We all know that change is a constant in the slice of heaven we call digital marketing. But even with that knowledge and experience, the past year has arguably been the period of the most seismic shifts in this business since I started in online media just in time for the 2000 bubble burst. There are numbers and news stories to illustrate this, but the point of change in the digital marketing age is to track and learn from it. There’s a lot to learn from the past year.
Much of it has been in the retailing area, on which AudienceScience just completed a Market Intelligence Report. Retail brands from Neiman Marcus to Wal-Mart and every stop in-between set new records for Black Friday and the entire Cyber Week that followed. But the sheer volume, and the surprising spike in online sales needs to be quantified beyond revenue. Who were the new shoppers and will they be back? Which demographic segments are growing the fastest and who should you be targeting? Our research shows that the “holiday shoppers” audience segment is made up of consumers who research and make purchases online as much as or even more than they do at brick-and-mortar retail locations. From an income perspective, holiday shoppers are fairly balanced across segments. The AudienceScience data shows the largest segment (30.5 percent) earns more than $100k per household. More than 16 percent earn between $75 and $100; just over 10 percent make between $60 and $75k. The $40 to $60k segment made up 15.4 percent of all shopping spend. That’s a more detailed picture than the one painted by media reports that stressed the lower end of the income groups. When we look at income levels as a customer differentiator—it goes beyond looking at just the raw sales figures—we see a more accurate read on the WHO the customer is (i.e. we learned that the lower income segment actually outspends the higher income groups) helping to better establish segments to target more precisely.
Retailing has been forever changed and other areas have been completely remade. The travel industry is yet another example of how online has changed the status quo dramatically. Our most recent segment tracking report shows a 156% increase in the amount of vacation traveler audience members over 2010. It doesn’t stop there - beauty and fashion shopping is up 203% over 2010. In the lifestyle category “social networkers” are up 264%. These are not small shifts. They are game changers in every sense of the word. In a sense, this environment was built for audience data and audience targeting. It allows a brand to track and recalibrate on an automated basis. It takes the guesswork out of your online customer profile and highlights opportunities to go after. You didn’t need to read this to know social networkers are up. But if you’re a CPG brand or a retailer, and you don’t know how that 200 point bounce for beauty and fashion will affect your business, that’s trouble.
It doesn’t need to be trouble. Brands that approach the changes from 2011 with a sharper customer focus in mind will be better digital marketers as a result. And I’m sure that at the end of 2012 we’ll be talking about how these learnings impacted better decisions and better consumer outreach over the year.
To Download the AudienceScience Market Intelligence Report please follow this link: http://www.audiencescience.com/lps/how-consumers-buy-us
