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Setting Yourself Up for Marketing Success in 2021

How advertisers can overcome four key challenges they’ll face in the coming year.

Through much of 2020, advertisers have had to react to rapidly shifting behaviors and pivot from long-held strategies, including how they reached their audiences—or whether it was the right time to do so at all.


Specifically, many will still face four key challenges in 2021: unclear market learnings, decreased marketing spend, inconsistent consumer engagement, and shifts in mindshare.

We looked across the past year and beyond to collect the right guidance and resources to help you conquer these roadblocks. Each of the sections below contains an overview of the action advertisers can take to solve a challenge, focus areas that will help you implement that solution and links to tactical resources to help you get started on specific recommendations. We hope this can act as a handy repository to guide your strategy as you plan for 2021.

Click on each challenge to see strategies that will set you up for success in the year ahead:

Accurate measurement is essential during times of transition because it enables marketers to understand their customers, leading to better business decisions. Marketers have the opportunity to reevaluate their tried-and-true measurement approaches in order to ensure they’re delivering the insights needed. Getting this right makes everything else much easier.

As in 2020, we recommend that marketers start with a measurement strategy that’s simple and adaptable in 2021. Here are two focus areas to get you started with operationalizing true measurement:

  • Build a test-and-learn culture.

    Continual testing and learning is central to strong self-sustaining measurement practices. Some forward-thinking advertisers have simplified their strategies to focus on key sources of truth, allowing them to quickly understand shifts and optimize media on an ongoing basis. Many have also launched initiatives to firmly place experimentation at the core of their measurement organizations.

    • Consider organizational and cultural changes to make. Check out our report Building an Organization That Embraces Experimentation to learn how other businesses are driving change from the top-down, building data-oriented mindsets and evaluating talent.
    • Use agile learnings to keep things simple. We’ve previously covered how advertisers are running quick A/B and multi-cell tests to stay nimble while understanding new business realities and the impact of strategic changes.
  • Conduct experiments and studies.

    Consumer behaviors have undergone rapid transformations because of COVID-19. Experimentation and studies can help advertisers test new hypotheses to better understand these shifts and to challenge long-held assumptions.

    • Get the bigger picture with lift studies. In some verticals, such as travel, advertisers often concentrate media spend on one or two channels. Lift testing enables brands to better understand the overall performance of their marketing, rather than only channel performance, and optimize their budgets.
    • Use experiments to calibrate your Marketing Mix Models (MMMs) to new realities. Traditional MMMs sometimes struggle to account for unexpected events; introducing granular data and calibrating with experiments can help adjust models to account for the pandemic's impact. the Considerations for Creating Modern Marketing Mix Models report.

Fortunately, there are valuable efficiencies brands can take advantage of. Leveraging technology intelligently and embracing cost-effective creative insights can help resource-strapped marketers make the most of their budgets.

  • Enable liquidity and machine learning.

    “Liquidity” refers to the state of allowing every dollar to flow to the most valuable impression. In study after study, we’ve seen that more automated placements, bidding and targeting leads to cheaper incremental conversions. Use these learnings to achieve results while saving both time and money.

  • Embrace cost-effective creative insights.

    We’ve uncovered a number of creative and format approaches that can deliver results more efficiently. Here are a few of those:

    • Use a “surround sound” approach. Using branded content in combination with standard brand ads can drive incremental purchase intent at 82% lower cost than using either format separately. This approach can be especially beneficial when developing branded content is cost effective.
    • Combine Stories and feed placements. We’ve also found that using Stories ads in tandem with feed placements can boost efficiency; a multi-cell test of campaigns in Europe and Africa found that adding stories to feed campaigns by using placement optimization resulted in a 21% increase in brand lift.
    • Use testing to lower costs. Every brand is unique and adapting creative strategies to these differences can improve efficiency. When brands tailored assets through Betatyping, a framework for testing and optimizing creative, they had a measurably lower average cost per ad recall, cost per action intent and cost per action.

Marketers can adapt to recent changes by understanding the nuances of how people pay attention to media across screens and by leveraging direct response tactics to capture demand.

Overcoming shifts in mindshare entails using creative techniques to brand build for the long term, starting again with the cornerstone: measurement.

  • Measure and invest in brand growth.

    It’s hard to overemphasize just how important measurement is to continuous improvement—including for brand building. Here are some resources for effectively driving brand growth.

  • Leverage brand-building creative insights.

    It’s no secret that strong creative principles can aid a strong brand. The challenge has historically been knowing what strategies can help you stand out.

What it means for marketers

What it means for marketers

  • Operationalize true measurement

    Build a test-and-learn culture, and conduct experiments and studies.

  • Realize new efficiencies

    Enable liquidity and machine learning, and embrace cost-effective creative insights.

  • Capture consumer attention and demand

    Better understand cross-device attention and effectiveness, and drive performance with creative strategies, elements and formats.

  • Retain and boost brand affinity

    Measure and invest in brand growth, and leverage brand-building creative insights.

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