2025 Paid Media Planning with Gawronski Food & Beverage

“Back-to-School” season is over, Holiday strategies are in motion, it’s time for 2025 planning. With all of the new platforms available for advertisers, sometimes paid media can be the most confusing, distracting, but necessary element of everyone’s marketing plan. The bottom line? Brands need paid media to move product off the shelf. Plain and simple. This has been proven year in and year out in the 7 years Gawronski Food & Beverage has been in business.

2024 Recap:

2024 went about as expected. Several retailers launched their own pay per click platforms (most transitioning from 3rd parties), Google progressed further away from text campaigns towards more creative focused initiatives, and Amazon’s fee hikes continue to scare brands away from heavy investment. Retail media (Instacart, 8451, Criteo, etc), maintained priority number 1 across the majority of their brands media plans, as we experienced a progressive shift way from DTC since COVID. Retail media platforms simply provide the most useful data, and direct impacts on velocity. At this point, a no-brainer for investment, and some retailers are even requiring proof that the agencies are making efforts in this department.

2025 Strategy:

Going into 2025, although your brand’s options of advertising platforms are much more straightforward, the management of these platforms has become significantly more complex. Retail media competition is at an all-time high. It’s become mandatory to invest here, and with all new features, platforms etc. rolling out, the days of “set it and forget it”, are long over. Media buyers must be reviewing the accounts on an almost daily basis in order to have successful campaigns.

Driving brand awareness across platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and connected TV require attentive creative planning, given multiple spec and assets types. In addition, there are now numerous options to integrate your awareness campaigns to third parties that can actually track movement at retail (PearCommerce, Aisle, etc.). This was a dream a few year ago, but now is a reality (although a costly one) for brands to receive data further down the funnel, and actual impact from their ads.

What does the perfect paid media formula look like for 2025? A mix of tailored awareness tactics in conjunction with lean, yet effective retail media strategy. Let’s start with Retail Media. When it boils down to it, Retail Media establishes a more prime position and higher likelihood of discovery while in the act ordering online. With no active campaigns, your products simply won’t show up. Obviously with really smart campaigns is where you start to scale and find incremental sales. The sad truth of it is most brands don’t even understand consumers can’t even find their products if they wanted to.

In conjunction with a smart retail media strategy, brand awareness continues to serve as the most overlooked aspect of a modern day brands media mix. Gawronski Food & Beverage can win you the 1st, 2nd and 3rd spots on any brands retail search platform. If the consumer has never seen your brand before, they won’t buy. First time trial is driven by a combination of simply showing up, plus consumer recognition. The best way to build up that awareness is to hyper focus/geo-target paid social and connected tv campaigns. The next time they search your product, not only will you show up first, but they’ve been served 3-4 ads of your product across multiple products, and that ultimate combination of credibility will lead to trial.

To simplify, don’t overlook the importance of brand awareness, and take advantage of the new amazing features rolling out across all retail media platforms.

Our Agency:

Now 7 years in, Gawronski Food & Beverage, an in person team in Madison, Wisconsin, has established themselves as a reliable, impactful partner for brands looking to profitably scale their online sales. They provide price efficient services, focusing only on the platforms, and objectives that are important for your brand. No wasted ad spend or cookie cutter strategies. Constant optimizations, testing and scaling their results. The most important aspect, and most frequent feedback they get is that “they care”.

To maintain the appropriate care and attention to detail for their brands, this agency keeps a smaller client roster, but is looking to add on a few partners going into 2025. If you are interested please reach out to info@gawronskimedia.com.