By: Deborah Cohen, VP, Customer Success Manager

Over the past few years, many organizations have grown more customer-oriented, bringing organizations to the realization that customer success is inseparable from the success of their businesses. For customers to feel satisfied with the product, they first need to achieve success interacting with it.

What Customer Success Means to Us 

Customer success can vary in different industries, but as a SaaS company and the proud owner of Skipper, to us, customer success means that our product helps our users achieve their business objectives. Our platform has been designed with the customers’ needs in mind. We began development by tracking our customers’ journeys and identifying their requirements for a user acquisition campaign management platform. At every stage of development, we considered our customers’ wants, needs, and pain points and how we would address them. As a result, our SaaS platform is designed to help campaign managers and app marketers increase the effectiveness of their campaigns while reducing their workload and maximizing their time. 

Our platform was designed based on the needs we recognized in the campaign management community. Unlike other solutions, we built Skipper around the need itself instead of creating a need to attribute our solution to. We consulted with campaign managers around the globe to ensure our platform would meet their needs and address their pain points. As a result, we have successfully developed a platform that allows users to simultaneously manage user acquisition and media campaigns across various channels and platforms. 

Our Customers’ Needs… 

CMO’s, campaign managers and other marketing professionals often find themselves trying to manage various campaigns across various channels, all at the same time. Trying to keep track of campaigns stretching across various media platforms or the success of mobile app marketing campaigns can become overwhelming and demanding. 

The challenge often begins before the management stage, with studies showing that social managers can often take up to 30 minutes to set up a campaign per platform. With each campaign utilizing an average of at least six platforms, this means that social managers are wasting three hours of valuable time on set-up alone, leaving less time for optimization and the development of new campaigns. 

…and How We Address Them 

Our platform, Skipper, was designed to address this issue. Our unique algorithm was designed to automate the user acquisition process, allowing campaign managers to maximize their time and focus it on other projects. While it may be our algorithm, it goes by your rules. The platform is designed with a rule-based engine, allowing campaign managers to define a set of parameters across various media channels and campaigns. 

The platform not only automates the entire process but also optimizes it. Using advanced automation technology, our KPI indicator helps campaign managers meet business goals by providing a clear view of the campaign’s success with an indicator graph and notifications, all visible from the user dashboard. The system allows users to select a KPI within any defined timeframe, while the indicator shows the campaign’s progress in real-time. 

Advanced dashboards aggregate all the data into one comprehensive location, allowing campaign managers to see the bigger picture and identify patterns. In addition, our user-oriented approach allows our customers to see their success in real-time, giving them the ability to make revenue-increasing decisions based on real data. 

How to Create a SaaS Platform Based on Customer Success 

Working on a SaaS product designed for campaign managers and marketers to run mobile marketing and app advertising campaigns can be challenging. The process comes with many ups and downs, and the client-side in particular can be complex. 

Creating a smooth onboarding flow, clear documentation, and constantly tweaking the system to meet our quality assurance standards, took work and dedication. Still, our team is committed to designing a SaaS user acquisition platform that focuses on our users’ needs. Skipper was created based on that exact notion. 

Both our product and R&D teams invested many days and nights into our platform with one goal in mind – developing software that brings added value to social and mobile marketing professionals and helps them create efficient and compelling campaigns with minimal time and effort. 

Where Do We Go From Here? 

Although our product is designed to meet our users’ needs today, the world of app advertising and app marketing is constantly changing, and when it comes to social media, it’s crucial to stay relevant and up to date. At Zoomd, we understand that the social and cultural environment is constantly shifting, and we are happy to develop and evolve our platform to meet our customers’ changing requirements. 

Our goal is for our clients to achieve customer success, and to achieve that goal, we need their help. That’s why we take client feedback seriously, from our new customers who only began using our platform to established clients who have been with us from the beginning. We appreciate the value every user adds to our design and use feedback to take our platform to the next level of efficiency and productivity. 

As we learn more about our customers and their needs, our product will undergo changes that are all part of the growth process and simply the next step in our continued journey towards making user acquisition as smooth and straightforward as possible. 

In Conclusion  

Skipper focuses on the users’ needs. Giving customers the opportunity to use our product for growth and to move their business forward is what keeps us going, constantly developing and evolving our platform. Despite the never-ending changes that are an intrinsic part of the marketing industry, our dedication to our customers’ success is a constant factor you can rely on. We are committed to adapting and meeting our customers’ past, present, and future needs. 

Media planning strategies need to be revisited by businesses that are looking to make it in the post-pandemic world, because the tactics that worked in the past are no longer relevant.

30-second summary:

• Mobile-first approach more important than ever, as global mobile subscribers is expected to become 5.7 billion by 2023
• Media planning objectives require cross-departmental collaboration for increased efficiency
• Silos disrupt and complicates workplace communications. 83 percent of executives claim their organizations have silos, and that 97 percent of them are aware that it has a negative effect.
• Implementation of media plan must be a collaborative effort
• The best way to measure success of each campaign would be directly tied to each specific goal, the teams that worked on it, and the value to be derived from the media.

Initiatives surrounding media planning are one of the hottest topics for marketers and advertisers worldwide, as they explore ways to make it out of the post-pandemic world in one piece.

The tactics that worked in the past may no longer yield the same results, especially considering consumer behavior has totally shifted in the past year. As such, it’s back to the drawing board for those taking part in media planning. But as with most other types of business-related strategies, it is far easier said than done.

Media plans help determine the best way(s) to convey messages to target audiences. In many ways, they unify general marketing, online marketing, sales, and advertising strategies.

Considering the fact that the first few steps tend to be the hardest, here are some no-fail approachable tips to get started on the media planning process.

First and foremost: Think like a customer

Before starting, it’s important to put the lens of consumer reality on every insight, channel, and anticipated behavior. This is the best way to set the stage for a realistic strategy and approach.

When thinking like a customer, you may realize that the “mobile first” approach would be best, especially when you consider the fact that more than half of all web traffic is mobile, and over four-fifths of time spent online is spent on mobile devices.

The total number of global mobile subscribers is expected to become 5.7 billion by 2023, which is 71 percent of the population.

Create a list of media planning objectives

While many might say that it’s best to narrow down on one objective, the truth of the matter is that there will be many. In some cases, several objectives might branch out of one. In other cases, several seemingly unrelated objectives might eventually meet at one.

One of the primary objectives should be to strengthen cross-team collaboration. Research has shown that of 95 teams in 25 leading corporations, 75 percent of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional because of the lack of clearly defined goals, which ultimately limits the level of success across numerous fronts.

All media strategies will have more depth when properly contextualized with all other relevant components of the marketing strategy. Another objective would be to improve the media distribution timeline in such a way to ensure content is shared in an efficient and timely manner for relevancy.

These join forces in the implementation of media campaigns for social networks that require a streamlined content creation process and pre-scheduled posts.

There are many points to factor (and also research) while listing out objectives and goals, including the following:

• Communication and media channels to utilize
• The target market for different channels and/or campaigns
• Level of exposure for each marketing channel (reach and frequency)
• Demographics and geographic coverage
• Budget considerations, allocation, and management
• Style and creative element, as different mediums require different approaches

Make use of media planning templates

There are many types of media planning templates for different types and parts of the media planning process, from editorial calendars, to social media calendars, to advertising templates, to media design templates, and so much more. These can be created from scratch, or even downloaded from the Internet for immediate usage or inspiration.

The point is that the content of each template ultimately needs to be unique to the organization. The filled templates must help the users of it, whether internal or external, be as efficient and effective as possible through each coordinated effort across all channels.

Collaboratively implement the media plan

Before implementing the media plan, it is important to ensure all parties have all the necessary materials, credentials, access, and information as needed to properly execute the plan. It would also be useful to provide a list of people to contact for specific needs, as well as the details for one central person who can answer general questions on the media plan.

Data silos would prove to be obstructive when it comes to any kind of marketing/sales initiative, especially media planning.

However, it is still far too common in large organizations- 83 percent of executives claim their organizations have silos, and that 97 percent of them are aware that it has a negative effect. Silos disrupts and complicates workplace communications, thereby planting a seed of inefficiency.

Determine how to evaluate success

Countless variables go into media plans, each of which have their own measures of success. In some cases, the goals may solely be an increase in reach, while in others it may be conversions, engagement, or revenue. Sometimes success could be a little more tricky to measure, such as when the goal is to increase brand sentiment.

The best way to measure success of each campaign would be directly tied to each specific goal, the teams that worked on it, and the value to be derived from the media.

As you go through the process of media planning, remember that some campaigns will be more/less successful than others, and there is no such thing as failure so long as lessons are learned from it.

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This article was first published on Click Z on December 22nd, 2020:

Fool-proof tips to make media planning more approachable than ever