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/

Measuring ROI Is Top Multichannel Challenge

As highlighted recently in a MediaPost Real-Time Daily post, quantifying and optimizing ROI across channels is a top challenge for today's marketing execs.  Gone are the days when direct marketers could afford siloed channel strategies. Citing a new global survey conducted by the programmatic marketing and analytics firm DataXu, the Real-Time Daily article notes that U.S. senior marketers now say the single greatest challenge in their jobs is developing an accurate way to quantify ROI across the variety of channels. Another 37% of U.S. marketers say their biggest challenge is developing an efficient marketing mix across channels to drive ROI. The U.S. marketers are not alone, however; difficulty tracking the success of a marketing campaign into metrics was cited by one-third of global marketers as the largest threat to the success of their teams. In meeting multichannel challenges, marketers also feel the bar for technical skills is set higher than ever before because of expanding digital technologies and proliferating data sources. So it's no surprise that 78% of U.S. marketers point to understanding marketing technologies as a skill critical to their mission, and 72% think grasping digital media is crucial to success. Overall,  65% also say it is necessary to be data literate. Testing to optimize marketing mix ROI is an approach that some marketers are now taking, per the article, including survey author DataXu. These marketing teams are randomizing deployment of existing budgets across various channels and then measuring business outcomes to pinpoint where a campaign is most successful, transforming a media plan into a controlled experiment. For more on the article and its statistics, go to http://www.acculistusa.com/multichannel-marketers-see-roi-measurement-as-top-challenge/

Clues That Your Media Mix Needs a Tune-up

Every budget cycle, marketers question whether they have the right media mix to optimize sales, whether they need to shift dollars between channels, especially in the rapidly changing digital landscape. In a recent Marketing Land article, Scott Rayden, chief revenue officer for 3Q Digital, offers seven clues that a change in your digital mix may be in order. Here are a few of his tips, starting with a no-brainer: If your brand, and non-brand, search numbers are declining, it's time to consider new ways to boost online brand awareness. He advises taking a look at options such as Twitter, display ads, video, Facebook, Pinterest, and Gmail sponsored promotions. Next, now that mobile traffic has topped desktop traffic, you are clearly behind the curve if most of your traffic, whether B2C or B2B, is desktop-driven, so invest in mobile. Rayden also notes that even with great CRM and well-segmented e-mail campaigns, you may not be mining all the gold in your first-party data. Consider using customer knowledge to prospect for lookalikes with new targeting programs offered by Facebook Lookalike Audiences, Google Similar Audiences and Twitter Tailored Audiences, he suggests. And if you are generating lots of leads but not enough paying customers, he advises rethinking targeting and linking CRM first-party data to marketing campaigns to weed out junk lead sources and boost channels delivering conversions. And, of course, pay attention to competitors; if they use many more channels to target the same demographics or firmographics, an expanded media mix may be in order. For more tips, read http://marketingland.com/7-signs-cmos-need-examine-media-mix-133456