April 2021: How to Choose a Digital Ad Strategy with the Best ROI

With digital advertising spending expected to increase this year by 13% to $169 billion according to MarketingDive, marketers will need to understand the new display ad formats and updated strategies to get the best return on their ad dollar investments.

There is a lot of innovation going on with new digital ad formats that drive higher engagement with audiences such as:

• New high-impact units that give better visibility to your message.
• Video units that help you better tell your story.
• Multichannel ad strategies where you message prospects on BenefitsPRO.com, as they access websites during their day, and on their social feeds.
• Premium programmatic units that grab attention but can be dialed up or down at a moment’s notice.

Fortunately, BenefitsPRO has you covered with our May 4 webcast: ROI of Advanced Digital Advertising, where our B2B ad product experts walked through the various options. Click here to register for the replay.

And we have other suggestions for improving the ROI you are getting with webcasts, brand marketing and content marketing. Please contact me at [email protected] to learn more.

Trends Employee Benefits Marketers Need to Know

• The benefits and health care industries continue to closely watch the Biden administration and gauge its ongoing impacts on health care reform and other factors that affect advisors and their employer clients. Areas of focus include reversals of Trump policies such as Medicaid work requirements, the ongoing impacts of ACA enrollment extensions, as well as health care premium relief included in the latest stimulus bill, and analysis and predictions about ways the new administration will follow or diverge from the Obama administration.
• New disruptors, including the effects of outside investors and others eyeing the health care and benefis space, continues to dominate headlines. Recently, everyone from Mark Cuban to Amazon have continued to dip their toes into industry waters. As if brokers and other industry players didn’t have enough internal competition, they must continue to be aware of outside threats as well. But, as always, along with those threats come potential opportunities and a push toward innovation, as areas like consumerization and digitalization continue to play a larger role in the purchasing of benefits.
• “Virtual health” will be a big focus of employers and benefits plan sponsors going forward, as Dan Cook explores in our March/April cover story. Amazon’s entry into the space may be the biggest bellweather to date and will be something to keep a close eye on in the coming months. Demand is also proliferating to include digital mental health resources and more patient-centric virtual tools. Following these innovations and helping employers understand how to fit them into their benefits plans will be key.
• The new workplace is top of mind. HR is focusing on vaccine planning and return-to-work policies, though the “hybrid workforce” is definitely looking to be the way of the future. This will come with some complicated logistics related to company culture, legal and tax issues, and more.
• In the employer-sponsored retirement plan space, advisors and sponsors are currently eager to get a sense of what plan participants are thinking regarding retirement saving — perhaps as a result of recent studies showing the harsh financial impact of 2020 on many employees’ finances. Employers and retirement professionals also want to know what is happening with student loan debt, and how the stimulus package could affect it, since student loan payment assistance is a product advisors are considering adding to their lineup.