Leader’s Blog

The concept of remarketing first began and delivered on the promise of targeted relevancy. Retailers captured what products a customer browsed while shopping online and then used digital media to remarket those same or similar items across third-party websites, encouraging customers to complete purchase.

And now that the approach is proven and more retailers have adopted the approach, integrating it into their cross-selling and up-selling strategy, the new realization is coming to light, that remarketing not only presents customers with a second chance opportunity to purchase, but it also reduces the overall sales cycle.

Prior to the evolution of remarketing, sales cycles tended to be long, fragmented, and were often unable to be accurately measured. Tracking the cycle was guess work at best, and offline and online customer behavior was loosely stitched together, leaving retailers with a wealth of data but no real insight into what actually was successfully driving the sale or what the actual number of interactions and total time from awareness to purchase was.

Remarketing is now offering the ultimate outcome in customer insights. Know the product your customer is interested in. Know the number of interactions required to connect the product to the customer. And know the typical amount of time it takes to present the interactions to the customer in order to successfully lead the customer to purchase. The result is more then just relevancy and preference for the customer. The result is better overall spend of marketing budgets, decreased cost of marketing, and increased profitability for the business – a truly remarkable outcome for retailers that invest in remarketing.

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

It is in digital marketer’s nature to segment, segment, segment when analysing customer behaviour. And in the majority of cases, that is a good thing.

But if we look closer at the findings in this article and we group them together to gain a fuller view of what is resulting in the success, we find the effectiveness of multi-channel marketing at work.

The measurements at the tactic levels help indicate what specific media is most effective in the trigger role however many customers won’t consciously acknowledge the multiple impressions from other media that lead up to the trigger point. Although there is an indication of influence, noted by the preference to act on articles that include brand information. Many recent studies continue to be published connecting customers actions resulting from the combination of product information – many times from third-parties – and online advertising placed in close proximity, on the same page as the product information.

After all, there is no better marketing then word of mouth marketing, so if an online publisher features a favourable product review and the manufacturer’s media is clearly positioned on the page, the advertiser greatly increases the chance a customer will act on that specific media. The specific media placement typical receives the credit for the action, while the article did all the work.

 So what does it all mean? Keep pushing for true connect, relevant experiences and strong representation of the brand, and customers will continue to act.

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

Nokia has created a text book example of best practice in product development. Identify what your customers want and build products that satisfy their desire.

Many companies drive for this endgame in their own product development but it remains elusive. Unfortunately, one of the factors that block companies from achieving similar product development insight is a too common adversity for social media. Some call Nokia’s approach crowd sourcing, some simply call it marketing, and some call it social media or community. And that can often be the deal killer in an organization.

But there is a way to progress people’s thinking and luckily the Nokia example can be leveraged to educate others to the deep business value that is achieved – even as deep into the enterprise as product development – from incorporating social media.

For other examples of great product development, community driven, enterprise destinations be sure to visit My Starbucks Idea and The HP Community.

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

The term “digital out-of-home marketing” covers a wide range of things from those video screens you see in your local supermarket to a video playing in a peep hole at a construction site.

Although digital out-of-home has been around for some time, it has recently begun to evolve from a way to deliver an interesting aesthetic to a true interaction with customers.  This evolution is consistent with what we’ve seen with other digital mediums. Users just don’t want to consume information pushed at them; they want to be engaged and truly interact.

Marketers have an interesting opportunity to with digital out-of-home campaigns.  For some brands campaigns that are gimmicky are going to be the most effective while for others, a straightforward approach like demonstrating product features will work the best. 

One thing you can count on being consistent is that the brands that are most successful will use digital-out-of-home to involve their customers with the brand and let them interact with the information.

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

InStyle magazine launched its first e-commerce site to offer its readers an online shopping experience in a fully branded InStyle environment.  So what would encourage a publishing company to try its hand at online retail?

The leap isn’t as far as it sounds.  InStyle has long been evaluating fashion, trends, and designers within the pages of its magazines, so it makes sense that that they lend some of that experience to selling apparel online.  The site, which borrows its look from the pages of InStyle magazine, is also carefully tied to the magazine content to cross promote products on and offline.  The other piece of the puzzle that InStyle brings to the table is editorial credibility.  Loyal readers of the magazine will find “editors pick” merchandise and feel confident that the publishers who have provided them savvy fashion advice on the pages of the magazine will continue to do so on the online store.

Many have discussed monetizing content as a way to lifting the publishing industry out of its current slump but it will be interesting to see if an approach like this one will keep them viable.

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

Promotion via social media is most effective when companies leave it in their customers’ hands.  Fashion Magazine did just that when launching White Space, a contemporary designer section at the Bay in Toronto.  The guests were treated to food, fashion, and music during this exclusive, invitation event.  Throughout the venue there were laptops set up encouraging guests to tweet or post Facebook updates about the event. 

Fashion Magazine and White Space really hit the mark by asking their guests to drive the social media “chatter”.  Not only did they save the cost of an agency-driven social media campaign, but they also kept the content in the hands of the guests.  Some might argue there is risk in replacing company sanctioned content with guest tweets, but I’d argue there is also significant opportunity to improve the viral reach. 

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

This article from Marketing Vox offers readers ways to sell mobile to consumers that are simple but maybe not so obvious.  All of them are solid tips for businesses to reach consumers, but the one that stands out to me the most is number 4 – build a mobile website.  There was a time that creating a mobile version of your website was the hot ticket item.  But with faster mobile browsers and the emergence of apps, many companies put mobile websites on the back burner. 

Mobile websites can often deliver a more robust experience than an app can.  Apps are also limited to the number of people who are familiar enough with your brand to have downloaded it, whereas a mobile website can be found in search or by anyone browsing the web.  As mobile marketing tactics continue to evolve, mobile websites should continue to be an option to reach users.

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

I have worked in digital marketing long enough to remember when email marketers only option was the plain text email.  Many marketers have abandoned plain text for flashier delivery methods, but there are many reasons to once again embrace plain text.

I am not suggesting you abandon the well formatted emails you send now, but rather consider giving your plain text version some extra attention.  This article gives helpful tips on the “how” so I am going to focus on the “why”. 

Professionals and consumers are doing more and more “on the go” which means the likelihood that your email is being read on a mobile device is increasing.  A well thought out plain text email improves the chances that your email will arrive to the mobile inbox in a way that the recipients can read it.  You also need to consider the recipients who receive plain text email in their inbox due to preference or because the HTML is blocked by spam filters.  Taking the time to perfect the text version of your email can help you stand out from the crowd when many senders are ignoring plain text. 

When you accept the idea that users may not be seeing that formatted email you created you’ll realize that spending time optimizing your plain text email is going to be well worth your efforts.

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

Rice University set out to verify whether Facebook fan pages could have actual impact on businesses.  The case study followed a Houston bakery and café as they established a Facebook fan page and tracked the impact.  The café only saw about 5% of their regular customers become Facebook fans, but those who did become fans came more frequently and spent more than non-fans. The fan page also seemed to cultivate brand affection and loyalty.

I think this study sheds light on what all businesses can accomplish using Facebook.  The results suggest that although the café didn’t reach all customers using fan pages, there was significant impact on those they did reach.  This is a great example of “meeting your customers where they are”.  It is likely that those who did become fans where already Facebook users.  The café – rather than simply building a fan page and hoping “if we build it they will come” – used the fan page to meaningfully engage with their fans by offering giveaways and discounts.  And the campaign was effective for the target group because the café approached the tactic holistically. 

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink

The Sears brand has been around for over 124 years.  Reading this Chief Marketer interview with Sears’ Senior Vice President Online I was surprised to learn that they’ve been vigorously pursuing a multi-channel strategy including online merchandising, mobile commerce, and communities.  They’ve even gone as far as to open up an online marketplace, similar to Amazon.com, that allows consumers to shop directly from vendor sites.

Sears developed much of this approach based on feedback from their customers.  If you visit the MySears community site – you’ll notice that it includes everything from customer reviews and questions about products to compliments and complaints about service in the store.  I think the biggest fear companies face when embarking on an online community is the possibility of negative things being posted.  Sears has really faced this fear head on and their community includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.  What you might be surprised to read is that Sears’s customer satisfaction scores weren’t negatively impacted by the approach – they actually went up! 

Companies are beginning to realize that customers are taking to online communities to discuss products and services whether you want them to or not.  The question is will your company ignore them – or join in and be part of the conversation?

Read the Article | Browse More Articles like This One in Our Publications Section

| Permalink