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Importance of re-targeting in E-commerce

Kantola, J. (2014). The Effectiveness of Retargeting in Online Advertising. Helsinki, Finland: Aalto University.Retargeting, according to Chaffey (2018), it is a crucial activity in our customer lifecycle marketing since it helps boost both conversion to lead and to sale rates. The figure below exhibits that the average rate of cart abandonment is 75.4 per cent with rates in a number of sectors like finance and travel being even higher.

Figure 1: Abandonment Rates (Chaffey, 2018)

The figure below shows the conversion rates and open rates from emails sent to cart abandonment:

Figure 2: Performance of cart abandonment (Chaffey, 2018)

Clearly, the open rates are higher than average because of the emails’ contextual nature while conversion rates are the same as average. This demonstrates that ad retargeting could support conversion, whether it is through ad networks, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn or Twitter. Kantola (2014) observed that well-designed utilisation of retargeting could enable the advertisers to manage the classic advertising challenge. More importantly, retargeting could be utilised to target customers that have shown interest in the product, with highly relevant ad content. Retargeting is an extremely effective technique for reaching shopping cart abandoners or website visitors as advertising target audiences. Retargeted ads have been introduced by large web platforms like Twitter and Facebook into newsfeeds of their members as an advertising strategy’s central plank. Kantola (2014) points out that communications and customised products attract the attention of the customer as well as foster customer loyalty.

Customised ad design is a key feature that distinguishes online marketing from other forms of marketing. The most recent step in retargeting technological development has been the creation of dynamic ad, which utilises similar technical solutions as browsing data (parsing individual-level) in making recommending the product to the customers in the web store. Essentially, such data could be utilised in retargeting through the creation of dynamic retargeting ads capable of presenting the same products that had been browsed earlier by the consumers on the website. Although retargeting is effective, Yeo, Kim, Koh, Hwang, and Lipka (2017) points that it is only valuable as a focused tool; therefore, understanding the type of products requiring extra retargeting is a crucial initial step. To narrow down the products to advertise, the advertisers should understand different products’ conversion rates as well as allowing the retailers to concentrate on products with the lowest conversion rate.  

References

Chaffey, D. (2018, September 10). Why is retargeting is essential in E-commerce (and other types of) businesses. Retrieved from Smart Insights: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-conversion-strategy/why-is-retargeting-is-essential-in-e-commerce-and-other-types-of-businesses/

Kantola, J. (2014). The Effectiveness of Retargeting in Online Advertising. Helsinki, Finland: Aalto University.

Yeo, J., Kim, S., Koh, E., Hwang, S.-w., & Lipka, N. (2017). Predicting Online Purchase Conversion for Retargeting. WSDM '17 Proceedings of the Tenth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, (pp. 591-600). San Jose, CA.

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Aligning Social Media Marketing with other Channels

The majority of organisations have a marketing calendar outlining the year’s key campaigns. It has become imperative for social media to be in line with this calendar. Normally, campaigns deemed successful are often simultaneously executed across a number of channels; thus, leading to promotion of the same core message, notwithstanding the marginally different implementation in all channels. As mentioned by Gurd (2018), the marketing calendar is not only fluid but also flexible; therefore, it could change in order to facilitate the marketing team to effectively respond to changing environments. Gurd (2018) posits that the spontaneity element is crucial to social media marketing; therefore, organisations should avoid posting content that is at variance with the core marketing messages or going off brand.

Figure 1: Social Media Marketing Example (Gurd, 2018)

Given that the marketing calendar offers the organisation a level plan for the campaign, it is imperative for the campaign assets to be improved so as to suit social networks. When an organisation is launching a new product, it should consider utilising product imagery with the goal of creating new boards on Instagram photos, Pinterest, and so forth. On Twitter, organisations should utilise visual posts instead of only text. Photography should be used to create photos that are engaging for visual networks such as Instagram. Marketing Campaigns, according to Gurd (2018) generate social conversations regardless of another channel being a catalyst.  An offline ad, for instance, could be shared by social media users; thus, generating interactions with other users. Social research tools like Buzzsumo can be utilised by social media teams to determine what people or contents are most popular. The generated insight can be utilised to work out what content style could be beneficial to the social audience as well as identifying crucial influencers with the goal of promoting the content. This plays a crucial role in generating new content, which has been tailored for the social audience, instead of depending on the existing content.

Figure 2: Social research tool (Gurd, 2018)

Managers, as suggested by Oyza and Edwin (2015), should understand that power has shifted from producers to the consumers; hence, social media offers consumers a platform to share their thoughts with regard to a new service, product or ad. Organisations should capitalise on two way communication while responding and communicating with consumers to realise how a certain brand is perceived. Managers must utilise social media platform to their advantage by encouraging employees to take part in social media marketing. A number of products are advertised effectively by means of demonstration; for instance, placing videos on YouTube. Ashley and Tuten (2015) mention that social media should act as a channel for various marketing activities such as paid advertising channel, customer service, customer relationship management, lead generation, buyer research, branding as well as the sales promotion delivery channel. Irrespective of the goal, information regarding the brand should be relevant to enable the consumers to engage with the brand self-relevantly.  

References

Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement. Psychology and Marketing, 32(1), 15–27.

Gurd, a. (2018, September 27). Social Media Marketing Planning + Alignment with other Channels. Retrieved from Smart Insights: https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/social-media-marketing-planning-alignment-channels/

Oyza, I., & Edwin, A. (2015). Effectiveness of Social Media Networks as a Strategic Tool for Organizational Marketing Management. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 2, 1-9.

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Customer Intelligence as a Source of Competitive Advantage

Kaushik, A., & Xu, S. (2016). Derivation Of Customer Intelligence From Customer Knowledge Management. International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering, 8(8), 296-306.For an organisation to become a market leader, Ramanan (2018) points out that customer-centricity must be embedded in all facets of the organisation. Generally, modern companies must have an understanding of what their prospects and customers expect to allow for the delivery of a customer experience which surpasses such expectations. Scores of companies have failed to connect between customer revenue and insight. Having a powerful customer insight can essentially influence customer loyalty and engagement, which in consequently makes a contribution to the bottom line. To target customers at scale with personalised and contextually relevant content, Ramanan (2018) asserts that the organisation must comprehensively understand customer behaviour over time. Understanding customer behaviour increases metrics like ROI, average order value, response rate, as well as business revenue.

Figure 1: Insight-driven businesses revenue (Ramanan, 2018)

When an organisation becomes customer-centric, the brand’s DNA must be shifted. That is to say, the organisation must be willing to listen to customers and accordingly adapt at all stages of the buyer’s journey. Customer intelligence, as mentioned by Ade, Akanbi, and Tubosun (2017) is an important instrument since it enables organisations to survive in the marketplace as well as gain competitive advantage. Customer intelligence enables the organisations to successfully expand their business, acquire more profit, perform better as compared to market competitors and improve its competitive advantage. Firms’ management should prioritise as well be proactive in collecting information that pertains to day-to-day marketing activities to effectively support their business and gain a business competitive advantage. Kaushik and Xu (2016) posit that customer intelligence drives revenue growth and business gains through the creation and utilisation of key skills. Companies that have effectively utilised customer intelligence in driving customer-centricity have achieved market advantages like product development, improved agility in a dynamic market, ability to respond to client demand, and accelerated process upgrades. Basically, a perfect customer behaviour portrait could be derived from a combination of human insights and transaction information, which could completely rely on how the organisation communicates with the clients.

References

Ade, L. P., Akanbi, A. M., & Tubosun, A. I. (2017). The Influence of Marketing Intelligence on Business Competitive Advantage (A Study of Diamond Bank Plc). Journal of Competitiveness, 9(1), 51 - 71.

Kaushik, A., & Xu, S. (2016). Derivation Of Customer Intelligence From Customer Knowledge Management. International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering, 8(8), 296-306.

Ramanan, M. (2018, September 19). Make Customer Intelligence your Biggest Competitive Advantage. Retrieved from Smart Insights: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/make-customer-intelligence-your-biggest-competitive-advantage/