Knowing What to Look for to Improve Digital Marketing in Retail

by Mark Smith Analytics Retail Analytics Spotlights

The-Marketing-ScopeYou’ve created a new digital marketing campaign for one of your products, complete with several ads that are driving traffic to a spiffy new landing page. You need a strong conversion rate to boost this quarter’s sales.

Is it working? How can you tell? If it’s not performing as well as you hoped, do you know what elements to tweak? And since mobile devices are now driving more than half of online searches, what is the on-page experience that visitors encounter when they hit your new landing page? Do you need to make different changes for your mobile visitors than people viewing on desktop computers?

In the fast-paced, quarter-to-quarter world of retail, this is a very real scenario. Eric Vidal, Editor & Chief Content Officer of The Marketing Scope, joined me to talk about “Why Digital Marketing Analytics Is Important for Retail Sales.” This video is part of the “Marketing Mash” series produced by Vidal.

We talked about how to use analytics to spot when something is going right, or maybe when something is going wrong. Once you understand what to look for and how to use that information, you can take action to optimize your campaigns from end to end.

Understanding How Retailers Can Use Analytics to Optimize Their Digital Marketing

by Mark Smith Analytics Retail Analytics Spotlights

The-Marketing-ScopeIn 2016, global e-commerce sales are expected to eclipse $1.1 trillion, according to leading consulting firm A.T. Kearney, with annual growth of 15%-20%. When the money is that big, you can bet that competition for wallet share in digital marketing will be stiff.

A competitive advertising space can drive up costs rapidly, so retailers need to make sure they are using analytics fully to optimize their digital marketing campaigns. When you dive into any analytics package, even free ones such as Google Analytics, the options can get complicated and overwhelming quickly. However, understanding the basic key performance indicators (KPIs) and using them correctly can help you optimize your website and improve conversions, which in turn boosts your digital marketing ROI.

I sat down with Eric Vidal, Editor & Chief Content Officer of The Marketing Scope, to discuss “Why Digital Marketing Analytics Is Important for Retail Sales.” This video is part of the “Marketing Mash” series produced by Vidal. We talked about how to understand what you’re looking at when you open your analytics package then, more importantly, how to use the data to optimize your website and drive more conversions from your digital ads.

Best Practices in Applying Analytics to Digital Marketing Campaigns for Retail

by Mark Smith Analytics Retail Analytics Spotlights

The-Marketing-ScopeThe retail industry depends heavily on digital marketing, and consequently, that makes online advertising very competitive. The online marketplace brings additional challenges that don’t exist in the brick-and-mortar world. Products, prices and even competitors change rapidly, sometimes by the minute.

To have any hope of achieving a positive return on advertising expenditures, online retailers must analyze what is working and what isn’t. While most digital marketers have an analytics program, such as Google Analytics, in place, more than half of them aren’t using analytics effectively.

These issues were the focus of a conversation I had with Eric Vidal, an Editor & Chief Content Officer, on this episode of “Marketing Mash,” a video series produced by The Marketing Scope. Watch the video, “Why Digital Marketing Analytics Is Important for Retail Sales,” to learn some best practices in applying analytics to digital marketing campaigns.

Nuts & Bolts: Raising Google Quality Score

by Mark Smith Nuts & Bolts Quality Score Retail Analytics

Screen Shot 2015-11-17 at 5.50.49 PMFor our November installment of “Nuts & Bolts” post, I’d like to share our Google Quality Score Workshop from earlier this year. Following my recent 3-part series of posts focused on mobile search, I feel this topic follows theme, as retailers gear up for ecommerce during the holiday season. Raising your Quality Score is one technique for optimizing your spending for higher ad positions. Topics include improving your click-through rate, ensuring the relevancy of your ad copy, keywords and landing pages and building quality history.

Hitting Mobile Targets Where They Roam

by Mark Smith Analytics Mobile Retail Analytics

Mobile Mall shoppingAs you walk through the halls of any shopping mall, chances are you will have to sidestep several people who are looking down at their cell phone. They may be texting their friends to determine where they’ll meet for lunch, or they may be searching to see which retailer has the best deal on the latest fall fashion.

Based on data from BIA/Kelsey, eMarketer estimates there will be 81.8 billion searches conducted via mobile devices in 2015 – just in the U.S. According to a recent report from Alphabet (parent company of Google), mobile search has surpassed desktop search worldwide.

Another recent study projects this holiday season will be the first time that the majority of online shopping visits in the United States (51%) will occur on mobile devices. To give that percentage some historical perspective, in 2014, Cyber Monday sales alone accounted for nearly $2.7 billion of sales, with 40% of that coming from mobile devices.

Now, think about those people you had to sidestep in the mall. Each one is quite literally a mobile target for your digital marketing campaigns. What do you need to do to ensure you’re capturing your share of those 81 billion mobile searches?

The good news is, if you have been creating and managing digital ads geared toward desktop searches, you are well on your way toward mobile success. You still need to create ad groups and keywords. Those really don’t change between desktop and mobile, so the work you’ve already done can still pay off. As I mentioned in a previous post, the analytics are largely the same as well.

You may, however, need to make other adjustments. For example, ad extensions for mobile may need to change from “click for more information” to “click to call.” Using a mobile device’s ability to place a call can have a huge impact on moving prospects through the funnel and improving your conversion rates.

You also may need to change your bid strategy. Getting the #4 position on a desktop might work, but on a mobile device it won’t be enough. If you can, you may want to change your bid modifiers so you’re showing up in the top three instead.

In addition, you may need to change your web development strategy. Even if your site is optimized for mobile using responsive design, it may not be delivering the desired experience. Again, check the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your analytics to ensure your mobile site is delivering the appropriate experience.

One final word of note: these principles apply to B2B advertisers just as much as B2C. Don’t assume a B2B buyer will be office- or PC-bound. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement has created a tectonic shift in the workplace, and many B2B searches now begin on a mobile device – even if they are ultimately fulfilled on a desktop. A poor mobile experience means they’ll never get to that desktop.

Hitting a moving target is far more difficult than one that’s standing still. But it’s not impossible. Use what you’ve learned already, make the proper adjustments, and you’ll find yourself leading the pack in our increasingly mobile world.

Improving the User Experience to Hit a Mobile Target

by Mark Smith Analytics Mobile Retail Analytics

Chasing a Mobile Target In less than a month, we will be staring down the Internet pipe at the busiest online shopping day of the year: Cyber Monday. Last year, Cyber Monday sales accounted for nearly $2.7 billion of sales, with 40% of that coming from mobile devices.

Retailers are already sending out teasers, inviting us to watch for their special deals. But while they are putting thought and effort behind what they will offer, how much attention are they putting on how they will optimize the shopping – and buying – experience? It’s not easy to hit a moving target, nor is it simple to make the user experience swift and seamless for a mobile customer.

According to a recent report from Alphabet (parent company of Google), mobile search has surpassed desktop search worldwide. A separate report from eMarketer based on BIA/Kelsey data, estimates there will be 81.8 billion searches conducted via mobile devices in 2015 – in the U.S. alone. That’s an increase of 23% over 2014.

The challenge for marketers, especially those who may have paid little or no attention to their mobile strategy, is how to deliver a fast, efficient customer experience from search to purchase.

The user experience is critical, especially given the lack of patience the Internet has created. When users go to a site, whether it’s via a desktop or mobile device, they expect it to work quickly and seamlessly. If the site doesn’t, they’re only a back button away from checking out a competitor. And once they hit that back button – whether because a site isn’t loading fast enough or isn’t readable on their mobile device – you don’t just lose that sale. It could have a significant effect on the lifetime value of that customer or prospect.

Think of what that does to your investment in paid search. You spend many months and dollars developing ads, researching keywords, testing and analyzing to determine what will be most effective in driving customers to your website. Then when customers arrive, what they encounter immediately drives them away. That’s like spending millions of marketing dollars to draw guests to a hotel, but when they arrive the staff is slow, the elevators don’t work, the roof is leaking and the paint is peeling. It’s unlikely many will stay even one night, which means all that marketing investment is lost.

So, how do you know if your online experience is welcoming visitors or driving them away? One good way is to use your analytics package to get into the details of user behavior online. By analyzing every step in the buyer’s journey, you can determine not only how many visitors your search campaign is drawing, but also what they’re doing when they get there.

A high bounce rate, for example, tells you people are coming to the site but they’re not clicking through it. That could be because your campaign isn’t drawing the right people, or because the right people are having a poor customer experience. A little investigation should help you determine which one is the actual cause.

Now comes the big question: With all of this happening, what do smart marketers need to do to ensure they’re hitting those nearly 82 billion mobile targets? That’s what I will cover in my next post.

Retailers: How to Turn Browsers into Buyers

by Mark Smith Analytics Retail Analytics

Retailers Eye Analytics - KeywordFirstIn the future, retailers won’t have to work hard to find prospective buyers. Every person’s purchasing patterns and “wish list” will be readily accessible as they stroll by a store or digital signage. Retina scans and other biometric monitoring tools will read the “digital exhaust” emanating from our bodies and instantly serve up dynamic, contextually relevant ads to each passerby.

At least that’s the future depicted in the sci-fi blockbuster “Minority Report.” But for now, most retailers understand they need to make the best use of data to identify and attract people through their digital marketing campaigns.

In an earlier post, I described how Google AdWords helps retailers quantify the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts in driving traffic to their websites. My last post discussed the value of session metrics, like you can get from Google Analytics, in studying customers’ behavior during a specific visit to a website.

The goal, of course, is to discover which campaigns are turning browsers into buyers. That is where analyzing performance metrics proves invaluable. Whereas session metrics deliver information about customers’ behavior during a specific visit to the site, performance metrics can be used to gauge a campaign’s overall performance and the site’s effectiveness as a whole. Let’s examine two key performance metrics:

  • Individual page performance lets retailers track what visitors do when they are on specific pages, such as whether they click through to a third-party partner’s site. This can help retailers identify the pages they should lead visitors to the most and which are underperforming.
  • Cross-platform performance is important for retailers doing omni-channel, or multi-device marketing, because it lets them measure performance across devices. This can lead to insights about users who start their searches on one device and continue on another one, and it allows retailers to see how well an entire digital marketing effort is performing and avoid the trap of last-click attribution.

Using both Google AdWords and Google Analytics to track and analyze session and performance metrics, retailers can gain insights into which campaigns are most effective in generating real leads and increasing conversion rates. Or in other words—turn browsers into buyers.

Effective analysis can also help retailers improve branding campaigns by helping them determine the best words and approaches to use, based on performance results—even down to the page level. Understanding what is working at this deep level will enable retailers to make the best decisions about budgets, bids, landing pages, ad copy and other program elements. They can then target their dollars toward tactics that are working and cut back or remove entirely those that aren’t—even if they’re driving traffic.

In short, it will enable retailers to rely on data rather than instinct.

A recent Google report, cited in Advertising Age, asserted that 56 percent of digital ads are never seen. That means there is a startling number of ads that never even have a chance to attract prospective buyers to an e-commerce website, and it highlights the critical need to build paid-search campaigns honed by analytics.

The technology from “Minority Report” that allowed businesses to assail individuals with targeted ads might not exist yet, but with today’s analytics applications, retailers can use data to improve their digital marketing campaigns’ performance and attract the right prospects to their e-commerce sites.

Read more on our blog about how retailers can benefit from analytics and visit our website.