5 advertising techniques and strategies for you to try

As the pace of digital transformation continually quickens, all industries are challenged to keep up. Advertising is no exception. As advertising becomes increasingly digital, businesses need to find new advertising techniques and strategies that set them apart from their competitors. Current technologies offer advanced techniques that can give savvy firms the advantage.

What is an advertising strategy?

An advertising strategy is a comprehensive marketing plan for how your team will place your product or service in front of consumers and persuade them to buy. To make an advertising strategy effective, thorough research is required. This process includes having a deep understanding of the products or services you offer, your target audience, your competitors, and what your unique selling proposition (USP) is.

How to develop an advertising strategy

Although every organization has a slightly different advertising strategy with its own unique goals, there are some main components that should always be considered in development such as:

1. Determining the target audience
2. Setting key performance indicators (KPIs)
3. Determining the steps needed to reach those KPIs
4. Executing steps and strategies
5. Testing new strategies, messaging, techniques or technology
6. Measuring results
7. Repeating or revising strategies based on learnings

5 cutting-edge advertising techniques

Developing an effective strategy requires an innate understanding of the advertising techniques that are shaping the industry today. Here are five cutting-edge techniques and strategies to consider for your next campaign.

1. Improve decisions at scale through AI advertising

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the advertising industry and 52% of survey respondents¹ say that AI will play a critical or very important role in their jobs over the next twelve months. Therefore, advertisers who are looking to boost their strategy would be wise to realize the benefit of AI in analyzing vast amounts of data to optimize campaigns and drive more impact.

Despite the massive amount of information available to advertisers, 64% struggle to measure KPIs accurately. With the loss of cookies and the increased pressure for privacy, it can be harder than ever to deliver relevant ads to the right people. AI can use contextual signals based on the content, weather and location to help advertisers make better decisions in terms of ad placements and creative.

AI advertising can help marketers and advertisers across a wide range of disciplines, including analytics, targeting, and personalization. Different forms of AI Advertising may include cognitive advertising, conversational marketing, and programmatic advertising. With AI, the possibilities are endless, and when used to make decisions in advertising strategy, can greatly help to scale efforts and improve ROI.

2. Interact with consumers through conversational marketing

A top use case for marketers looking to implement AI is providing highly targeted content to users in real-time. With the challenges that data deprecation brings, marketers are concerned about loss of consumer trust in marketing tactics, and loss of ad delivery precision.

However, conversational marketing can deliver hyper-personalized experiences, without the use of cookies or being intrusive. Conversational marketing is a method that engages consumers in dialogue-driven, interactive advertising experiences at a one-to-one level. It is a great way to interact with consumers in real-time while gaining unique customer insights that you can use in the future to better target your audience.

3. Achieve personalization through predictive targeting

Personalization is becoming increasingly important to consumers and marketers alike. Ninety-nine percent of marketers surveyed by Evergage agree that personalization has some sort of impact on the customer relationship and 78% agree that it has a strong or extremely strong impact.²

With personalization becoming increasingly necessary, marketers will need to think strategically about how they deliver on personalized experiences and stand out from competitors. Some constraints may include ever-changing privacy regulations and a loss of cookie targeting. One way to provide personalized experiences without cookies is through predictive analytics and targeting. A predictive advertising tool works by using the latest in AI technology to analyze relevant data and score users based on the probability of taking a particular action.

Predictive analytics can help anticipate consumer needs, enabling advertisers to save time and money by targeting the right audience the first time and putting ads in front of people who are likely to be interested.

4. Mitigate bias in advertising campaigns

Bias impacts nearly every decision we make, and in most cases this bias is unconscious. Positive or negative, these biases can become ingrained into the tools advertisers use, causing certain groups to become overlooked during campaigns.

Although CMOs and advertising executives strive to remain objective in their campaigns, bias can creep into the data being used and the algorithms deployed. However, AI and machine learning can also be leveraged to identify these advertising biases.

Our AI tools can discover subgroups that are being advantaged or disadvantaged during campaigns, so companies can take proactive steps in mitigating these stereotypes. Through The Weather Company, organizations can better scan for unconscious biases, so brands can more fairly target consumers across their entire advertising ecosystem.

5. Leverage weather targeting and weather-based ads

Also known as weather-triggered advertising, this AI-powered approach combines the power of weather’s ability to drive emotion and action with complex data sets like health conditions, product sales, and consumer activity, into an actionable solution that drives sales.

One way advertisers can see weather’s power to elicit emotions and affect buying behaviors is when you compare the response of an individual on a rainy day versus a sunny day. On a cloudy, rainy day, consumers may spend the day indoors, leading to increased foot traffic or online sales. If they venture outside, they may realize they need to buy an umbrella or rain boots. On the other hand, if it’s sunny, consumers may be more inclined to buy sunscreen or ice cream.

It’s also important to consider where in the world these ads are being placed. For example, New Yorkers may wear shorts and a t-shirt in 60-degree weather, while consumers in Miami may opt for a jacket and long pants. With weather-based ads, advertisers can put the right ads in front of the right people depending on the weather in their specific area and their unique buying behavior.

Learn more about The Weather Company

Whether you already have a strong advertising strategy under your belt or are looking to expand your techniques and stand out among competitors, The Weather Company can support your needs. With an array of AI-powered solutions that don’t rely on cookies, our solutions are designed for businesses looking to better predict future outcomes, automate complex processes and better optimize employees’ time.