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Change. It’s everywhere. The potent cocktail which blends one part economic pressure, one part technology acceleration and two parts immense consumer adoption has forever changed the dialogue between brands, their products, and buyers, evolving it in unexpected ways. The dialogue goes wherever consumers are, with vertiginous growth in mobile hardware sales and subsequent Internet access. The discussion has evolved from one-way to two-way to multi-lateral, with accelerating social discovery and influence. Retail in particular is experiencing exciting collisions between ecommerce, store-based and blended models which will change High Street forever, in a creatively destructive way. Bandwidth and a new generation make video take-up explosive - along with the opportunity to take advantage of it. Underpinning it all, technology is making what now feel like ‘classic’ online channels – display, PPC, SEO, affiliate – more measurable and targetable. And the rapid pace of change means we all need to train to sharpen our skills and stay on top of our game. What is very clear is to succeed in these challenging – but exciting – times, marketers need to deploy their message across the full range of channels and recognize that online and offline are not separable – people are everywhere and brands and products have to go with them. I hope you are enjoying the change as much as we are at Latitude and that this romp with some of our friends through some of the opportunities change brings us is helpful.
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Alex Hoye CEO - latitude
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Socialising
contents
your opportunity 8 Spot Kinloch Magowan, Latitude
with 100 million users - Now we can engage 10 Twitter Alex Hoye, Latitude F-Commerce, I-Frames and Apps 12 E-Commerce, Gemma Ferrer, Latitude - Beyond the click and overseas 14 Facebook Cristina Ormesher, Latitude media comes of age 16 Social Paul Kennedy, Callcredit Information Group
Mobilising OS and Android apps challenged by traffic acquisition 18 iPeter Farago, Flurry your business 20 Mobilise Damian Hanson, One Iota - mobile advertising 22 PPC Duncan Fisher, Latitude
Optimising across channels next for multichannel retailing? 24 What’s David Kohn, Snow and Rock to achieve 26 Training Mark Johnson, Latitude
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Analysing your customers’ paths to conversion Darren Herbert, Latitude
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Affiliate marketing - challenging common misconceptions Craig Jackson, Latitude
Finding via search
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Personalisation and fragmentation James Lowery, Latitude
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The personalisation of search Andrew Barke, Google
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The role of technology in digital marketing Aaron Goldman, Kenshoo
Engaging
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Online media is changing how we watch Chris Worrell, Specific Media
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Video - The new engager Holly Wilde, Latitude
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Combining the performance of retargeting with the impact of video Emi Gal, Brainient
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Gamification - What is it? Endaf Kerfoot, Games for Brands
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Advergaming Amy Jones, Latitude
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Terms of engagement David Beardmore, Callcredit Information Group
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Spot your
opportunity KinlocH Magowan, Latitude Think about your favourite song. Start singing it in your head. You know the lyrics, you know how the melody goes and when the guitar kicks in. You can’t help but to hum it out loud. Maybe your friend joins in and before you know it, you’re having a singalong. Without question music has always been social. What has changed is how we share and listen to it; invention of sound recording techniques has seen us go from using phonographs to cassette tape, through CDs and MP3 to finally accessing music online. The way we think about music has also changed. Owning a CD is very different to thinking about music as something you can access anytime, anywhere. Spotify, a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs, has been a pioneer in making music accessible by creating a place online for playlists, sharing and discovering new music.
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The partnership between Spotify and Facebook originally began in early 2010. When Facebook users were first able to share and enjoy music they listened to on Spotify. What followed in September 2011 was a larger scale merge of Spotify’s 10 million users and Facebook’s 180 million users, connecting all the music listened to by a Spotify user with their Facebook
page. This development creates new opportunities for advertisers, the most significant of which is simply having access to a passionate, music loving audience on a large scale. As reported by Business Insider in November 2011, Spotify has gained an estimated 4 million new users in 6 weeks since linking with Facebook. This is a huge addition, which gives brands advertising through Spotify an even bigger footprint. More importantly what advertisers are in the position to do through Spotify is to really gain deeper consumer engagement and social activity. Perhaps most importantly, a bigger audience base and deeper engagement levels give advertisers greater opportunity to be creative with their campaigns. Think about that song again. Think about the process of hearing it for the first time, listening to it over and over again and telling your friends about it. This is how the customer journey begins. The customer buys a product, they get to know it and if they like what they see, they then start recommend it to friends, colleagues, online friends and followers. All they need to do is hear about it first.
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Twitter with 100M Users - Now We Can Engage Alex Hoye, LaTitude 100 million consumers worldwide, 20 million of those in the United Kingdom. Companies have run promotions on Twitter and helped manage customer support, but until now have not been able to reach them through advertising directly. That has now changed with three products that have been launched in October 2011. Twitter has come a long way, consider that in May 2008 they reached only 1.2 million unique visitors globally (Nielsen, 2008). What started off as an earlyadopter (um, geek) microblogging site has grown into a platform for private users, celebrities, athletes and even politicians to engage with other users and air their daily thoughts in 140 characters or less.
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According to ROI Research for Performance poll (June, 2010), over half of people on Twitter recommend companies and products in their Tweets, with just under half of those delivering on their intention to buy the product. Imagine this kind of reach in a more traditional advertising environment. Forget advertisement breaks – now welcome a platform where your customers talk positively about your product to their peers, where word spreads like wildfire. When Twitter originally introduced advertisement into the platform for advertisers in the United States in 2010, rather than going down the traditional advertisement route of adding banners and rails onto the site, their approach was to create advertisement products that took into consideration what was already working, with the aim of creating a product that looked like the organic content on the platform. By doing this, Twitter has stumbled into something quite remarkable. Twitter has now just introduced their promoted advertisement products in the UK and they come in three flavours. Promoted Accounts are designed to increase an existing Twitter presence by helping the client find the most suitable followers – essentially looking at your followers and finding more like them for a cost-perfollower. Promoted Tweets enable tweets on a Cost Per Engagement (engagement meaning retweet, tweet or reply) basis and are a low cost
solution that can be implemented as a part of PPC spend. At Latitude, we are using this seamlessly with PPC campaigns. The engagement volume is still relatively limited, but it offers an important means to add reach to your DR campaigns in a low-competition market. The most impactful of these products at present is the Promoted Trends solution, where clients can effectively deploy a ‘takeover’ on the Twitter page with coinciding with events or campaigns and help create a buzz. Twitter is seeing the average Promoted Tweet product drive an average 3-5% engagement in search and even higher when tied to a Promoted Trend. A good average engagement rate in digital marketing is considered to be above 0.1%, a great engagement rate is above 0.3 0.5%, which makes Twitter’s average rates extraordinarily high, particularly if they are set to increase. Why should businesses care about engagement? Engaging means your followers are listening, it means they are sharing – it means they will also come back bringing their peers with them. So – it’s a new opportunity in a crowded marketplace. Given that there is only one Promoted Trend a day, we say grab those first and dabble with Promoted Tweets as part of your comprehensive DR campaigns to get a feel for them as the product matures.
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E-Commerce, F-Commerce, I-Frames and Apps - do you know your digital ABCs? Gemma Ferrer, Latitude The emergence of e-commerce has changed how businesses sell to customers. While retailers traditionally relied on the look, feel, taste and smell of a product or a recommendation of a service in order to win customers over, the growth of e-commerce in the last 10 years has mean that the customer can, and will, now purchase an item solely based on a picture and a description while paying for it online. According to a Socialnomics survey, 90% of consumers base their purchasing decisions on peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertisement. This is a percentage that is too high for any business to ignore. The power of user recommendations can already be seen on Facebook. After integrating with Spotify in September, Facebook introduced a ticker that broadcasts music listened to by users making it possible for friends to discover new music. There are also similar opportunities emerging for other sectors through F-Commerce.
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While the effect of online ‘word of mouth’ is perhaps the most useful force to come out of the invention of social media so far, F-Commerce - or selling through Facebook - is one of the latest developments becoming relevant within the e-commerce market. With 800 million users currently on
Facebook, it is easy to see why selling through Facebook is an attractive proposition for any business. After establishing itself as a component in the digital marketing strategies for most businesses updates on, social media is now proving that it has very little value on its own – businesses have realised tweeting alone won’t necessarily make a consumer buy a product. Therefore many businesses are now moving beyond the ‘I tweet, you listen’ model by promoting social plug-ins such as the ‘Like’ button while tapping into the users interests and connections. The very latest addition’s to types of F-Commerce are store applications and iFrames that pull online stores through retailers own servers into Facebook to give the shopper a seamless user experience. Companies such as Goodsie allow retailers to build storefronts which are easily integrated into Facebook, with Like buttons attached to individual products. Facebook development company Zibaba also provide selling platforms to allow transactions and integration with adverts on Facebook. Luxury brand Oscar de la Renta recently launched a limited edition perfume ring that was sold exclusively via 8thBridge Facebook wall application. Cider brewer Magners have also followed suit by launching their limited edition cider only available via Facebook.
What was notable from a report by Econsultancy in October was the correlation between online social presence and online sales performance. Although F-commerce is still emerging, it is clear that online presence is influencing sales offline. After launching their Facebook store in January 2011, ASOS have experienced a slow take up of people actually purchasing via Facebook – although their online social appears to be having a marked influence on their other online sales. The future of the F-commerce is very much in its infancy, however with brand such as ASOS and Oscar de la Renta amongst many others jumping on board, the rest are sure to follow.
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Facebook has undoubtedly Direct-Response-focused clients shaped the 21st century and are reluctant to launch Facebook influenced many different ads for the fear of poor ROI generations. performance. In September 2011 the site reached a jaw-dropping 800 million users and it is estimated that 1 in every 13 people in the world now have a Facebook Cristina Ormesher, Latitude profile. Moreover, in September 2011 Facebook accounted for 53% of In many instances, Latitude has all UK visits to social networks. been able to prove a link between Facebook and PPC performance So what does this mean for after launching highly-targeted businesses? Facebook campaigns, especially Many companies have integrated with retail clients. Facebook their brand Social Media and users are typically looking to SEO strategies. Our consultants relax and unwind and often are implement actions like social not at the “purchase stage�. bookmarking your website to Facebook ads should be served help increase traffic while Social as a means of brand and product Media monitoring enables you to awareness to carefully-selected protect your brand. recipients. What we found is a Another key factor is directly material correlation of users analysing the interplay of who had seen a Facebook ad to Facebook and Paid Search, subsequently make a purchase merging the two channels under via Google or other channels. one mutual tactic. Managed Whilst every product and correctly, paid search is the service is different, it is in every most effective direct response marketeer’s interest to consider channel. While Facebook Facebook as an extension of the generates limited clickthrough, cross-channel search engine it is best seen as an awareness- marketing strategy. generating channel. Some
Facebook beyond the click and overseas
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Facebook International Reach Working as International Account Manager I’m often challenged by clients to find new and innovative ways to grow their digital marketing campaigns. Last month the Financial Times published an article declaring, “UK retailers with international exposure are outperforming their high-street focused rivals”. UK retailers are being encouraged to expand their brands’ reach overseas targeting their products to European and international customers. Facebook is an effective way for businesses to deliver targeted campaigns to new markets. Mid-sized UK retailers will be unknown to overseas users and Facebook ads are an effective way to reach customers internationally, introduce your products to them and get them to research your brand. Moreover – thanks to Facebook targeting criteria – businesses without multilingual in-house skills can simply target their ads to overseas users with English listed as one of their spoken languages. In times of economic turmoil and financial instability – Facebook offers a cost-effective platform to reach potential customers wherever they are in the world.
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Every new medium eventually becomes ‘not a new medium’ and social is no exception. There are clear signals that social media is now being accepted as just another element within the marketing mix. The novelty may have worn off but the commercial opportunity has only just begun. Social marketing which is siloed is doomed to failure. Instead initiatives based on clear commercial objectives (eg, data captured, opt ins gained, trackable customer journeys, or direct sales measures) and a coordinated approach across the business have the best probability of success. There are some underlying trends which confirm the arrival of social media into business as usual marketing activity. These include: • Enhancing established engagement and marketing techniques: marketers in the UK are still mostly reliant on email marketing according to recent research. Social functionality and principles are being woven into the fabric of existing communications and touchpoints – from email to retail and even direct mail. • Encouraging real participation: in the early days, social was seen by some as another way of pushing communications out to audiences. Marketers are realising however that social is about conversations and participation. • Transacting socially: the rapid rise of brands setting up transactional applications within Facebook
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has been one of the strongest statements of commercialising social. Mobile displacing desktop time: the boundaries between mobile and social continue to blur. This together with the boom in demand for Tablet devices has dramatically changed how consumers across the UK are choosing to view, compare and shop. Growing role of location: there are many location platforms offering consumers the opportunity to register at venues, places and spots to interact with their network but also to receive special deals. Evolution of social monitoring: the cottage industry that quickly emerged to provide stand alone social monitoring services (often by point solution providers) is gradually being replaced by service providers offering deeper insight, evaluation (the ‘so what’ and ‘what next’) as well as building metrics which are consistently trackable and aligned to existing marketing KPIs. Integration of social data into customer databases: brands have begun to puzzle out how to link conversations, posts, blogs, check-ins and other social data elements to traditional offline data. Social Relationship Marketing: within the context of CRM, new measures of influence and relationship are now used along side value.
Social media comes of age - the new 'business as usual' Paul Kennedy, Callcredit information grouP
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iOS & Android Apps Challenged by Traffic Acquisition Not Discovery Peter Farago , Flurry Apple and Google have ushered in a new era of mobile computing whose consumer adoption is rivaled only by the PC revolution of the 1980s and the Internet boom of the 1990s. Since 2007, more than 440 million iOS and Android devices have been activated, with 1 million additional devices across both platforms now activated each day. On top of this massive and rapidly expanding platform, a software battle is raging. With very low barriers to entry, and friction-free digital distribution, companies have been feverishly building, shipping and updating applications, intent on capturing and monetizing consumer audiences. The number of apps is growing significantly in both markets. And while the App Store has attracted more apps to date, the Android Market is closing the gap. In October 2011, it is estimated over 2.6 billion apps were downloaded - four times higher than a year earlier in October 2010. Expectation is such that the 3 billion download per month mark will surely will be shattered in December 2011. Month-on-month, app downloads have been growing at an astounding rate of 11.4%. App retention is also a key performance indicator. When an app is released, 100% of a consumer cohort begins using an app. After three months, 24% of them continue using. After 6 months, this percent shrinks to 14%, and, by 12 months, only 4% are left.
This analysis is based on data from 25 apps downloaded a cumulative 550 million times. With app downloads increasing month-over-month and app usage not only climbing, but also surpassing web usage, we know that consumers are both discovering and using apps more than ever. And while the industry often talks about discovery as a problem, we think the real problem is traffic acquisition. However, an app can only appeal to first-time-users each time it ranks. It’s a pure first-time acquisition tool. App users don’t relaunch apps when seeing them in the top rankings. They need to go to their app icon and launch from there. So as an app’s installed base grows over months, even years, the relative number of incremental users that can be added from ranking in the charts continues becomes relatively smaller. In other words, over time, an app is better off targeting its much larger installed base of users to increase usage. This is the equivalent of traffic acquisition. The key challenge is that developers lack the tools to bring traffic back to their app, post-download. Therefore, the industry has a traffic acquisition problem, not a discovery problem. Only when compelling ways of connecting with existing app users are established, that allow the easy relaunch of an app, can app makers address retention through marketing, and fully control their own traffic acquisition.
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Mobilise your business Damian Hanson, CEO of One iota Approximately 10% of website traffic in the retail sector now originates from mobile devices. As a result, the subject of Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce) demands attention from businesses who recognise this as a growing area. There has been a 163% increase since May 2010 in the number of UK consumers who access retail sites via their mobile phone, fuelled by the increasing trend for shoppers to browse the internet on their phones. Suprisingly however, only one third of the UK’s top retailers have M-Commerce solutions. Sites which are not optimised for mCommerce pose a potential revenue loss for businesses, as reported by Retail Week in July 2011. According to the study, the younger generation in particular has concerns with retailers whose non-mobile optimised websites have poor navigation, hindering their purchasing experience. If such issues were resolved an easier navigation system could be established and, with simple menu options and a functionality to join up a user’s history and previous purchases, purchases would be more convenient and the
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customer journey more pleasant. All forms of advertisng such as TV, radio, print, email, display, SEO, CPC and affiliate traffic all drive mobile traffic when consumers reach for their mobile devices after seeing an ad they like because it is the most accessible way of accessing what they want. This is particularly the case during seasonal peaks such as Christmas, as seen by One iota’s research over Christmas 2010, when there was an increase of over 300% in UK mobile traffic to top sites and a 123% growth in multichannel retailers’ traffic compared to online-only retailers during Boxing Day. These numbers are set to grow significantly in the UK over the next 2 years and retailers need to optimise their mobile sites in order to take advantage of multichannel retailing and, in turn, of the 92 million Smartphone users estimated in the coming year (Flurry, July 2011). Businesses should make changes now and convert traffic through traditional and digital advertising to mobile if they are to succeed in exploiting the high percentage of mobile users in retail.
Mobile Consumers up With
by 163% since 2010
Brands
Need
Optimise for Mobile
to
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ppc mobile advertising duncan fisher, latitude
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As markets become more competitive across the Paid Search landscape, so the need arises to become more innovative and find opportunities for more cost effective traffic. Technology plays a significant part as it influences the way we conduct our online behaviour. The evolution of the Smartphone and now Tablet devices have been pivotal in creating a change in this behaviour, with more than 10% Paid Search traffic coming from these mobile devices. Two significant releases this year have been the iPad2 and more recently the iPhone 4S, the latter receiving over a million pre-orders in the first 24 hours of availability. In Q4 2011 we expect to see record mobile transactions, with the growing user base to smash M-Commerce records in the run up to Christmas. Mobile traffic is becoming more expensive as search marketers have reacted to the increased traffic opportunity, creating a more competitive landscape. Mobile Costper-Clicks are still on average 23% cheaper than desktop though, with tablet devices slightly more expensive at just 13% cheaper than desktop Google has placed a real focus on improving user experience on mobile through introducing new initiatives; 1. Supporting development of mobile sites: Google has launched a website (www.howtogomo.com) to help educate businesses on what makes a good mobile optimised site. 2. Rewarding advertisers with mobile sites: mobile optimised
websites now have a positive impact on Adwords Quality Scores. In other words, if your website is optimised for mobile users, you can look forward to cheaper clicks and higher ad positions. 3. Better analytics: there are now custom reports that can be applied to Google Analytics profiles, showing mobile specific performance stats. This data gives much more insight into how consumers are interacting with your mobile sites. What to expect next: • Mobile web usage will continue to increase rapidly following the release of the iPhone 4S. By the end of 2012 we anticipate up to 20% of all web search queries will occur via Mobile. • Mobile conversion rates during Q4 2011 will begin to rise. We have previously measured mobile conversion rates at an average of 0.85%, compared to an average 5.4% for desktop. We expect the increasing number of mobile optimised websites combined with growing consumer confidence to push conversion rates up, peaking in the run up to Christmas. • By the end of Q4 2011 almost 5% of all website traffic will come from Tablet devices, and 8% will come from Smartphones. So if not already, start treating this channel seriously to engage better with your consumers through strong visibility in search and an overall positive mobile experience
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What's Next for Multichannel Retailing? At Snow+Rock we focus on delivering a quality experience for customers both in stores and on our website. e-Commerce is booming in retail, but it is also maturing, requiring retailers to define and develop their strengths. We’ve been spending some time and effort focusing on how to make a difference and here are some of the areas we’ve found critical to leverage our advantage in having stores as well as an important web-based presence. Killer Apps for Multichannel Operators - Retailers with a store network have advantages that consumers care about, but it is important that the operations of the retailer and its website are integrated. Some offerings include: • Click and Reserve / Collect Service: Offering the convenience of rapid pickup at a time that suits the customer and making store stock visible to give confidence that a trip to the store is worthwhile. • Return to store: making it easier
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for customers to return products and avoiding the inconvenience of postage and packaging. Order in store: filling gaps in instore availability and increasing conversion in store. Third-party sourcing and fulfilment: extending the range of products or services without incurring retailer stockholding. Mobile apps: for planning a visit to a store or to access richer product information.
Purely Online Opportunities Pureplay online retailers can often compete on price as they don’t have to worry about undermining their in-store proposition. Further, price comparison scanning apps like RedLaser and Sccope can expose price differences to customers while in store. Pureplayers are seeking to match multichannel on delivery and return options, for example Amazon now provide pick up kiosks, and ASOS offer the popular Collect+ service for returns.
David Kohn, Head of MultichanneL
Snow+Rock
So what else can multichannel do to improve their e-Commerce offerings to compete for the increasingly onlineoriented consumer? Some options include: • Technology in-store: store staff use iPads as mobile POS to allow the transaction to be completed without visiting a till (think of the Apple store). QR codes can also be shown alongside the product to allow Smartphone users to access reviews, guides and enhanced product data. • Passionate Content by Passionate Staff: harnessing the knowledge and passion of store staff to provide more expert-driven content on their website. Then taking it a step further, like BestBuy US’s Twelpforce, to provide near instant expert response to customer queries. • More delivery options: increased delivery options through new services like Shutl for delivery within 90 minutes or timed delivery slots, with the product being sourced from store stock for
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unbeatable speed. Being more local: allowing stores to interact with local communities in a traditional sense (eg. talks, organised runs, equipment checking) but also by using technology (via local store Twitter and Facebook pages, localised emails or location-specific texting). More Accurate CRM: using data gathered both in-store and online to build a more complete picture of customers’ buying habits and shopping preferences . Reconfiguring Stores: This can be done to reflect the new reality, which House of Fraser have implemented with their internetonly store in Aberdeen, and White Stuff with their virtual fitting room.
The collision of the web and physical space is in an exciting period of change. What is important is that retailers take the initiative to leverage the growing range of tactics available to combine online and onsite opportunities.
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train to achieve Mark Johnson, Latitude
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No individual can say that they can’t improve their skills and knowledge; even world class athletes and musicians train and practice every day, perfecting their art. So why is that many of us don’t take the time to train and practice our professions? Sure you can say to some extent that we practice “on the job” and learn as we go along. But are we perfecting our craft or just retraining ourselves in the same tasks and procedures that may well include bad habits and poor technique? Neurologist Daniel Levitin wrote about studies of expertise: “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything” None of us become experts in anything overnight. Reaching that 10,000 mark and becoming a world class expert would require practicing for two hours every weekday for 20 years.
But how many of us can say that we, or members of our team, dedicate two hours a week let alone two hours a day for training? Are we really investing enough time in improving our knowledge and skills? I’m not suggesting that we should all strive to become world class experts in our profession, but we should always be looking to improve. There is always more we can learn and as the saying goes, “knowledge is power”. In the context of digital marketing, this could be the power to make more informed decisions about your company’s digital marketing strategy and the power to understand and improve your performance. So take a look at the hours you actually spend on training and learning. Could you find two hours a week or one day a month that you could devote to just digital marketing training and learning? As you will see from reading the other articles in this book about the advances in digital marketing, there is always more to learn and ways to improve what we do.
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Analysing your customers - paths to conversion Darren Herbert, Latitude
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Exciting developments in Path to Conversion analysis have helped 2011 become a watershed year for a practice largely unadopted by digital marketers. Until now. Whether labelled Exposure to Conversion, Multichannel Funnelling or even Cross-Visit Participation, P2C can help provide search marketers with unprecedented insight into the shape and composition of your customers’ journey to conversion from across your marketing channels. How each traffic source interacts can be evaluated, showing which work well in combination and facilitate the completion of your website’s goals – even if they have not previously been taking credit for them in campaign management. Are your generic paid search clicks leading to conversions accrued by your brand terms? Is Display generating interest in your products that results in a direct-to-site visit and sale? Taking this further, the characteristics of each channel’s activity can be assessed, applying a value beyond ‘last clicks wins’ so commonplace in standard campaign performance reports. Instead, identifying each source’s contribution to
‘assisting’ online conversions, illustrating how credit can often be lacking for channels indirectly leading to sales, is possible. Understanding this data, and using it, is the key to maximising revenues from your marketing mix. Since Google Analytics’ Multichannel Funnels burst onto the scene in August, interest is high in the tools that purportedly provide you with the means to get the most from P2C. Here are four pointers in looking for the one best-suited to you. Are ‘Direct’ site interactions measured? If you’re using a P2C platform that does not include direct-tosite visits and conversions, then a huge benefit of the endeavour is being missed. Not only should your channels’ influences on each other be measured, how they affect sales captured directly is also crucial. Quality of interactions So you’ve found that, on average, the number of visits required by your customers before they buy is three, but do you know if they were ‘quality’ interactions? Did they engage with the site or bounce away after mere moments? Being able to discount innocuous visits from paths can be key.
Post impression vs Post click ‘Post click’ tracking logs a site interaction once a visitor has arrived on site. ‘Post impression’ can also record if a user has been exposed to an offsite Display advertisement and visited the site wthout clicking the ad. While certainly not for everyone, this view can nonetheless provide great detail into the reach of your non-Direct Response campaigns.
And finally What to do with the P2C data? By working closely with both your marketing managers, analysts and the data itself, the best-fit model to redistribute credit across your successful conversion paths can be devised. Some solutions either offer a tool or service to help create ‘off-theshelf’ and bespoke models.
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Affiliate marketing: Challenging common misconceptions CRaig Jackson, Latitude Working within one of the fastest growing digital channels, our affiliate team has been involved with an increasing number of pitches in the last 12 months. From those meetings, one of our key observations is the number of brands that still hold misconceptions about affiliate marketing. So, we will challenge the common misconceptions and help brands become more comfortable around affiliate marketing and use the channel as part of a wider, more integrated online strategy. Misconception 1: “Isn’t affiliate marketing full of fraud and unethical activity?” If you have a well managed affiliate campaign with a strong validations process, ‘unethical activity’ from affiliates really shouldn’t be an issue. On any campaign, one of our first recommendations would be to switch off any ‘auto acceptance’ of affiliate applications. Check out an affiliate’s website before clicking ‘accept’ or ‘reject’. If the site is under construction, drop the affiliate a line to verify what the content will be and how you will be promoted. Then, keep on top of things. You should know exactly how you’re being promoted at all times, especially by any affiliate driving significant volume on your campaign.
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Affiliate Window has recently launched a dedicated new service department that utilises 3rd party verification software to remove the opportunity for affiliates to drive invalid leads, and to closely monitor performance per lead source. Michelle Boxall, Head of Lead Generation for Affiliate Window summarises the solution: “Our Lead Generation service was developed to deliver campaigns that drive quality, cost-effective leads for achieving ROI. We’ve created a filter for merchants to ensure that erroneous or incorrectly formatted data is removed or corrected prior to being delivered” Misconception 2: “Won’t affiliates sneakily bid on my brand PPC terms out of office hours?” A well-managed affiliate campaign with clear terms and conditions will certainly help prevent some brand bidding. However, technology is now readily available to monitor your brand space and enable you to take punitive action on any affiliate breaching your T&Cs. For some merchants and those without a network that supports brand space monitoring, solutions such as Adgooroo can provide a similar service.
Misconception 3: “Affiliate marketing is all about discounting, vouchers and cashback” There is no doubt that voucher code and cashback affiliates play a major part in the majority of affiliate campaigns. But figures from the recently published 2011 Econsultancy Affiliate Census suggests that content is still king, with over 50% of respondents suggesting that ‘content is the most important method of promotion’. Email, Mobile and Social Media are also becoming a more significant part of the affiliate campaigns as well as technologies such as retargeting and remarketing which are now available on a CPA basis.
For merchants concerned about the impact of discounting on their brand, we’d suggest that there is always the opportunity for “value added” codes, for example, a free gift or sample with entry of a code at checkout. Misconception 4: “Affiliate marketing favours the larger brands...we can’t compete” There is a slight truth in the first part of this statement. but not necessarily the second. It’s true that affiliates are more inclined to favourably promote brands where they know users will click through and convert, especially at key times of the year such as Christmas. Understandably, this tends to be the
household names. But if the lesser known brands and their agencies are willing to work smarter, harder and with slightly higher commission tiers, the affiliate channel can still be a significant source of online revenue and profitability. One of the regular concerns we hear from more niche brands is that the set up fees and monthly access fees on the major networks are a significant barrier to launching an affiliate campaign, especially when they know the revenues generated won’t offset the investment in the immediate term. So in response to this, we launched our own private network offering access to the majority of affiliate publishers in the UK for just a nominal amount.
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James Lowery, Latitude
personalisation and fragmentation
We’re re Different. We don’t have the same interests or the same friends, we don’t like the same music or the same clothes, and we don’t go to the same places. We’re not the same age, and we live in different cities. Who we are as people determines a lot about how we behave as individuals, not just in the choices we make in our day to day life, but also how we behave online. Our character and personality determines the starting point for our decisions in terms of the options that we lay out in front of ourselves and the direction that we take in choosing. Until recently, search has not granted us the opportunity to decide on the options that we choose from. As social media has a greater influence over the way search engines treat users, the 10 blue links that make up our
set of options is changing to reflect our individual choices.
Google knows a lot about us; our search behaviour is tracked and our interactions with third party websites are stored, aggregated, and used to refine the picture that Google has about us. Every search you make on Google; every result you click on; every page you view through Google Chrome or on a browser with the Google Toolbar installed; every site you visit that has Google Analytics installed on it, passes data back to Google.
That data is used to subtly refine the search results that you see so that they are personalised just for you. The 10 results that you see are different to the 10 results that I see. Every search page is bespoke because each of us is different. Beyond this, new paradigms in search behaviour – Siri for example – are changing the way we interact with the search results. We entrust a machine with information about ourselves and trust in its algorithmic judgement to find us a restaurant or book us a cab. Increasingly SEO is about finding the common ground. Writing content that is tailored specifically for the target audience, finding promotional opportunities on websites that share a demographic similarity with our clients’ websites, and developing strategies that ensure that we mine social graph data to find out who will be there to influence the market and ensure that our clients are getting their products in front of the right people. We are no longer asking clients what they want to rank for; we are asking who they want to rank for.
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The Personalisation of Search Andrew Barke Agency Industry Head, Search is no longer just about getting data, it’s about how you make use of that data. We want to help you convert pieces of data into useful information, and then convert information into knowledge. One way to make the information you seek more relevant and interesting is by putting people at the core of your experience on Google. Relevant search results are no longer just about words and pages, people and relationships are a huge part of our web experience and this includes search. The Google+ project is an extension of our efforts to put people at the heart of all Google products. Sharing has become one of the best parts of the web. Our goal is to transform the overall Google experience making it very simple because we can understand what you want and can deliver it to you instantly. This means baking identity and sharing into all of our products so that we build a real relationship with our users and inherently, a more social Google. Our +1 button is being served over 5 billion times a day all over the web. Let’s say your friend Ali hits the +1 button to recommend the site of a hotel in Greece. When you’re online and signed into your Google account you might see Ali’s +1 on search
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results when looking for places to holiday, on the site itself or on a display ad for that hotel. We all look to people for recommendations, +1’s bring this to your search results. Ali’s recommendation might help you make a more informed choice. What is so great about this is you only see your friend’s recommendation when it is interesting to you, not to them. So you don’t have to know how much your friend loves cats, unless you love them too! From an advertiser’s perspective having your business recommended, in a relevant and personal way is incredibly powerful. The recent launch of Google+ pages means businesses now have a home on Google+. This helps brands connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle. They can also spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. Promote your page with social extensions in Adwords which connect your G+ Page with your AdWords campaigns so all +1s on your ads appear on your page, and all +1s on your page appear in your ads. The +1 button combines the power of these personal recommendations with the reach of Google.
People searching on Google are very often looking for businesses and brands. Google+ Pages helps people transform their queries into meaningful connections. Brand pages and public posts are included in Google search results, and you can easily search for a specific brand page with Direct Connect. Simply search for (+) followed by the page you’re interested
in and we take you to their Google+ page. From there you have the option to add their page to your own Google+ circles, the business can add you back and sparks will fly. The Google+ project is about relevancy, talking to the right people at the right time and above all it is about you.
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The Role of Technology in Digital Marketing
Aaron Goldman, CMO at Kenshoo
Humans and machines have a long history of co-dependency and achievement. Sailors and their radars. Doctors and their X-rays. Astronauts and their spacecraft. Marketers and their campaign management platforms. Technology can play a crucial role in digital marketing, but only when placed in proper context and complemented by human experts. Technology can’t tell you why someone would want to buy your product or service, but technology can help you test various messages and promotions.
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Technology can’t tell you how to engage with your customers across channels, but technology can integrate data across channels to give you a holistic view of performance. Technology can’t do your job for you, but it can help you do your job better and faster. At Kenshoo, we’re focused on building innovative technology solutions to make marketers more efficient and effective. Our mission is to automate everything that can be automated in digital marketing without sacrificing relevancy, quality and performance. Here are some examples of how technology platforms like Kenshoo can accelerate the campaign planning, implementation and optimisation processes: Ad Creation • Centralise campaigns on global search engines and social networks. • Mine on-site and broad match queries for new keywords to add to campaigns. • Turn inventory feeds into search ads. • Monitor landing page URLs for dead or irrelevant links. • Create audience segments and permutations for social media targeting. Bid and Budget Management • Automatically roll over budgets from one campaign to the next when appropriate. • Cluster keywords into bid
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portfolios based on characteristic similarity and data sufficiency. Schedule future actions and forecasting the impact of bid changes. Manage campaigns across channels from your desktop without internet connection. Convert currencies for international and global campaigns.
Analysis and Reporting • Present bespoke dashboards to surface key data points and insights. • Provide alerts to underperforming placements. • Integrate data from website and 3rd party sources for pathto-conversion and attribution analysis. • Track offline conversion activity like phone-calls and in-store sales. In the future, the lines between humans and machines will continue to blur. You won’t be able to differentiate the role of the person versus the technology, and no longer will it be necessary to. Everyone and everything will be hardwired to meet business goals and objectives. You will think it and the machine will act on it. For now, though, the winning combination for digital marketing is the “old-fashioned” one that incorporates passionate people and scalable software.
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chris worrell, head of consumer insight europe, specific media
Online video is changing how we watch and it's only the beginning!
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Video has been the growth story of digital over the past 12 months. More consumers are watching more content across more devices than ever before, presenting marketers with a wealth of exciting new ways to connect and engage with consumers. Three key themes are emerging from our work in the video space so far: •
The Online Experience: just as TV is not radio with pictures, online video is not TV smaller. It is its own unique medium, with its own unique properties. Our research has shown that content is consumed in a far more active manner than the more passive habitual consumption of TV – driven by consumers actively seeking content they want to watch at a time that is convenient to them. Consumers also interact with content in a way they can’t with TV, sharing, rating and recommending. The nature of viewing is very much ‘lean forward’.
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Measuring Success: the click has become the measurement of choice for digital display, despite its plentiful drawbacks. But the Internet has evolved as a medium. Critically the consumer is empowered – they have chosen to view a particular piece of content at a particular time and therefore it is highly unlikely that they will interrupt that experience by clicking on an ad. This doesn’t mean that advertising has no value, and just because something can be measured, that it is, in fact, worthwhile measuring: relevant, insightful metrics need to be applied.
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Creativity: digital is a hugely flexible, hugely engaging medium – and marketers need to embrace this. Thirty seconds is just a random number in digital. A brand can talk to consumers for 3 seconds or 30 minutes using online video, and the rich engaging variety of formats open up a world of possibilities for brands.
Online video is just the beginning. As more and more connected TV sets are sold, the future of TV certainly looks different, opening up a world of possibilities for consumers and advertisers alike, from socialisation to data, personalisation to creativity. Specific Media are proud to be at the forefront of developments.
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video
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the new engager holly wilde, Latitude There is no denying that moving imagery and video is powerful and can be a key influencer over audiences. Video advertising provides a much more engaging environment for advertisers to relay their brand messages. It is projected that advertisers and agencies will increase spending on DVA by 25% over the next 12 months, amounting to about 23.8% of total online ad budgets. This change in online advertising is going to force brands to reconsider how they approach video. Static ads are becoming replaced with video and TV budgets are being shared with online. Whilst TV can specify audiences that might like and watch a certain type of programme (soaps, sport etc.) DVA can guarantee audience, reach, frequency, with very specific demographic, lifestyle and interest targeting. Although the market is moving more towards engaging and interactive ad formats such as video, there are a number of limitations that will need to be worked on if spend on DVA is to reach full potential. •
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Some are of the view that online videos are interruptive in nature which means it’s bad for user experience. The interruptive nature of online video is often considered an asset among advertisers looking to capture complete user attention and escape banner blindness. High price of online video continues to be a prohibitive factor in its growth. This will become less of a factor once the inventory quality and reach improves. No standardised buying model – CPM, CPC , CPV, CPE. Lack of standardisation is limiting online growth – if you consider the vast number of network, video players and providers in the online space, is there a need for more standardisation?
Despite some of these limitations, marketers and agencies are still seeing video advertising as one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness and engagement. Predicted spend within the video market will continue to increase throughout 2012 and as the number of limitations reduce, the format will become part of the mainstay for those brands with fully integrated online and offline campaigns.
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Combining the performance of retargeting with the impact of video
Emi Gal, CEO, Brainient Personalised display retargeting has generated incredible results for DR advertisers in the last few years. With video advertising growing so quickly, it is hardly surprising that the addition of personalisation to video is a natural evolution. Results Personalised video retargeting is an innovative new format that allows advertisers to reach those who have expressed interest in their brand or product by visiting their website. Online retailers like GetTheLabel. com, Zoopla, O2 and Phones4u have generated, on average, five to ten times higher results than traditional video advertising, with click-through rates ranging from 1.5% to 3% and post-click conversion rates of up to 20%. How it works Advertisers can use existing video assets (TV ad, branded video, etc), which are then personalised in realtime based on cookie data. Areas in the videos can also be dynamically replaced by product information, forming interactive layers of content for an increasingly effective, relevant and engaging ad; imagine being able to book a test-drive while watching a video advert for the new BMW Z4
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or ordering a DVD while watching a trailer for the latest Harry Potter film. Data, data, data In terms of reporting, advertisers can easily track the number of impressions, clicks and conversions a campaign has generated, just as in display retargeting. What’s more, they can measure brand uplift in order to determine how the campaign has helped them to increase their brand awareness – particularly crucial when video advertising is known for its ability to generate brand uplift. Why get involved? Set to revolutionise the online video advertising industry, personalised video retargeting is an innovative advertising platform that gives brands and advertising agencies endless possibilities for engaging viewers. With a pricing model of CPC it is also ideal for advertisers who want to increase their brand awareness while maintaining the performance of their ad spend. About Brainient Brainient offers the first video retargeting platform in the world and builds tools that help agencies and video publishers create interactive video ads.
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Gamification - what is it? and how does it affect your business?
thinker in chief games for brands
endaf kerfoot,
There’s a fantastic book by a British author, Tom Chatfield, called Fun Inc., which places games in a cultural and historical context and explores the rise of gaming as a phenomenon. And what a phenomenon that is. VC money is sloshing around the games space. Yet, oddly, brands are still reluctant to embrace games as a channel for digital marketing. For many people, gamification is all about making games. This is a misconception. Games can play a useful role – but correctly defined, gamification is about the application of game mechanics in contexts outside of games. So, what we’re talking about is harnessing the skill of good game designers in creating engagement which draws users in, much like a great game draws players into a (virtual) world. Which is not to say that this is simple - far from it. Many people, including game designers, hate the term, but it would appear to be here to stay. In essence, gamification is about psychology. As Kam Star, the UK’s leading authority on gamification, puts it, gamification is “90% psychology, and 10% technology”.
The idea being, if you know how to push certain buttons to obtain certain results, which good game designers do, these learnings are applicable to other domains. Thus a website can incorporate elements like progress bars, status badges, achievement points and leaderboards to make users more engaged with the content on the site. Businesses with physical locations can turn visiting those businesses into a giant game, perhaps a treasure hunt based on Foursquare. Loyalty programmes can evolve from rewarding members with real rewards and instead offer intrinsically rewarding benefits. People can be “nudged” into doing stuff by tinkering with the presentation of information, offers, price and product information. So, consider where in your business would benefit from rethinking how you hook customers in and start them down the road to engagement, and then consider your options for making that journey more rewarding, and you’ll be half way to “doing” gamification.
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advergaming Amy Jones, Latitude Ten years ago, using phones to download video clips, listen to music, play games or search the Internet seemed a distant prospect. Now such activities are commonplace. Research carried out by Orange earlier this year revealed the popularity of those practices among all age groups. Over half use their phones to access the internet, 64% send picture messages, 55% play games, 49% listen to music and 26% receive email. With 1 billion mobile internet users globally there are a whole host of opportunities for advertisers to target those users who play games on their mobiles. Put simply, advergaming is the practice of using video games to advertise a product or organisation. The premise of advergaming is simple: the game promotes a product, lifestyle or service throughout the game. In return, users can get the game either at discount or even free of charge. Many brands already leverage advergaming in traditional Internet and PC-targeted environment, and the world of mobile devices is following.
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Advergaming presents multiple opportunities to brands. Those users that play games do so in their free time, meaning that they are more
engaged and open to advertising. If a brand sponsors a game, this is less invasive as the user doesn’t see pop ups during the game. So, with such a variety of options available to advertisers, let’s weigh up the pros and cons of each: • Insertion in an existing game: while it might be hard to find a game where you can incorporate or relate an existing brand - it is nevertheless cheaper than creating your own game. • Creating a branded game: this is very costly but is specific to your brand, so you are tied into that game. • Ad-funded game: while this is a cheap solution - advertising can be annoying to people and the brand isn’t tied to the game. Regardless of the solution more suited to your brand, the industry shift is towards mobile advertising. So, for lifestyle or niche brands the advergaming model is becoming increasingly important; and what better way for brands to get increasingly more engaged with consumers than with an already captive audience?
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Callcredit Information Group
David Beardmore, Business Development Director,
Terms Of Engagement 48
The proliferation of digital marketing tools has given marketers yet more ways to connect with customers and prospects. It’s perhaps not surprising that something has been lost in this step into the new world. What happened to all of those marketing learnings and best practices that were so carefully nurtured and handed down? Why has so little of this planning and insight led approach survived into today’s consumer landscape? How can marketers reapply their previous learnings to successfully engage with today’s customers and prospects? Callcredit’s led us to challenge is apply those
experience has assert that the to look again and robust customer
engagement principles, many of which we have learned over decades, whilst embracing new technologies and making all this work within the interconnected cross-channel consumer market. The following points which are based on a recent presentation given by the author to an industry seminar, seek to reinforce these customer engagement fundamentals but in the context of engaging with consumers in 2011: •
Get It Together: moving from a traditional Single Customer View (SCV) to a Single Holistic Consumer View, recognising an individual across different channels and locations regardless of what personal data is presented
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Colour It In: enhancing what you already know about a consumer with external data attributes to provide a fuller, richer view. More insight = greater relevance = more effective marketing. What Else Do You See? using data analysis to provide greater insight about those consumers. Stop Shouting: traditional mass marketing techniques deliver increasingly poor returns. The era of batched mass-market communications is over. Dialogue and cross-channel conversation is the new currency. Speak Where I’m Listening: recognising channel preference and the ability to deliver across these channels is crucial to successful consumer engagement. Show Me You Know Me: gaining greater insight is commendable but using it to deliver highly personalised, relevant and timely
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communications is the key. Learn From What Happens: the virtuous circle of test and learn is just as indispensable in digital marketing as it ever was in the traditional offline world as each interaction generates additional insight which further improves the quality of future communications.
Brands which successfully engage with their prospects and customers benefit from higher than average return on investment, higher repeat sales and greater customer advocacy. We contend that traditional marketing principles are still relevant now but it’s important to understand that they need to be re-appraised and applied in a world where savvy, empowered consumers expect relevance in return for information and connected messaging rather than isolated mass marketing.
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