With technology transforming and the explosive rise of new businesses, it is getting challenging for companies to stand out. It is important to know how to navigate your company through this environment to come out on top.
Here are some trends that we believe, if integrated correctly, can be the key to a successful marketing strategy.
1. ATTRIBUTION
The marketing industry is transforming and digital is at the forefront. It is now becoming even more crucial to understand how to integrate online and offline touchpoints to engage with users across different stages of their shopper journey. Attribution comes in handy as it is a marketing method used to measure actions taken at user level by attributing a portion of the success to each point they came across during their purchase journey. This way enabling you to truly understand which marketing efforts were most effective.
Diving in further, attribution helps determine the reason behind certain events and the order in which they occurred. For marketers to be able to optimize campaigns and create an experience tailored toward specific users, it’s key that they understand which touchpoints caused a consumer to take action. With the right attribution model, companies will be able to quantify the impact of their advertisements on consumers’ purchasing habits.
To get a better idea of how implementing an attribution model into your marketing strategy can benefit you and/or your brand, take DeVito/Verdi as an example. The digital team at DeVito/Verdi recently launched an advertising campaign to measure attribution for a large healthcare system. In doing so, they discovered two types of attribution – Direct and Indirect. If a user converts after going to your website directly, that is accredited to the Direct channel. Indirect on the other hand can include all of the following: organic search, display, email, referral, etc. A regular model would say that all credit for the conversion went to one of the above, whether display ad or social, but this clearly understates the direct visits that lead to a conversion. By using attribution models you will be able to fully distinguish each consumer purchase driver whether direct or indirect.
Below is a part of the attribution model that the D/V Digital team created for a major client, who in the past was not able to attribute their results to any specific activity.
*The numbers have been changed for confidentiality reasons*
Looking at the campaign above, DeVito/Verdi found that website traffic and activity, such as new users and home page sessions (Indirect), as well as top-of-mind intent like branded search volume (Direct), had significant increases during and after the campaign, leading to 10.18% and 28.49% increase, respectively.
2. PERSONALIZED MARKETING
This marketing strategy is directed toward a specific individual or prospective client. It is as intimate and personal as a marketing campaign can get. This means that the company must have detailed data on the prospective client. With today’s media capabilities and technology, a complete personal profile is only a few clicks away. Once this information is gathered, the company gears its marketing efforts specifically towards the potential clients’ interests based on his or her previous behaviors as discovered through digital media channels and data collection. Ads are tailored based on the information gathered through stored cookies and past searches.
By focusing on relevance and impact, advertisers will be able to reach more specific audiences and target them with ads that are of interest to them. This can help companies understand the true performance of their ad, including engagement, brand lift, and conversions.
3. SOCIAL STORIES
Social stories are an extension of personalized marketing and play a critical part in a company’s marketing strategy. Stories on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat allow brands to tell a story. This is what we call “Visual Storytelling.”
Sharing stories of personal or corporate struggles offer teaching points and exposure. For example, stories depicting “a day in the life” at a certain company gives viewers a glimpse into company culture. The story has a pulse. It has far-reaching effects on both current and potential customers as well as those already in the industry. Social stories are used to create brand awareness and drive consumers ever so closer to making a purchase.
Organic reach is becoming a declining concept for all social platforms. Stories are one of the final modalities of organic reach that exist in its most authentic form. Thus, taking advantage of the time that exists right now, where this medium is still free, is critical for advertising teams.
4. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics can help predict results not only in the form of reach but also sales. This has the ability to create an advertising strategy that will deliver optimal performance for a brand’s target audience and campaign objectives. In translation, AI can help not only improve the customer journey but also predict her next move.
An improved user experience is the most important aspect to the usage of AI in marketing. It allows us to serve consumers the most relevant content based on location and past behavior while building brand loyalty and a uniquely tailored experience. AI can even help create a virtual experience for consumers. For example in retail, consumers can “try on” clothes online without ever entering a store which increases brand satisfaction and loyalty.
As mentioned above, an integral component to artificial intelligence is its predictive capabilities when it comes to consumer behavior. Data management platforms can collect information about users from not only your website but all over the internet and determine who is likely to convert and who should be eliminated from marketing efforts. With this, customer journeys will become more efficient and sales will be forecasted more easily.
By taking into account all these factors, marketers will be able to better allocate advertising spend and optimize performance while creating the best possible experience for customers.
5. VOICE SEARCH
Voice search is changing the digital marketing landscape, in particular, search marketing. According to a BrightLocal Study, 58 percent of consumers have used voice search to find local business information within the last year, and 76 percent of smart home speaker users conduct local searches at least once a week, with 53 percent performing daily searches. Even for online purchases, voice-assisted search is becoming increasingly important, with the most well known example being Amazon’s Alexa where many consumers use it to make purchases on AMazon as well. However, there is much more to voice search that does not only have to do with purchases but rather information. For example, users can ask their voice assistant to look up information on movie times, car brands etc., which can act as the first touchpoint of the consumer purchase journey.
Technavio predicts that the voice recognition market will be a $601 million industry this year. Searches are becoming more conversational — 65 percent of people who own an Amazon Echo or Google Home can’t imagine going back to the days before they had a smart speaker (GeoMarketing). comScore predicts that 50 percent of searches will be voice searches by 2020. Voice search gets rid of the screen and the UI/UX that has until now been key for SEO.
Businesses need to be aware of these future changes and the transformation of internet usage. DeVito/Verdi is focused on value-first opportunities that make sense for our clients.
DeVito/Verdi has recently been voted as a top Digital Marketing Agency by DesignRush for 2019.
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