Digital marketing faces a new set of challenges. As we shared in our blog The Evolution of the Marketer from “Mad Men” Advertising Executive to Brand Warrior, customer loyalty is no longer won by offering seasonal promotions, and products and services can no longer be sold with one marketing campaign targeted to a general audience. Back in the day, marketing was all about creating a visual with a savvy tagline! The world is completely different today. Digital marketers must analyze mass amounts of data which opens up a whole new set of pain points.
With so much data and ways to connect with customers, it’s easy for marketers to become overwhelmed. How can you truly get creative when you spend a majority of your time analyzing the MANY reports – like Facebook, Google, Twitter, CRM systems, email, and website analytics. To make matters worse, these reports may not match up and are also updated at different times throughout the week. So how in the world are marketers supposed to better engage a more demanding, social media savvy customer who expects 24/7 brand engagement with meaningful experiences? And how can you justify your work to senior leadership with the “right” performance measurements and prove that your marketing campaigns are working?
“73% OF CEOs ACKNOWLEDGE THE NEED FOR PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND EXPERIENCES THAT ARE MORE MEANINGFUL TO THEIR CUSTOMERS.”
—MarTech Today
In order for brands to create more individualized experiences, they need to make effective use of their own internal data. A good rule of thumb: your own data is always your best data. At your fingertips, you have the names, contact information, and purchase histories of your customers. This allows you to create a specific target audience. Once you determine the best targets, you can then create campaign messages that are tailored to your customers’ own preferences.
“ONLY 12% HAVE THE ABILITY TO COLLECT ONLINE DATA AT AN INDIVIDUAL LEVEL, AND THOUGH 65% OF BRANDS REPORT USING DIGITAL ANALYTICS SOFTWARE, MORE THAN HALF (53%) SAY THEY’RE NOT COMPLETELY SATISFIED WITH THEIR CURRENT SOLUTION.”
—SiteCore
In order to measure success in our digital landscape, marketers must have a trust-worthy technology solution. A technology solution that can map the entire digital customer journey. The so-called “walled gardens” like Google and Facebook are of little help. When brands use these platforms to interact with customers, they receive little useful data in return, making it all the more difficult to tailor customer experiences over time. Today, marketers are creating marketing campaigns across many channels, so working with a reporting system that can track those cross-channel conversions is a must if you are hoping to be successful.
“A TYPICAL WEBSITE CONVERSION RATE IS ABOUT 2.35% ON AVERAGE. BUT THE TOP 10% OF COMPANIES ARE SEEING 3-5X HIGHER CONVERSION RATES THAN AVERAGE.”
—WordStream
Many brands are sending an overwhelming amount of traffic to their websites. When a customer gets to the website, its extremely important for marketers to understand what happens; did a customer bounce, browse, or buy? Where are they at in their journey (ie: session)? Are they new or returning customers looking at a specific product? Once marketers have a greater understanding, they can begin to optimize their marketing efforts to increase their conversions. The key take-away is that only by understanding conversions in real-time can digital marketers effectively maximize their media spend throughout the campaign to drive a higher ROAS.
