Is Your Marketing Ready for the E-commerce Surge?

Pandemic lockdowns across the nation have turbocharged e-commerce, with online sales growing by triple-digits. Is your marketing ready? Most marketers are not, according to a recent Profitero and Kantar survey of 200 brand executives, which found that only 17% believe their organizations are leading competitors in e-commerce. E-commerce marketers need to quickly prioritize strategies, advises a recent post by Forbes magazine’s CMO Network contributor Sarah Hofstetter. A problem identified by the Profitero and Kantar survey, for example, is that only 11% of organizations have functional-level e-commerce goals in place. Hofstetter urges making e-commerce a part of everyone’s job, from building e-commerce KPIs into bonuses to content accountability on retail websites to overcoming silos with cross-functional goals. Next, marketers should boost online profiles and product discovery efforts. That includes targeted SEO and SEM, strong ratings and reviews, engaging targeted content, and aligned multichannel outreach. Third, shift from offline to speedier online tactics, such as algorithmic matching of competitor price changes and real-time tailoring of product assortments and promotional strategies by audience. Fourth, boost online agility. Note that 63% of brands do not test and optimize their content to improve sales impact (Profitero and Kantar survey). So brands that digitally test new products, new traffic-generating variables and new marketing messages gain an edge. Janet Balis, a principal of Ernst & Young LLP, recently penned a Harvard Business Journal article offering more advice.The nuances of creative messaging have become more delicate, she notes, warning that while exploitative brands will not fare well, organizations that promote doing good, from food bank donations to repurposed manufacturing, can enhance brand image as long as contributions are seen as material and not solely for commercial benefit. Next, since the mix of preferred media platforms has changed, marketers may want to modify the media mix, for example with more ad-supported premium video streaming for spiking digital entertainment, or ads around peak news consumption. Finally, marketers will want to put a greater emphasis on behavior trends and response tracking to better adapt messaging and targeting. Small, less sophisticated retailers can take advantage of Google tools, such as using Google Trends, Google Alerts  and retail-category metrics for Google Search and Shopping campaigns to spot shifts in demand. They can frequently update Google Ads, customer-facing websites and Buyer Profiles on Google Maps and Search, and can enable automatic item updates in the Google Merchant Center to keep product data current. For more, see https://www.acculist.com/has-your-marketing-adjusted-for-the-current-e-commerce-surge/

3 Digital Trends Challenge Multi-Channel Marketers

As this year's marketing gets underway, we want to alert multi-channel marketers to three important 2017 digital trends recently cited by digital marketing hub ClickZ author Rebecca Sentance. Trend One: Marketers need to go beyond "mobile friendly" to a "mobile first" strategy given current search trends. Think mobile is over-hyped? Sentance asks you to consider the following: Search-engine giant Google has removed the "right-hand rail" from the search results page and moved to only displaying paid ads at the top and bottom, making the main search results layout more adaptive to mobile; Google continues to strengthen a mobile-friendly ranking system that penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-optimized; and Google announced in October that it would further favor mobile search by splitting off desktop and mobile into separate search indexes, with mobile as its primary index. Trend Two: marketers need to embrace visual elements and visually focused platforms for more effective social media performance. Trend Three: Marketers should stop assuming social media is mainly a tool for brand and traffic building rather than direct sales. For the facts driving the last two trends, read our complete post at http://www.acculistusa.com/blog/

In Web Design, ROI Means More Than Good Looks

We've learned from years of direct marketing that the most important measure of creative design is how well it works rather than how pretty it looks--and it's a principle that applies to websites as well. A recent DirectMarketingIQ article provided seven website elements that help deliver a return on website investment that a merely pretty site just won't achieve. Rule No. 1 in designing a website (or a direct mail piece for that matter) is to realize that you only have a limited time to capture viewer interest so "Don't Make People Think," meaning design obvious, self-explanatory, easy-to-read and navigate content with clear calls to action and response mechanisms. Confusion is deadly to results. One way to avoid confusing design is to follow the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and put yourself in the user's place to avoid the complexity that drives away traffic. And generally avoid "reinventing the wheel" with web design; standard site conventions familiar to users make it easier for visitors to grasp your message. Of course, make sure the website is selling, which does not mean preaching about your company and products but rather offering prospects answers to their problems and benefits that fit their needs (addressing "What's in it for me?"). Next, be mobile-friendly; websites today must be designed for the 60% of online traffic accounted for by mobile views, and it's especially important since lead search engine Google made mobile-friendly pages a factor in its search algorithm this year. It's also smart to embrace a design that understands how viewers read a screen, per studies, by scanning in an F pattern from top left across (navigation, search, subscription, etc.) and then down to the first and second paragraphs before skimming the rest. Finally, accept that white space is a marketing design tool as much as copy; overstuffed pages are daunting to visitors, and densely packed text reduces readability and comprehension. For more advice details, see http://www.directmarketingiq.com/article/why-a-pretty-website-doesn-t-work-7-website-elements-improve-roi/1

Google 'Mobilizes' As Smartphone Search Tops PCs

Surging mobile usage has tech giant Google "mobilizing" resources to adapt and profit--with important marketing impacts. Marking a clear tipping point, Google announced this May that its influential search engine now has more search requests on mobile devices than on personal computers in the U.S. and many other parts of the world, according to an Associated Press report in The Washington Post. The growth in mobile use --for e-mail, search, social networking, even shopping and donating--has been rapid since Apple first introduced the iPhone in 2007. Among Google's strategies to accommodate mobile preferences was the launch in April of a "mobilegeddon" change in its search recommendation system to favor websites that easily read and load on smartphones. The change sent websites scurrying to make themselves mobile-friendly to avoid demotion in search results. Google also has been introducing advertising formats that tend to work better on mobile devices. For instance, rooms can now be booked within hotel ads, and car ads can be swiped to comparison shop, the report notes. Mobile ad prices are on the upswing, too. Previously, marketers were unwilling to pay as much for commercial messages displayed on the smaller smartphone screens, but the race for mobile space is heating up. The AP story quotes Google as saying that mobile ad prices are climbing steadily and will continue to do so. Jerry Dischler, Google's vice president in charge of its “AdWords” service, summed up the urgency of a mobile strategy for today's marketers: "The future of mobile is now." See the complete AP story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/google-searches-on-mobile-devices-top-those-on-pcs/2015/05/05/cccd64de-f366-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html

Over Half of Online Display Ads Unseen, Per Google

Online advertisers potentially throw away half their budgets paying for display ads that go unseen, per a new Google study. Business Insider recently reported that Google's analysis of its own display ad platforms found a whopping 56.1% of all impressions served could never have been actually seen because they were served outside of the browser window. Of course, if advertisers buy on a cost-per-click basis they are not paying for those lost impressions, but expected response is slashed regardless. What are the factors determining viewability per Google's study? Page position is an obvious issue. Google found that the most viewable ad position is right above the page fold (the lowest point on the page before a user has to scroll) rather than right at the top of the page as many advertisers assume. Above the fold is still not always viewable, but it’s the most likely place for an ad to be seen. Another factor impacting viewability is ad size. Bigger is better, and vertical ads garner the highest viewability rates, probably because they stay on the page longer as a user scrolls. The targeted content vertical also makes a difference to viewability. Sites associated with the most captive engagement levels—reference, online communities and games—have far higher viewability scores than content about food and drink, news or real estate, for example. For details of Google's online ad viewability statistics, see the Business Insider article at http://www.businessinsider.com/google-display-ad-viewability-study-2014-12

Celebrity Endorsements Don't Win Fans for Brands

Think a famous name touting your product or service will impress customers? Think again. Brand endorsements by celebrities and athletes are trusted less than all other methods of brand promotion, including digital ads, traditional ads and company-sponsored social media, according to a new global study by The Boston Consulting Group. Consumers put the most store in what family and friends say offline about a brand, followed by product reviews, expert opinions, and information from Google and other search engines. One reason trust matters: Brands that show their customers that they can be trusted are able to gather at least five to 10 times more information about customers to fill the Big Data marketing mill. Still, marketers must tread carefully because consumers are choosy about what info they entrust to companies, and financial and health data definitely rank higher on the privacy scale than brand preferences, age and gender. Millennials, despite a social sharing addiction, are about as concerned with data privacy as their elders. As a result, the data practices of financial institutions, social media, search-engine companies, and government arms garner more than twice the consumer concern than do branded manufacturers, airlines, hotels, cable providers or retailers offering loyalty cards. For more, see MediaPost's Marketing Daily story at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/212917/endorsements-dont-earn-trust-for-marketers.html

How Marketers Can Spur Social Content Sharing

Social sharing of your digital content not only boosts marketing ego, it boosts Google search ranking and expands brand audience, according to studies. So how do you spur more sharing? A recent article by Tom Mangan of Reputation Capital Media Services, an agency offering content marketing support, helpfully summarizes the simple advice of multiple experts. Tip No. 1: Make it easy to share by adding social sharing buttons to your blog, website, e-mail, etc. No. 2: Make it exciting to share by adding an image. Web experts agree that any image, but especially an interesting and original graphic, increases sharing. No. 3 is a standard for marketing: Write an attention-grabbing headline. For a basic rule of thumb, keep it short and include a motivator for response or sharing, such as fear, exclusivity, greed or peer approval. No. 4 is more technically challenging: Use content meta data tailored to sharing on the social platforms targeted, which should be the platforms most used by your target audience. Examples are OpenGraph tags for Facebook and LinkedIn, and Twitter Card tags for tweets. And No. 5: Time your posts to maximize sharing. To hone in on the right day and time, you can start by learning directly from your own audience through your online traffic analytics. To read Mangan's article with helpful links, go to http://repcapitalmedia.com/how-to-get-people-to-share-your-content/