I recently read about Didit's Blizzard tool on retargeting. Nice job. It is a low hanging opportunity to tie online search to remarketing. But it's only a first step, and why stop there? Why not integrate all the touchpoints that drive a consumer through the purchase process?.
Ted Shergalis, our co-founder and chief strategy officer, has written before about Ed See's theory that the traditional purchase funnel has become a continuous cycle (most recently in Online Media Daily), with search at its center. The theory posits that a consumer does not just wake up and want to search for a product; rather a stimulus drives one to search. And that's where we need to start as marketers.
Of course, many marketing tactics help create demand, and many of these are offline. When it comes to online, audience-based display advertising is a very useful tool. Audience-based display refers to the approach of buying specific audience characteristics, regardless of the sites on which that audience is reached. The advantage of this approach is two-fold: Extremely high composition against the target demo (low waste) and efficient pricing. In addition, a skilled and technology-enabled buyer can achieve these benefits without compromising reach.
So audience based-targeting enables a marketer to cost effectively influence what we used to call "top of funnel" metrics such as awareness or interest. But what if we could recognize and manage those customers who are exposed to your ad through the phases of the purchase cycle? For instance, what if you knew which display ads customers were exposed to before conducting a search? You might give them a custom, personalized version of a search landing page based on that information. Then you could use the behavior data on the landing page and website to inform an extending conversation through remarketing.
Regardless of the tactics used, at the end of the day it's all about data and your ability to hit the consumer with the right message at the right time. That means you have to manage the data and turn every marketing outreach into a customized experience. For example, we know from analyzing online behavior that exposure to a display ad leads to a propensity to search; in fact, one drives the other. We also know that optimizing a landing page to reflect an audience profile stimulates intent, dramatically increasing engagement and conversion rates. We've found doing so lifts rates anywhere between 30-125% percent. But don't become too enamored with rules of thumb. We've found vast differences in consumer behavior among our clients, and between different industries. One client may find that exposure to display ads is positively correlated with a response to an offer on its site; another may find a negative correlation. In one case, non-response is a clue that the display offer is just not relevant to the consumer, in the other, display is building interest that is "paid off" on the website. The problem is that you just don't know which is which unless you observe the behavior and analyze the data. It gets back to data and targeting and insuring that the right offer is delivered at the right time to the right person.
Which gets us back to the purchase cycle. As marketers construct their campaigns, they need to be mindful of messaging's place at each point in the process. On the front end, which is all about demand creation, benefit- or position-based messages work best. Further along, specific offers will be more effective. What this means is that different messages will run concurrently, with data driven technology delivering the right message to each consumer at each touchpoint. For example, you will likely have a broad-based, benefit-oriented display campaign running simultaneously with an offer-based retargeting campaign, along with a sweetened offer for certain consumers on the website.
The bottom line: retargeting is a powerful tool for driving results. But it is only part of the job. Don't stop there. Pursue the still greater value of a more holistic approach that engages consumers no matter where they are in the purchase cycle.
