Marketers need to discard traditional concepts of the marketing funnel and assume that consumers switch devices as needed to read reviews and ratings, and research prices before searching again. To make matters more complex, on 53% of conversion paths, the last click typically belongs to a generic keyword -- which means brands that do not show up in search engine results for generic keyword searches miss out on new customers, according to Todd Pollak, head of retail at Google. Pollak, author of the latest ZMOT Handbook (Zero Moment of Truth), wants to debunk the myth that consumers go to a store to check out prices and purchase the product on the channel offering the lowest price. Since consumers are doing much more research before making a purchase decision, only showing up some of the time means the brand misses out on what he calls zero moment of truth opportunities. "Once you know how much income you generate from search ad clicks, you can set your bids accordingly to make sure you're capturing profitable demand," he said. Pollak calls the purchase path a "flight map," where shoppers bounce back and forth across channels. If 46% of consumers research the product on their smartphone and then go to a store to make a purchase, as he suggests, marketers must consider multichannel marketing through optimizing mobile Web sites, creating interaction on YouTube video ads, and enabling click-to-call search ads. "Some 68% of consumers use YouTube to browse retail companies," he said. "That was simply not the case five years ago." One of the major issues Pollak points to in the handbook is shopping cart abandonment. As 2012 began, seven out of 10 times consumers abandoned full carts. Many of them made a short hop somewhere else, such as back to a search engine to check for a better price, cheaper shipping, a coupon or a savings code by changing the keywords in the search term. While the path becomes more complex, supported by "self-directed and unpredictable" shoppers, more devices that means brands have many options to connect with consumers. The latest ZMOT handbook also highlights a three-step plan for working with affiliate programs, mobile insights and managing the bids, rather than the budgets. Marketers need to remember that mobile ads don't work for all product categories or age groups. Doug Schumacker, digital director of marketing at Braun Corp., a manufacturer of wheelchair-accessible vans and ramps, told MediaPost in an earlier discussion that mobile doesn't fit into his company's business model. The clients -- typically older -- won't use a smartphone like consumers ages 12 to 17. The problem lies in focusing on the ad budget rather than on the bids needed to reach the most relevant customers. The goal -- to capture demand at a price the brand is willing to pay -- becomes the challenge and the reward.
A $22.5 million civil penalty against Google for improperly tracking Apple Safari users brought on by the Federal Trade Commission gave Bing the fodder to launch a Web campaign Friday suggesting that Apple Safari users switch to Bing. The landing page message tells site visitors that Google may have recently tracked Apple Safari users even though the company promised it would not. Aside from the message suggesting users stop searching with Google and start searching with Bing, it suggests making Bing their home page and starting every search with Bing. The two companies compete across many segments, from cloud computing and Web-based docs to Web browsers and search engines, but this campaign focuses solely on showing consumers how Bing becomes a viable alternative to Google search, according to Stefan Weitz, senior director at Bing. The small, online campaign is designed to make Safari users aware that Google had circumvented Safari's privacy settings -- which resulted in the FTC’s largest penalty in the history of the agency, according to Weitz, adding that the goal remains making consumers aware of the facts. "Earlier this year, we showed a more open approach to social search, where Google favors only its own G+ information," Weitz said. "Last week, we launched the Bing challenge, to show customers the quality of Bing's Web search results had surpassed Google's." Clearly, Microsoft has become more aggressive in its competitiveness against Google, similar to the Microsoft PC vs. Apple Mac campaign made popular through humor. The penalty against Google could also explain Apple's decision to cut ties with Google YouTube and Google Maps. In the case of mapping, Apple developed its own application. Apple's replacement app mapping features became available in the iPhone 5, which recently went on sale. Earlier experts criticized the app, saying it often becomes confused, doesn't provide directions for public transportation and displays inaccurate business information. With the iOS6 release, major changes were included in the mapping application. This has implications for small businesses, local arms of national brands, and franchises, according to industry insiders. If the iPhone rethinks a business location, it could mean fewer customers.
As smartphones continue to gain in popularity, consumers are shopping with them in surprising numbers: A new study from comScore estimates some 85.9 million Americans dabbled in some sort of m-commerce in July, with Amazon coming up the big winner. “The sheer volume of consumers interacting with retailers on their smartphones really underscores the growing importance of the mobile channel in retailers’ marketing strategies,” Sarah Radwanick, comScore’s senior marketing manager, tells Marketing Daily. “With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, mobile devices are poised to be an essential tool for this year’s shoppers, whether they are in-store or on the go.” While the study looks at unique visitors that visited one of the brands (either via mobile Web or app) during July, it didn’t measure how much time they spent shopping, nor did it track whether people accessed the sites while actually in a store -- to compare prices, let’s say -- or whether they were sitting at home in a lawn chair. The study -- based on adults 18 and over, using smartphones running the iOS, Android or RIM operating systems -- says that means four out of five smartphone owners let their fingers do the shopping. Amazon dwarfed all other brands, with 49.6 million unique visitors, followed by 32.6 million visiting eBay; 17.7 million going to Apple sites; 16.3 million shopping at Walmart, and 10 million at Target. Apps are gaining in popularity, with 4 million visitors checking out Shopkick, for example. The study found that women are more likely to shop via phone (as they are from their desktop computers) than men. And not surprisingly, younger people are more likely to do so than older consumers: Those between the ages of 25 and 34 accounted for 23.3% of all m-shoppers in July, closely followed by those between 35 and 44, who generated 22.8% of visits. And brands beloved by Millennials are doing as well as mainstream brands: Etsy, for example, got as many visits as Lowe’s.
Do you hear that rumble in the distance? It’s change coming. What sort of change, you ask? Well, the events of the last few weeks collectively point to a pretty big shift in the search landscape. First, has traditional search engine usage reached its peak? ComScore and Hitwise reported lower year-over-year search queries. Could this point to users moving away from traditional engines to answer their questions? Secondly, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has shared the very real potential for the social engine to get into search in a big way. While I doubt Facebook could reach the outlandish forecast of 50% market share in search, this move would certainly further erode traditional search engine use. Lastly, Apple is continuing to distance itself from Google. With the release of iOS6 we see the severing of some of the ties that once bound the companies, including Apple’s dropping of Google Maps and YouTube no longer being a built-in app. In the short term, this will likely impact local result consumption, since less people will use Google Maps. But the real question is, how long until Apple decides to use a different default search partner -- and what will that mean for mobile search budgets? What are driving these changes? The increase in mobile and local searches has a lot to do with this. I have spoken frequently about search becoming an experience for users on the go. And many people resort to mobile apps to get specific, situation-based answers when they search on a mobile device. The drive to mobile will also increase opportunity for competition. Check out the mobile version of Bing. Instead of a site that merely ports a desktop experience to a phone, Bing creates an innovative experience for users. Another trend driving change in the search landscape is the increasing use of non-search-engine search capabilities. When people skip over a search engine and go straight to Amazon for product search, it’s clear that either Amazon is doing something very right, or search engines need to improve their results. Changes to Google Shopping may help improve the experience for users, but is it too little too late? What are the implications for search marketers? There are few implications to these changes in the very near term. In fact, despite comScore and Hitwise pointing to decreases in search engine use, our data shows year-over-year paid search ad impressions up significantly this quarter -- and we don’t foresee that changing in a major way over the next 12 months. We consider these changes more mid- to long-term significant landscape shifts. Search marketers should expect more search fragmentation as users spread their nets wider for information. This is in addition to more device fragmentation as users accelerate their flight from the desktop. There will be new opportunities for large Google competitors and scrappy startups alike as they take advantage of new user patterns and information availability. Search marketers need to remain open to these transformations. Testing new paid search outlets and strategies will likely add up to longer days, and budgets spread further afield. But by remaining at the forefront of innovation, you can stay one step ahead of your competition.
Agencies, and media buyers in particular, today live in a data-driven, real-time world. RTB platforms crunch billions of data points to let media buyers quickly buy audiences – targeting digital campaigns in real-time to micro-segments likely to be interested in a particular product or message. It seems everyone in digital advertising bows down to Big Data. Data is the new creative! Data will solve all our problems! Data will bring us one-to-one marketing at last! Buying audiences based on complex data analysis is clearly a huge step forward in helping brands understand and connect with their core customer constituencies, but it’s not enough to let the machines do all the work. Even in today’s Big Data ad world, “persona” work is still critical. Slicing and dicing data to understand the characteristics of a target segment gives a fairly broad view of that segment – man aged 25-40, in-market to buy a car, aspires to buy and can afford a Mercedes. But it takes real cognitive thinking to consider cultural nuances, pre-conceived image perceptions, current trends, influencing factors, and generational mind-sets to really understand key “personas.” That same man shopping for a car may be concerned about global warming and thus interested in fuel efficiency; he may have a young child and place safety high on his list. This person would respond to a different campaign than the standard “audience” of a 25-40 year-old, high-income man in the market for a Mercedes. So what steps can a media planner take to go beyond the dataset to understand their core customer? *Tap into hearts and minds Persona work involves understanding the physical characteristics of a consumer (age, demographics, past purchases, click behavior) and their needs and wants on emotional and rational levels. When building a core audience, look at connection points that bring together the head, heart and wallet. A consumer’s online behavior and demographics (digital shopability) may show that he wants to buy a Mercedes, but his head may be telling him to buy a minivan for the kids, and his wallet dictates he should buy an economy car. With those nuances in mind, you can target an ad for a fully tricked out minivan to this person – with ad messaging that taps into his complex psyche without sacrificing features – instead of targeting him with luxury car ads based on a “data set.” The Toyota Sienna “Daddy Like” campaign was brilliant in understanding the hearts and minds of who really buys minivans – wistful, used-to-be-hip dads who want to be respected by their peers and the key influencer in their life: their wife or significant other. *Focus on 5 trigger points Learn how a core audience interacts with five key triggers: music, sports, technology, fashion, and lifestyle. When defining an audience, you should look at how a target consumer engages with these things. By grouping personas based on their feelings and responses to these five key triggers, you’ll come up with distinct audiences that respond to distinct messages. Understand the connective thread of their lifestyle, as well as their habits and aspirations around brand and product choices. By looking only at data sets, you might define an audience as “young active woman 18-22,” but looking at how this audience responds to the four other trigger points can deliver a clearer picture of her self-perception as a former athlete motivated by sport, instead of a young woman motivated by beauty. *Be authentic. When you set out to do persona work, one truth holds true: be authentic in how you approach people and be authentic to the origin of the brand that you are marketing. No matter how precisely you define audiences, consumers don’t appreciate being “marketed to. Consumers will reward brands that take the time to instead understand their needs/wants and motivations, values and cultural differences. Good persona work makes the difference between building trust or building doubt. Operate from transparency, relevancy and credibility to solve real problems or deliver exciting aspiration for the consumer. Even in a big data world, persona work allows agencies and brands to do their best creative work – creating campaigns that resonate with people on a personal level. Data may be the glue that holds together digital advertising, but machines can’t yet understand human emotions. A great brand campaign speaks directly to what makes us human.