Strategy, creative and media buying — leave it with the same team.

In the “olden days” (about 10 or 15 years ago) paid media and content creation were the marketing equivalent of church and state. Content was created with a strategy in mind and then lobbed over to a media buyer who would make sure people saw it (via billboards and bus shelter ads).

While that model might still apply to physical media, the reality is digital media moves too quickly and has too many nuances for this assembly line approach. It’s for this reason you should be looking for the same team to set your strategy, develop your creative and execute on your paid promotions.

In the same way a fine dining chef curates a meal or menu as a complete experience, you should be looking at this as a single process and not 3 separate tactics.

Apart from being seamless and hassle free it makes good sense to streamline your efforts. In fact here are a few reasons your agency partner should be delivering on the whole “meal.”

Good organic content leads to great paid

While a lot of people insist on telling you organic or unpaid social content is dead, I’m still a strong believer that it has its place. In fact steady organic content can and should be a proving ground for your paid content. Think of organic as the canary in the mine — and the people who are regularly creating it know what’s working and what grabs users attention. Good information to have before you put your budget behind it.

Know your audience

Social/digital advertising can be as refined and precise as a laser. You’ve spent all this time and energy (and money), on curating a community filled with metrics and demographic data. Chances are your team doesn’t create content without feedback from your insights, so why not apply that same logic to your ads? Use that targeting to refine your ads and make those dollars go further. Maybe then you’ll stop getting broad, unhelpful metrics data like impressions.

Results are social in nature

Speaking of metrics, social advertising tends to deliver to social metrics (imagine that) — meaning that you have a myriad of analytical options open to you beyond the always vague and highly suspect ‘campaign impressions’. Clicks, view times, engagements, shares…it’s all there to pull apart and find important nuggets. If all you’re getting now is impressions, you’re only seeing a tiny part of the picture.

Fast and efficient

Lastly, it’s just easier. Not much to say other than, why — as a client — wouldn’t you want to have everything in one place? If you need to update the creative or the ad targeting you can count on the same team to do both. Seems like a no-brainer.

I know for a fact there are still some non-believes out there. Those who think the old model is still the best and your creative team and media buying teams should operate separately. But from conversations with clients I’ve heard first hand they see this model as antiquated and cumbersome, and those that can deliver on all three courses are destined to dine alone.

What do you think?