Tag Archives: advertising

December 16, 2015 · 10:49 am

Letting Customers Win

I know we talk a lot in this space about being customer centric and how that paradigm shift can result in great sales.  It’s always nice when I can find evidence to back up that assertion, and I have some for you today.  Adweek ran the following as part of their eye-opening digital marketing stats a few days back:

English: Nissan car dealership

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Port City Nissan, Portsmouth, N.H., recently ran a campaign in which it claimed a 49 percent closing rate on the automotive leads it generated online using Dealertrack‘s system. The key to such success is pretty simple, Dealertrack told Adweek: Create as much digital transparency as possible when it comes to every car and give consumers a ton of control over the shopping experience.

I don’t care what you’re selling, online or off:  a 49% conversion rate is off the charts.  You can see the difference as soon as you bring up their website.  There are three very clear paths put in front of you – I know what I want (you search by make, model, and year), I know my budget (search by price), and I just want to browse (which is subdivided into price ranges).  But as it turns out, it’s not the website per se.  My local Nissan dealer is using the same template.  The key seems to be the Dealertrack system, which is basically an integrator of all of the dealerships activities.  They start with marketing and include CRM, inventory management, and all related functions.  They key is the system’s emphasis on this statement:

Customer transactions have always been the lifeblood of your business, and in today’s more transparent retailing landscape, they’re where reputations and long-lasting relationships begin.

Exactly.  They are trying to build increased customer trust, an area in which car dealerships have historically not been leaders.  Tying all the systems together to maintain that focus has been a critical component in delivering great results. Creating transparency and control for the consumer is key. The statement above is true no matter what your business, along with the willingness to make the consumer your partner.  After all, they’re paying the bills, so when they win, so do you, right?

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December 3, 2015 · 12:55 pm

Hurry Up!

I know you all want to hear another rant on ad blocking about as much as you’d like to hear an endless loop of Tiny Tim singing Tiptoe Thru The Tulips.  I’ll keep it brief, therefore.  A company called Soasta did some research with the Harris folks about what website users were looking for as they surf around.  Not surprisingly, they found the following (as reported by eMarketer):Most Important Attributes of Website Performance According to US Internet Users, Sep 2015 (% of respondents)

When it comes to website performance, internet users say personalized content is less important than a website’s ease of navigation and speed, according to a September 2015 survey. More than three-quarters of US internet users said that a leading attribute of website performance was that it was easy to navigate. Another top attribute was speed; 73% of respondents indicated so.

Here is a truism (at least one I’ve found) about digital interactions: people hate impediments.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a landing page from an ad that doesn’t go directly to the reason someone clicked on the ad or if it’s just a plain old web page.  People are pressed for time.  Any impediment we put in their way has a high likelihood of derailing the interaction.  Web pages that are slow to load because of external calls get closed.  For you non-technical people, that means when the page calls out for an ad (especially if it needs to fill the ad via a programmatic auction), or some behavioral tracker, or anything else like analytics.  Popups are an impediment as well – it’s something in between the user and what they are trying to do. The research bears this out.  Personalization, on the other hand, can help speed up the interaction since it’s based on the user’s likes and preferences.

Ad blockers generally speed up page loads.  That is one of the main reasons people use them besides avoiding tracking.  If we help people hurry up, maybe they will, in return, be more responsive to the marketing information we present instead of doing all they can to avoid it.

Make sense?  What are your thoughts?

 

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November 30, 2015 · 11:32 am

A Better Ad Model

What does it say to you when people go out of their way to avoid your product?  Nothing good, probably.  That’s exactly what consumers are doing with digital advertising, and while it’s not good, it might actually be a blessing in disguise.  How so?  Source : comScore

I’ve been in digital media for 20 years, and during that time the question of “how do we pay for this” (monetization, in a word) has been asked constantly.  The obvious answer was to employ the ad-supported model of “old” media since adapting the subscription model to the digital age has proven incredibly difficult.  The problem is that with almost unlimited inventory, price pressures keep pushing down the revenue per ad and publishers just kept adding more “stuff” to keep revenues growing.  That’s not the case with traditional media, although TV has fallen victim to the same problem. Enter the ad blockers, which are a giant call to action to rethink the business model again. Well, maybe not the model but certainly the execution.

Some folks are already doing that with decent success.  Let me give you an example.  To unwind, I will often take short breaks to play a game on my phone.  While I don’t have an ad blocker installed on my phone, I have uninstalled a few games that popped up ads or placed the banners in places where it was likely that my fingers would accidentally click them.

One game I’ve been playing does something differently which I think is a very effective way to promote ad viewing.  Before I begin a level, a little box asks me if I want to watch a video and get rewarded with something I can use immediately in the game – a bonus life, a booster box, etc.  Saying “yes” brings up a full-screen ad of no more than 30 seconds – most are shorter.  The ads are almost always for another mobile game of some sort, and to get my reward I need to let the video finish.

This is a better way to market because it gives value to the user as well as to the marketer.  I almost look forward to the ad prompts since I gain something.  When was the last time you said that about an ad?  This sort of innovative thinking turned around the “avoid it at all costs” mentality, at least with this consumer.  It costs the publisher (the game I’m playing) nothing and brings value to all parties.

The business model hasn’t changed.  What has changed is that users are going to mobile, and within mobile they are hiding out inside apps. Rethinking how ads interface within those apps is how the business moves forward.  Showing ads that provide value to all parties – which includes the user – is the key.  You agree?

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