhere will be hoping that all the time they spent stressing over budgets at the tail end of Q4 is worth it. Allocating campaign spend is a highly pressurised task that can have a massive impact on the business’ bottom line.
This year, marketers will be under especially close scrutiny. Budgets will be tighter than ever. Every penny, cent, kuruş, and fēn needs to count. It’s crucial, then, that you have the right information to make your decisions wisely.
Attention to detail is a must, and it is especially important to tap into local expertise of the markets you operate in. It’s possible that you might not realise that the most important sales period of the year is between June and August in Australia, for example, if you’re working in an office in London watching the crowds of Christmas shoppers grow larger every day.
The month of Ramadan has its own set of consumer spend and marketing habits, and it changes dates every year as well (22nd March to 21st April in 2023, in case you were wondering). China has the Double 11 shopping festival held on 11th November every year. And in June there are the French Days, an event launched in 2018 and organised by major French ecommerce brands, their equivalent of Black Friday in the US.
All of these events may play a key role in campaign planning over the next twelve months for global brands. You may be aware of some or all of them, but the point we are driving at is that each market has its individual patterns that make them unique. Global marketing teams should be aware of these quirks and respond to them with appropriate campaigns and allocation of budget.
As we’ve mentioned before, global brands must treat their local teams like the precious gems that they are to ensure they can access the insights of these in-market specialists. But there is also a pressing need to ensure that media data management practices are in good shape in order to get the full benefit of these insights; with data from different regions coming in a variety of languages and taxonomies it’s easy to get bogged down and miss the crucial details.
But media data management doesn't have to be difficult. Our own TukTuk solution gives global marketing teams the flexibility to prioritise local data and adapt to the unique workflows and nuances in each market.
As we've said before, global advertisers need to be in control of their own media investment data; but not only should they be shifting away from dependency on external agencies, they need to ensure their own data is in good shape in order to get the maximum out of it.
Data ownership enables brands to combine data points and create a single, trusted source of media truth that the entire business can use. However, they'll only achieve this through good data management practices, with access to real-time insights from local sources. This will allow them to allocate spend to the right areas and quickly change strategy where appropriate. And it will certainly take the stress out of budget planning in 2023.
