New Year Connected TV Strategies for Fitness Marketers

8 Min Read

Hey fitness marketers, you better be planning your New Year’s ad campaigns. There’s going to be quite a few “New Year, New You” shoppers out there looking to make good on their New Year’s resolutions pretty soon. 

Obviously you’re going to launch paid search and social because those two are reliable performance channels that will generate a good return on investment. But there’s a third direct-response performance channel you may be missing out on: Connected TV. 

Aren’t running any Connected TV campaigns yet? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Here’s what you need to know to start driving revenue, conversions, and site traffic with MNTN Performance TV.

Table of Contents

1. Identify Your Goals
2. Drive High Value Traffic With Prospecting
3. Extend Your Audience on Web & Mobile
4. Bring Them Back to Convert With Retargeting
5. Measure Your Performance

Viewers & Advertisers Are Switching to Streaming

Before we dive into strategy, here are some stats on why you need to be on Connected TV. 2020 has seen solid growth in ad-supported Connected TV viewer adoption. According to research by Nielsen and the IAB: 

• Total streaming TV viewing time increased 74% year over year in 2020. 
• 73% of Connected TV viewers watch ad-supported services.
• Of that 73%, 45% watch ad-supported CTV the majority of the time.

So how can a fitness marketers make the most of the Connected TV opportunity? 

1. Identify Your Goals

CTV ads can drive direct-response performance similar to paid search and social. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, Connected TV as an ad channel affords a couple different options to drive traffic and conversions.

• Prospecting | If you’re trying to drive new, highly-qualified site traffic that’s likely to convert we recommend starting with a prospecting campaign.
• Retargeting | If you’re looking to take advantage of current site traffic, or traffic driven by your prospecting campaign, CTV retargeting is a good option.
• Combo Approach | A full funnel Connected TV strategy is ideal as you’ll harness its effectiveness to bring shoppers through the full sales funnel. 

Whether you go with prospecting or retargeting (and we recommend you do both), know that they’ll deliver solid site traffic and ROAS with an efficient use of your budget. Advertisers on the MNTN Performance TV platform have averaged the following benchmarks across retargeting and prospecting campaigns: 

• Site Visit Rate | 1.87% 
• ROAS | 4.4X

And while your campaign performance will be determined by your goals, Performance TV is able to deliver results like that because it excels at reaching in-market, valuable prospects thanks to its precision audience targeting. Let’s dive into how prospecting campaigns benefit from this advantage. 

2. Drive High Value Site Traffic With Prospecting

MNTN Performance TV is fully integrated into the Oracle Data Cloud, the world’s largest CTV data provider. Its access to tens of thousands of audience categories means you can target based on a wide range of attributes. 

Use Performance TV’s audience builder to create custom 3rd party audiences that are a good fit for your brand and tap into the New Year vibe. Here are some tips to keep in mind when building out your prospecting audience.

• Go Big With Fitness Audiences | Oracle offers thousands of fitness-oriented audiences; search keywords that matter to your brand and select the audiences that make sense. 
• Add New Year Audiences | Oracle’s seasonal audiences can do a lot of the heavy lifting because they include shoppers who have a history of buying at this time; search for New Year shopper audiences with a fitness slant. 
• Combine Your Audiences with In-Market “and” statements | Add as many audience segments as possible, and then combine them with an in-market “and” statement to ensure you’re reaching viewers who are looking to buy. 
• Competitive Conquesting | Tap into audiences who have shopped at your rivals and bring them over to your side. Search your competitions’ name in Performance TV’s audience builder to add these viewers to your audience.

For ad creative considerations, incorporate elements that would be useful in introducing your brand to a new shopper. Also be sure to lean in on the New Year seasonality. 

• New Year Lifestyle Imagery | You not only want your audience to see what you have to offer, but also how it’ll make them feel. Incorporate lifestyle visuals of people enjoying your products, and be sure to tap into the “New Year, New You” vibe. 
• Persistent URL | Since Connected TV doesn’t allow for viewers to click on an ad, you need to make sure your audience knows where to go. Include your URL, either along the bottom or in a corner, throughout the ad. 
• Commanding CTA | Include a visual and audible CTA to prompt viewers to take action.

3. Extend Your Audience on Web & Mobile

Omni-channel reach is crucial since so many shoppers hop from device to device. You’ll want a consistent ad presence wherever your audience is spending their digital time.

With that in mind, every Performance TV campaign comes with ads that are served across web and mobile. These are great for creating an omni-channel presence for your campaign that keeps your message top of mind. 

Here are some best practices to keep in mind for the prospecting campaign creative that will accompany your Connected TV ads. 

• Keep It Visually Consistent | Match your ad aesthetic with that of your Connected TV ads; this will help your audience connect the dots between the two. 
• Match Your Message | Use similar or the same language in your accompanying ad to help deliver a consistent message.

4. Bring Them Back to Convert With Retargeting

On average across the web, 92% of first time site visitors don’t convert. So, you’ll need a retargeting campaign to convince the majority of your audience to come back and make a purchase. 

Performance TV retargeting leverages the same omni-channel approach as its prospecting counterpart. You get the added benefit of retargeting ads served on other devices that feature dynamic product carousels with items you want to showcase, or those that a user may have viewed or added to their cart. 

Here are a few retargeting audience segments advertisers on our network have deployed with success: 

• Highly Engaged 
  • 2+ views to specific product page
  • 0 products added to their cart
  • Who they are | People who have shown enough interest in a specific product to view its page multiple times.
• Cart Abandoners 
  •  1+ products added to their cart
  • Who they are | People who added items to their carts but never purchased.
• Lingering Prospects
  • > 2+ site visits
  • > 0 products added to cart
  • Who They Are: These people know your brand, and care enough to come back to your site, but aren’t converting.

Your retargeting campaigns will reach viewers who are familiar with your brand and have seen what you have to offer. That affords an opportunity to get a little bit more specific with your creative approach.

• Connected TV Creative: 
  • Get Aggressive | These shoppers are lower down on the sales funnel now, so consider offering this group more aggressive promos to convince them to convert. 
  • Focus on Your Offering | These shoppers already understand your brand, so make your product offering the focus.

• Accompanying Ad Creative: 
  • Sell Them What They Want | Deploy a dynamic ad carousel that showcases the items they viewed on your site or left in their cart.  
  • Stay Aggressive | Include the same offer as featured in your Connected TV ad to keep it top of mind and entice a conversion.

5. Measure Your Performance

Connected TV advertising requires accurate cross-device measurement—shoppers aren’t converting on their TV screens after all.

MNTN uses Cross-Device Verified Visits, which is our proprietary technology that measures any user visits to your site following a completed in-view display of your ads, in a window of time defined by you. It’s fully integrated into Google Analytics, so you can measure and verify your performance using the leading 3rd party analytics platform as well.

Different Tactics, Same Strong Results

Whether you’re looking to drive new prospects into your sales funnel, or see them through all the way to conversion, Connected TV has a place in your New Year ad strategy as a performance marketing channel. 

We highly recommend you tap into higher streaming television viewership to reach your audience on an ad channel that offers a compelling experience. If you’re interested in adding Connected TV to your New Year marketing mix, check out what Performance TV has to offer. It’s built to deliver revenue, site visits, and any other important metric you have in mind—so you can kick off the New Year right. 

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