Customer retention vs. acquisition: A media balance
Exverus Media Director Vanessa Pinzon walks marketers through the balancing act
Make new friends, or keep the old? As the saying goes, one is silver and the other's gold.
Brand marketers have to walk a fine line between retaining existing consumers and acquiring new ones for sustained business growth. With paid media strategies, that means retargeting existing audiences while expanding to new-to-brand audiences.
At MediaPost's Planning & Buying Insider Summit in Chicago this September, Exverus Media Director Vanessa Pinzon joined three other media experts onstage to discuss customer retention vs. acquisition. Read the highlights or watch the full conversation below:
Finding new audiences
Q: When everyone's trying to find new audiences, and we're all chasing the same signals, where are you looking?
Vanessa: This is where you have to, as a media planner, think outside of the box. Everything is intent signals right now, and everyone's using that as the definition. But you have to think of evolution and think of adjacent signals: What are they doing? What are they consuming?
I have a descriptor of who the target is and the intent signals. That's great, but all of our CPG competitors are going to be going towards the same thing. So, what is the secondary layer of behavior that may give us an insight to who this audience really is? Is there a way in from a different perspective?
Who owns client identification
Q: Let's look into these nonobvious signals. Is this where we have to rely on the human touch to really talk to the clients, get an idea of what their audience is? Can we ask AI what some of these non-obvious touch points were?
V: I think it all starts with the client brief. I think as we go into this AI era, it's about holding the clients a little bit more accountable to providing us beyond demographic information. Could they share what the purchasing journey is for their consumers? Is there additional information they can share with us that we, as media experts think, maybe there's a way in from this angle versus your traditional [audience profile].
So I think we hold our clients accountable a lot more for providing us with that true direction. Because they are the goalkeepers of their brand, and they are the ones that need to really help us identify the audience.
Customer retention vs. acquisition
Q: Let's say clients’ budgets are halved tomorrow. What would you prioritize? Would you prioritize finding new customers or activating against existing ones?
V: I think it really depends on the business goals. Do you have a strong enough core, and is retaining those customers and that revenue your priority? Or has your base shrunk? Is the category shrinking? And do we need to focus more on the prospecting side and increasing those new-to-brand sales and expanding our audiences?
Incremental budget allocation
Q: [Let’s say your] clients are like, "Hey, I have incremental dollars. We have to use it before we lose it because I need to make sure I comp over it for next year." Where is that money going?
V: I think incrementality is what's going to guide the additional funding. Where is the
incrementality? Is it within the core audience or is it within the prospecting and expanding of the audience?
It's usually a quick turnaround and a quick exercise of asking, are we funding the right approach? [Because] we want to make sure that, at the end of the day, everything gets tied back to the business KPIs, because that's what we're going to be measured on.
About the Author
Vanessa Pinzon is a Media Director at Exverus by Brainlabs, a full-funnel media planning and buying agency, where she oversees strategy for Xponential Fitness, Soules Kitchen (CPG), and Specialty Coffee Association (B2B). Across Vanessa's 18 years in advertising, she's led teams building omnichannel media campaigns at top agencies for retail, pharmaceuticals, finance, and government clients. She also serves on Cal State Fullerton’s Alumni Board of Directors as VP of Marketing and Communications. Follow her on LinkedIn.
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