CROSSMEDIA - Precisely target your target audience

CROSSMEDIA: The agency blazes new trails in order to win advertising budgets amidst the competition

CROSSMEDIA is among the largest independent media agencies in Germany and stands for independent and differentiated consulting on modes of communication. Together with WIGeoGIS, CROSSMEDIA have developed a methodology with which sociodemographic data are transferred from postal codes to a smaller-scale honeycomb structure (up to 250 metres in diameter). Based on these honeycombs, analysis modules were developed with which a media campaign can be optimally planned both spatially and specifically to a given target audience.

Success for chain stores

For proper media regulation of a branch via advertisement insert, four questions are relevant:

• Where do new customer potentials exist?
  
• Where do the most profitable customers live?
  
• What is the competitive situation like?
  
• How far from the branches are the households to be advertised to?

The exact knowledge of customer characteristics makes it possible to identify areas with high natural potential for new customers. CROSSMEDIA identifies those honeycombs whose structure most closely corresponds to the customer profile. These potentials areas contain households that, due to their sociodemographics and psychographic properties, would most likely purchase from our chain store and who are thereby predestined for an advertising insert. The customer turnovers at the postal code level determined from point-of-sale surveys are likewise transferred to the honeycomb structure with the aid of the disaggregation method. 

From this, the turnover can be integrated into media distribution planning as a detailed planning factor, for instance through the targeted advertising of weak-turnover areas. The competitive situation is analysed via a gravitational factor that presents the competitive intensity for each honeycomb in the form of a heat map (see image).

Depending on the advertising strategy of whether one wishes to utilise the budget optimally or to woo customers away from competitors, distribution can be further controlled through the CROSSMEDIA competitive score. Finally, the distance from a honeycomb to the nearest branch also determines the probability of a visit to that branch and thereby an advertising campaign’s chances of success.

The optimal media plan

The sum total of the analysis steps described is a media plan that addresses both existing and new customers optimally and in a budget-preserving manner. According to Axel Ahlbrecht, head of KIEZquadrat—local media, geomarketing and retail marketing at Crossmedia: “By linking the individual modules, we get a distribution plan that is tailored to the requirements of our customer, with which we can optimally utilise the budget. Moreover, due to the small-scale honeycomb structure, the distribution area can be transferred to the publisher’s areas of coverage almost losslessly.”