Keys To Teaching Digital Transformation in Media

Media strategy and planning has made some significant changes over the past 10 years, and it is still evolving with the rise of social media, and digital in general as a medium. One of the challenges is teaching digital transformation in media effectively and in a way that creates long-lasting impact. What skills should you be teaching your students to become media marketing experts in this digital era? Here are our recommendations:

Social listening

Social listening is the process of tracking conversations around specific phrases, words or brands, and then leveraging them to discover opportunities or create content for those audiences. Marketers can gain key insights from their customers by listening to their conversations on social media platforms. Using social listening in conjunction with data analytics can unlock a myriad of possibilites that can lead to addressing customer needs in a targeted and personalized way.

An integrated media strategy

It’s essential to create a well-balanced media mix when trying to reach your target market. We recommend teaching how to allocate your annual media budget across four main categories, Traditional – Outdoor – Digital Owned – Digital Paid – Digital Earned. We think it’s important to emphasize the digital channels, as every generation, including Generation X and even Baby Boomers, uses online channels in their daily lives these days. Media marketers are constantly confronted with this shift in user behavior, and the trend to move from traditional to digital channels will continue as the years progress.

Digital Owned entities include your website, mobile apps and social media channels.

Digital Paid entities usually include SEO, PPC and display ads.

Digital Earned entities include any online reviews linking to your product page, any blog posts or any content that has gone viral online.

Of course, this doesn’t mean more traditional channels should be ignored. Even though digital channels are becoming more and more popular, consumers from all generations still spend their time using traditional channels, such as watching TV, listening to the radio and reading print media. Make sure to teach the importance of creating the right balance in the media mix.

Defining media objectives

What is your ultimate goal in your media strategy? Do you want to reach Millenials or older generations? These objectives need to be defined from the very beginning. Additionally, decide which level of the purchase funnel you want to boost. Consumers may also use different types of media depending on what step of the funnel they are at. For example, a consumer at the awareness phase compared to one in the consideration phase may require a different media approach. Also, it’s really key to dig deep into the purchase funnel for each target segment. A Generation Z consumer’s media habits at each step of the funnel may differ from those of a Millennial, so take that into consideration when defining your objectives.

Media planning decisions

Media plan decisions should be driven by population trends and events. In order to make sound media planning decisions, it’s important to analyze key data on these metrics. For example, if you are targeting touristic regions, you will see a high increase in consumers throughout the summer, whereas consumers may remain stable in more touristic regions. These changes should be taken into account when putting together the media plan.

How to teach these concepts

With DIGITAL MediaPRO your students will actively experience media challenges in the digital age and focus on understanding consumers, learn how to optimize digital media in the marketing mix and become experts in digital transformation in only 3 hours.