In an ideal world, you would have as much money as you need to effectively market your products or services online. Unfortunately, most companies don’t have an unlimited supply of cash waiting to be used on promotion. This means it’s extremely important to invest in the right digital marketing channels.
Prioritizing which promotion pathways to focus your marketing on isn’t always easy, but the ICE system can make it a bit simpler. Through evaluating each digital marketing channel for Impact, Confidence, and Ease, you can score each channel to determine which is right for you. When you invest in the channels with the highest ‘score,’ you can expect a better return on your investment.
To help you strategically prioritize the digital marketing channels you should invest in, let’s take a look at how you can apply the ICE scoring method!
Key Takeaways:
- The ICE Scoring Method enables you to see which channels are worth investing in.
- Through scoring your digital marketing channels based on Impact, Confidence, and Ease, you can focus on the campaigns that will bring the highest returns.
- Scoring your channels before investing can save you a lot of time and money.
What Is the ICE Scoring Method?
The ICE Scoring Method enables marketers to gauge how successful a potential channel will likely be, before implementing a campaign. Through scoring the Impact, Confidence, and Ease of each channel, you’re able to better understand which ones will bring the highest returns.
A channel’s score is broken down into three parts:
- Impact tells you about the magnitude of the results you can expect from that channel.
- Confidence reflects how sure you are that the channel will work.
- Ease displays how simple it will be for you and your team to implement that strategy.
These three scores will be totaled, to give the overall ICE score for that channel. You can then select the options with the highest scores, and invest your money in those areas. This technique provides reassurance that you’ll see a high return on your investment.
How to Apply the ICE Scoring Method to Your Digital Marketing Plan (In 4 Steps)
The ICE Scoring Method can be easily applied to your digital marketing strategy, in four easy steps. Let’s take a look at each one.
Step 1: Determine Your Channel’s Impact
The first factor you’ll want to identify is the Impact of your digital marketing channel. This tells you what kind of results you can expect from campaigns on that platform. Whenever you implement a new campaign or strategy, you want to make as much Impact as possible.
A high-Impact channel or campaign is one that will bring results quickly. Working with major influencers in your industry is an example of a high-impact campaign you could implement.
To find your Impact score, you’ll want to rank the potential results of a campaign on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Be realistic about the number you assign. Looking carefully at past campaigns or case studies will help you develop a better idea of what results you can anticipate.
Step 2: Examine the Channel’s Confidence
The next metric you’ll want to measure is the channel’s Confidence. How sure you are that this approach will bring the results you’re after? In other words, your Confidence score will tell you how risky that channel or campaign might be.
While taking risks can sometimes bring rewards, you want to be confident in the channels and campaigns you invest in. If you’ve already had success with a particular channel, you can probably give it a high Confidence score. On the other hand, a channel you don’t have any experience with would probably get a low Confidence score.
[Tweet “While taking risks can bring rewards, you want to be confident in the channels you invest in.”]
Just as before, you want to rank this metric on a scale of 1 to 10. The higher the ranking, the more confident you are in that channel. You can better understand whether or not a campaign will be successful by looking at your past campaigns or examining your competition.
Step 3: Understand the Channel’s Ease
The final metric you’ll need to measure is Ease. The Ease of a channel indicates how difficult it would be for you to implement that campaign, given the resources you already have. A channel is considered easy to implement if you don’t need to acquire new skills, team members, or materials first.
Of course, you want each channel you choose to be as easy to implement as possible. This means they should play off the skills of the team you already have, or even use content and materials you’ve already developed. If you’ll need to create entirely new materials, that channel may have a lower Ease score.
Using the same 1-10 scale, give each potential channel a score in this area. Be sure to carefully evaluate your in-house skills and tools, to determine whether or not you already have access to everything you need to be successful on that channel.
Step 4: Prioritize Your Channels Based on Their ICE Scores
To find the right channels to invest in, you’ll want to repeat Steps 1-3 for each channel you’re thinking about investing in. After you’ve assigned an Impact, Confidence, and Ease score for each approach, you can total them to find the final ICE score. So if you assigned one channel an Impact of 9, Confidence of 7, and Ease of 5, its total ICE score would be 9 + 7 + 5 = 21.
Next, rank your potential channels based on their overall ICE score. The channels with the highest scores will be the easiest and least risky for you to implement, while still delivering results. This means you can expect the highest returns from investing in those channels.
A channel’s ICE Score also helps you determine whether or not an investment will be worth your effort in the long run. By examining the overall ICE score rather than just one factor, you’ll find out if a seemingly attractive channel is really worth your money. For example, a channel may have a high Impact score, but if you’re not confident in your results and will have to secure a lot of new resources, it may not be worth your time and money.
Conclusion
After determining a digital marketing channel’s ICE score, you’ll better understand whether or not it is worth your time. By doing the research before implementing any new campaigns into your overall digital marketing plan, you can save your company time, money, and resources. Plus, you can ensure that you always get a high return on your investments.
Let’s recap the four steps to applying the ICE scoring system to your digital marketing channels:
- Determine how strong the Impact of that digital marketing channel will be.
- Measure how Confident you are that channel will return results.
- Examine the Ease of implementation, given your current connections and resources.
- Prioritize your channels based on their total ICE scores.
How do you think the ICE Scoring Method will make choosing the right digital marketing channels easier for you? Let me know in the comments section below!
