Permuto was well represented by our illustrious Director of Sales, Deanne Swartz, at the recent, invite only, iMedia Brand Summit at Coronado, California, September 13 – 16, 2009. The event is an annual summit between media sales pros and some of biggest brands who are spending on online advertising.
Here are some interesting takeaways observed from the Summit sessions.
Sell marketing solutions, not advertising ideas – Tell brand buyers how they can sell their product, not where they can buy more advertising.
It’s about effectiveness, stupid – It’s not what is most efficient – most effective. We are overvaluing clicks – need to readjust our measurement value
Come with an Interesting POV – Brands like to be taught about new and interesting insights about their audience, not just sold to. Media buyers want sales reps to “bring a point of view about their business” to a meeting. It is important to use data to make points on whey they should buy from you.
Come Prepared or Go Home – 25% of all sellers do not come prepared or understand their business. Tip: Use Twitter to see where people are talking about their business.
It’s no secret the recent economic crisis has forced many businesses to rethink their marketing and advertising expenditures. While, not long ago, many were once satisfied with ad reach and exposure, ad executives and business owners have become increasingly concerned with ad efficiency and ways to increase ROI. If you currently spend money advertising online, or are interested in advertising online you should do your research; there many potential pitfalls, and no shortage of ways by which money is spent with little to no conversion impact. For businesses large and small, the following constant the ten most commonly made mistakes in online advertising — and should be avoided at all cost:
While high-conversion traffic should be a primary goal of advertisers, discouraging all types of traffic is never a good idea. One way advertisers can seriously curtail multiple flows of traffic is by turning potential shoppers off from their brand. Aesthetically unappealing, offensive, or altogether annoying (ie., pop-ups, or forced advertisements) can turn customers off.
SEOMoz recently published a story on Global Retail Insight’s (a subsidiary of IDC), report on multi- and omni-channel shopping. Based on extensive surveying, this study determined the various spending rate by customers when shopping multiple channels – ie., store, m-commerce and through social networks. The study indicated that multi-channel shoppers spend 15-30% more than single-channel counterparts. Further, those that shop multiple channels simultaneously – referred to as omni-channel shoppers – spend 15-30% than the multi-channel shoppers. According to IDC analysts, Bob Parker and Leslie Hand:
“The omni-channel shopper wants to use all channels—store, catalog, call center, web, mobile—simultaneously… an example would be a shopper with an Android-based phone who snaps a picture of the barcode of a product in a store, immediately does price comparisons on the web and connects to her social network for opinions.”
While this study substantiated common theory regarding multi-channel shopping, it was interesting to note the spending disparity between multi- and omni- channel shoppers is the same as single- and multi-channel shoppers. This illustrates the need for more visible and comprehensive advertising strategies, especially with the increasing commercialization of social network sites, and trends in m-commerce.
Ever thought that showing your competitors’ prices on your site was a bad idea? Well, a recent study by the E-Tailing Group found that,”…63% of online consumers who comparison shop like to see competitors’ prices while shopping on a retailer’s web site, and 39% say such a display would make them more loyal to that retailer even if its rivals prices were lower.” While price comparison is easier than ever, with potential buyers being able to pull up multiple sites in minutes, customers don’t always go with the lowest price — even though price is the initial subject of comparison.
The study goes on to indicate that a significant percentage (53%) of online shoppers would be less inclined to comparison shop elsewhere, after having already shipped on a site that revealed competitors’ prices — suggesting that, this this type of openness can lead to a heightened sense of loyalty. A further 78% of those polled said they’d return to a site that revealed competitors’ prices.
This study also found that:
* 36% of shoppers spend more than half an hour comparison shopping, and 65% spend at least sometime comparison shopping, before making a purchase decision.
* 95% of shoppers visit at least two web sites when comparison shopping, and 51% check four or more sites, prior to making a purchase decision.
* 57% of respondents said it’s important to have comparison pricing on a retailer’s product pages; over 40% said this would save time and money.
* 58% of respondents expect retailers of commodity products to offer comparison pricing on their e-commerce site.
This illustrates the case for price openness for internet retailers, even those which are not “comparison shopping” sites. Additionally, it helps disprove the myth that price is the determining factor for where consumers make their purchases.
Just came across this interesting article in Internet Retailer called, “Using a Consumer’s Life Stage to Predict Online Spending.” The core finding of the article is that basic demographics may not be the best indicators of online shopping behavior based upon a study conducted by Acxiom.
From the data there appears to be a bimodal distribution of online shoppers from the higher disposable income but older groups (mostly without kids) and the very young who have grown up with Internet access.
Based on the study results, Acxiom recommends that online retailers refine marketing messages based on shopping behavior and then refine again based on the shopper’s life stage.
I recently stumbled upon Chris Lake’s most recent article at econsultancy.com, which addresses ‘tweeting’ and how businesses should use this service to communicate with customers. Most people have their own opinion of Twitter, and like it or not, not everyone understands the micro-blogging service. When used correctly, Twitter offers a highly effective, highly personal, and highly public method of communication. Lake argues, Twitter should be used by those companies that wish to reach out to their customers, and those confident they can provide top-notch customer service. With Twitter, company representatives are expected to deal with customer complaints publicly, and in a way the company is comfortable with everyone seeing. This provides representatives the opportunity to show their business still cares about customer service. It is this new, very informal-seeming (yet dedicated) approach to customer service that Lake refers to as, “putting the ‘me’ in social media.”
He goes on to give 27 examples of promotional tweets used by online retailers.
The long tail – the very specific and long search term – has a different performance than ’short tails’. Isolated long tails may not constitute a significant percentage of your traffic, as Scott at SeoMoz illustrates, but together they cannot be ignored. Much like the long tail applies to SEM, the long tail of interests for products is relevant for all types of media. This further iterates a need to have automated whys of taking advantage of this data. Read the video below to learn more:
1 .What does “effective” online display advertising mean to you
Shaukat Shamim: Today Search Engine Marketing is approximately $20B dollar market and continues to set the bar. Advertisers continue to spend in SEM due to the fact it is economically effective and efficient for them. Search has the element of being very ROI driven, and measurable. However, the problem is they can’t get enough of it, since search engine marketing is only 20% total reach and therefore rather limited.
Our objective here at Permuto is to achieve the the same economics and relevance of search engine marketing in display advertising. When you establish and deliver that every time, advertisers will get a new effective channel for their online display advertising campaigns.
2. How are you able to illustrate the effectiveness targeted display advertising to the advertisers?
Shaukat Shamim: The term “effective advertising” means different things to different types of advertisers. For brand advertisers, they measure the success of their campaigns based upon soft measures such as awareness, purchase intent, and favorability. Performance advertisers, especially commerce marketers, are very much driven by hard metrics driven which are measured by metrics such as clicks, conversions, and ultimately return on ad spend (ROAS). So, any solution that will give them positive ROAS that matches and exceeds their best channels will always get them to turn their head.
Ever wanted to know how much advertisers spend on Google Adwords? It probably comes as little surprise that Google has taken over as the search engine of choice for 4 out of 5 online advertisers. Nor, that this form of search advertising accounts for nearly all of Google’s revenue. We have broken the figures down to daily spending, in order to illustrate Google’s highest spenders, and how much they are spending. It would be interesting to see how efficient these ads were for spenders…
Desperation, they say, breeds creativity. The same is true for advertising, where many look to cut costs in favor of highly targeted and new media channels. Mike DiFranzi’s article at MediaPost claims that economic crises are breeding grounds for wide-sweeping media innovation: the radio during The Great Depression; television during the mid-1950s recession; cable during recessions in the 70sand 80s; the Internet after 1988’s recession; and, interenet advertising after 2000’s recession.
DiFranzi goes on to note that, without recessions, most marketing departments don’t concern themselves with efficiency – they are not concerned with what and what is not working. During good times, most people subscribe to a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” thought process. Once economies begin to slow, and cost cutting becomes a reality, advertisers are forced to pick and choose between advertising methods, choosing only the most efficient.
Today, marketing executives are being forced to find new ways to engage potential customers. Paying for exposure doesn’t quite cut it any more; conversions are the measure of today’s success. As a result, today’s advertisers are demanding a greater level of effectiveness in their online advertising campaigns. Fortunately, today’s advertisers are better suited to produce targeted campaigns than their predecessors due to the availability of metrics, targeting, and data to optimize their online ad campaigns. This is extremely useful to advertisers, as audiences continue to splinter into finer and more illusive places, and going increasingly mobile.
The onus is on the online advertising providers to meet the challenge by offering new ways to meet the effectiveness challenge. The need for effective advertising will ignite and drive the next wave of improvements in online advertising.
