To many, it didn’t seem like the best time to start a business.

But the timing actually forced us to focus on building a company that empowers our customers to achieve real and measurable business KPIs within days of signing up as clients. This focus has enabled Creative Clicks to weather the storms brought on by the industry and now COVID-19.

Provide performance value and a competitive advantage

Though this is a no brainer to the PerformanceIN community today, a focus on performance wasn’t obvious 10 years ago. Yet my partners and I realized that as long as we performed for our clients, we’d have a business. Yes, marketing is a creative industry, and we should all strive to provide creative solutions using the best marketing creative, but we must always perform for our clients, delivering results. And we have to continuously test and iterate to ensure that we continue to perform.

But performance isn’t enough. There are a lot of companies providing performance marketing, particularly today. Are you providing real value to your clients? And is this value a competitive advantage? If not, others will copy you and kill your business. That’s why you need to keep your eye on the future to ensure that you can maintain a competitive advantage.

For example, social, e-commerce, streaming entertainment, gaming, food delivery, and grocery apps performed very well during COVID-19, however, these categories have been growing for several years, so as a marketing agency, we had clients in some of these categories already in 2016. We saw the opportunity in 2016 and kept growing. Are you looking for opportunities for 2025?

Diversify

A second guiding principle has been a focus on diversification of offerings and revenue streams. Marketing is a dynamic industry – what performs today might not perform tomorrow, and new platforms and channels will rise, some performing better than others, depending on your product/solution offerings and target audiences.

Therefore, businesses need to diversify to survive a change in the industry, the economy, or a platform/channel. This means diversifying in terms of product/service verticals and geographic locations and targets as well as with the channels and platforms used. The digital marketing industry is full of companies that ultimately closed because they put all of their marketing efforts into one channel or platform, and crashed after a change in the algorithm or policy.

We look at the growth verticals and make sure that we’re working with apps in those categories to ensure that we’ll grow as an agency. In addition to food/grocery deliveries, we also have clients in streaming entertainment, social, e-commerce, and gaming verticals. 

For example, I believe that mobility apps will keep growing because young people today are less interested in owning a car. Of course, apps like Uber suffered during COVID-19, but I still believe in the future of mobility apps which I think will continue to grow in the coming 10 years.

Beyond diversification, marketers are always on the hunt for the newest shiny object, so it’s important to test all of the new offerings to find new performance marketing opportunities. Being an early partner with a new solution will enable giving clients relatively strong KPIs because the platform will be appreciative of the early support you’re providing.

Live the life

One rule which is critical for marketers is to live the life of the products and services you’re marketing. Whether we’re marketing a game, a shopping app, a streaming service or something else, I make sure that the team (and myself included) servicing the business have experienced the app. You need to be able to look the client in the eye (or into the camera today) when you’re making marketing recommendations, and that should also come from extensive personal experience.

Find the opportunity

I know that the saying is ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,’ but why not make Lemon Meringue Pie OR Limoncello?

The point is that even in down markets, there are always opportunities, and it’s your job to find them. Even in the middle of COVID-19, there were a lot of opportunities because of the increase in time spent online and user engagement. Our job was to create marketing programs that enabled our marketing clients to advertise while providing a revenue stream for our publisher partners who suffered from campaign cancellations.

As soon as we saw the impact of COVID-19 and the shift in consumer behavior, we secured specific and exclusive traffic sources suitable for our Social, Video on Demand, and E-commerce clients whom we thought would see an increase in demand. This enabled us to scale up relatively quickly and compensate for the other verticals which were negatively impacted by COVID-19. Furthermore, we expanded our media buying capabilities to take advantage of the changing branding budgets. 

Always have a plan

When news of COVID-19 grew in January, we created an action plan at Creative Clicks with various scenarios. It’s important for all businesses to always have a plan, even in good times, and to always be looking ahead for any potential market changes or corrections.

Because digital marketing is a dynamic industry, the only guaranteed constant is change. That’s why it’s important to run your business as if there is always a crisis around the corner — because there probably is.

The post Always Have a Plan in Case of a Crisis appeared first on PerformanceIN.

When it comes to managing leads, LeadByte has top-notch features that are geared to give your business the best value for money. How many new features do you have in your bag of tricks for 2020? We will be following the trends of this year in addition to those that are outlined in the article below.

Know your buyer profile 

Now, this is something most businesses know and convey before they start with a lead management system but to what extent have you evaluated your buyer profile. In 2020 where everyone is spammed with masses of information online, you need to be clearer on what your buyer profile really looks like. Are you selling B2B? B2C? Are you selling to the CEO or the marketing manager? These finer details are what can help your lead management in the long run, they help you save time and money. When your buyer profile is defined, your lead management is far more effective, and your leads are more likely to convert.

Did you know, when businesses were asked what the most important objective to lead generation strategies were, the answer was to improve lead quality. If you develop your buyer profile and implement that into your lead management system, your lead quality improves drastically!

Understand your prospects needs 

Personalisation is everything in 2020. It is more about building relationships rather than just selling. While bringing in the sales is important, the way we sell has changed. In each campaign, your business prospects will reveal more and more information to you about who they are and what they need. Each interaction you have should help you form a better understanding of their decision-making process as well as show you how to better personalise and structure your lead nurturing.

Did you know that “80% of customers” said that they were more likely to buy a service or product from a company that used personalised experiences? LeadByte has a wide variety of ways that you can personalise your lead generation strategies within our lead management software, click here to see what features we have on offer. 

Keep testing your strategies

The performance marketing industry is very fast-paced and what works one day, one week or one year may not always work. This means that you have to keep reviewing your lead scoring criteria, A/B test and keep re-evaluating your assumptions about the sales process. That way you can see what is still working, what is not and stay ahead of the curve for any changes that may take place. 

Social media 

We don’t have to tell you that social media is happening, not just in 2020 it has been on the scene for businesses for quite some time now! Therefore, there is no reason it should not be included in your lead generation and lead management strategies. Is your business running any Facebook campaigns? LeadByte’s integration with Facebook LeadAd Forms allows you to link your forms directly into your campaigns with just a few clicks. Thus, you no longer have to manually download leads from Facebook, giving you the benefit of real-time lead transfer. This is critical if you are selling leads or using auto-responders to nurture leads. Click here to find out more. 

Be adaptable

The key to success in lead management and business, in general, is to be flexible and able to adapt to any changes that may arise. The implementation of GDPR saw a change in this industry and there will be more things that develop in years to come. Build your team up, develop their skills, strengthen your relationships with your clients, test your data and at every step of the way you are creating a business model that can withstand all the new trends that come at you in 2020 and come out even better. 

The post Lead Management Trends and Benchmarks to Implement in 2020 appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In this article, we look at what it takes to be a successful performance marketer. The aim is to identify and distil the absolutely essential core skills, mindset and equipment that unites the very best performance marketers. 

Think of this as a checklist of the key tools you need in your kit to be truly successful within this industry. 

Equipped with 

Phone: Standard, but essential. Successful performance marketers work with clients around the globe and need to stay connected. 

Laptop: The central point of everything they do. This is the tool that allows them to work on the go, control their process and leverage results. 

Full Stack Martech Software: Including, but not limited to, lead management software, affiliate tracking software, a landing page builder. These are the core tools all performance marketers need to be running. 

A black book of publishers and advertisers: Harder to come about, but more valuable and rare than anything else. Once they have this book, proving they are able to keep strong relationships with everyone in it.. and keep adding new people to it, the sky is the limit! 

A bank of high converting landing pages ready to roll: The best performance marketers will know exactly what converts. They will be experts in conversion principles and be able to create the very best landing pages to get the very best results. They will also have amazing Advertorials, social banners and email creatives ready to go on-demand. 

Key skills

Fluent in multiple technologies: Not only must a performance marketer be in possession of a full stack of marketing software, but they must also be highly skilled in using them to achieve the best results. 

Understands elements of the law in relation to GDPR: Without knowing how GDPR works, a performance marketer could be liable to receive HUGE fines. Legal knowledge in this area is absolutely essential! 

Excellent at communication: The most important job a performance marketer has is building relationships with clients and keeping clients happy. Being able to communicate effectively is absolutely key to achieving this. 

Inspires trust: If people are going to buy leads from you they need to trust you. This isn’t necessarily something you can learn…but if you ensure you have as many of the other keys skills and equipment as possible then it’s a good start. 

Mentality 

Embraces change: The most dangerous phrase a performance marketer can use is “We’ve always done it that way.” That’s fine for average performance, but if you want success, you must be ahead of the curve and be open to new ways of doing things. You must search out the new, embrace it and run with it. 

Knows and can demonstrate the value they add: To inspire trust in clients, a performance marketer must be able to show exactly what they offer and the value they add. This will increase new clients, client retention and enable them to constantly improve performance. 

Is at the cutting edge of technological developments: Technology is the key to success within the world of performance marketing. It is a constantly evolving market and the most successful performance marketers will be at the cutting edge of this market.

Time management

Spends time building relationships: Time is money. A successful performance marketer spends both well and wastes neither. One of the most important ways of spending time is building relationships with clients. 

Spends their time driving traffic: The second important way of spending time is driving the very best traffic. 

Automation is their secret weapon: In order to spend their time doing what really matters, the most successful performance marketers will automate every single aspect of their workload that possibly can. If you’d like to learn more about Automation read Lead Management Automation Will Skyrocket Performance. 

Summary

To be a successful performance marketer you need to be in possession of all the tools, skills and qualities listed above. You need to be at the cutting-edge of every technological and industry development and you need the mindset to embrace change and lead, rather than follow. 

If you’d like to employ some practical steps to start utilising the secret weapon of any performance marketer or lead generator, download The Lead Generator’s Automation Checklist for Free and start focusing on everything else on the list once you have.

The post What Makes a Successful Performance Marketer appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In a period of intense competition for retailers big and small, driven by online-only disruptors, mass discounting is a practice that makes sense. At least on the face of things.

Site-wide discounts offer a fast and simple way of grabbing people’s attention. They can be used to drive sales volume, gain new customers and re-engage old ones. Lowering prices is a sure-fire way of ensuring competitiveness in an overcrowded market, but everything comes at a cost, as retailers tend to find out.

The truth behind mass discounting

One of the biggest impacts of mass discounting is on customer behaviour. When someone uses a discount to purchase a high-value item during a heavy sales period (e.g. Black Friday, or a 20% off sale), there is always a risk of them expecting the same on their next visit.

Black Friday, in general, has taught shoppers to expect big reductions if they’re prepared to wait for them. According to Natalie Berg, a retail analyst and founder of NBK Retail, consumers are currently being “trained to buy on promotion”.

Mass discounting also has a short-term impact on profit margins – something that retailers are struggling to protect. One of the more puzzling aspects of mass discounting is the lack of consideration and selectiveness when it comes to the items involved. If you’re offering the same 10% discount across both low and high-margin products, all of that extra sales volume could be costing you money.

There are hidden issues to consider, like the process of returning items from customers that are happy to overbuy. “Serial returners” are said to be costing the UK retail industry an estimated £7 billion per year, with 25% of stores witnessing an increase in their return rates. Discounting entire product lines will only fuel this trend as customers when they see a bargain, are encouraged to buy more than they need.  

Not only this but if you rely on driving sales over highly concentrated periods, what chance do you have of running a sustainable, healthy business? Once a beacon of the e-commerce world, and no stranger to a ‘20% off’ promotion, ASOS reported a near-90% drop in profits after deciding to curb its use of mass discounting. Pulling the plug, therefore, might not be as easy as it sounds.

In our opinion, mass discounting carries more cons than pros. Forget Black Friday and Cyber Monday; if the retail industry is to look beyond quick wins and consider the ramifications of record-breaking weeks, it has to steer away from broad-brush, site-wide sales.

Discounts in general, though, are not a bad thing. They drive purchase intent and even happiness if some studies are to be believed. Through a tactical and highly considered approach, it’s possible to increase sales, new customers and order values without the long-term baggage.

The key is in being able to adopt a more personalised discounting strategy. And by that, we are talking about something that works for both consumer and brand.

What is smart discounting?

RevLifter’s version of a personalised discounting strategy is inspired by its AI-powered solutions. Rather than incentivising every customer, they use a goals-driven approach to only convert those who meet certain criteria.

In the past, this would not have been possible. But technology is advancing to the extent that we can now personalise offers according to the person in front of them. This development is enabling retailers to manage and control their discounting, and without the hassle you’d expect from rewarding customers on a one-to-one basis.

To demonstrate its importance, let’s think about the lack of harmony between mass discounting and a retailer’s best interests. A single promotion is capable of answering to any one of the following aims:

• Raising performance – Improving AOV, revenue, conversion rates
• Driving business goals – Attracting new customers, revenue in specific markets
• Promoting the right products – Raising interest around high-margin or low-selling items

A 10% off sale might increase revenue, but does it drive a profit? Does it answer to a set of business goals? Is it only boosting sales among regular customers, leading to a drop in incrementality?

Until now, it was acceptable to offset the negatives with positives. It’s how Black Friday rose to prominence; a time to trade all sensibility and logic for sales. Considering the rise in competition, the fickleness of each customer and our squeezing of margins, there has to be a smarter way of doing things.

Through AI-powered technology, RevLifter is helping retailers embrace the future of discounting.

Our campaigns achieve goals-driven, one-to-one personalisation through dynamic deals pages and on-site messaging tools, which only incentivise the customers our retailers want to drive. It means that discounting can be used to, for example, gain new customers and increase sales of high-margin items in a controlled and calculated manner.

Can I justify discounting?

If you’re already feeling the pressure on your margins, or carry a pre-existing view of discounting, it might seem easier to avoid it altogether.

We’d advise you to consider what we’d call the perfect scenario. If your customer has a basket full of high-value, high-margin products but is showing signs of abandonment, would you be prepared to discount in order to convert them?

These decisions are made on the fly, but not by the retailer, as their unique algorithm dictates when a discount needs to be offered. By using technology in an intelligent way, you can effectively pick and choose when you want to utilise discounting, and tap into its benefits.

While mass discounting is being brought to question, there is no doubting the future of hand-picked, one-to-one incentivisation. It is the easiest way for your competitors to seize market share, so you can’t afford to ignore it. Your discounting strategy should be more personalised, more considered and built around your own business goals. It’s then possible to only cut your prices when it makes sense to.

The post Does Mass Discounting Still Work? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

The days of celebrity endorsements are quickly being replaced by younger generations’ love for social media. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, 70% of teens trust influencers more than traditional celebrities. While teens might be one demographic among many, it is important to recognise that these youngsters will be tomorrow’s adult consumers. Social media influencers are not only shaping followers, but also the marketing industry as a whole. In fact, global ad spend on influencer marketing is expected to reach $5 – $10 billion by 2020.

As this trend grows, it’s important to know how to handle your influencer marketing budget to give you the most bang for your buck. In this article, we will look at three marketing hacks you can use to make your next influencer campaign as influential as possible.

YouTube vs Instagram: The right channel for the right audience

To successfully reach your target audience, you must find out where they are. For example, the vast majority of YouTubers range between 18 and 40 years old, making it an ideal channel to reach older audiences. Alternatively, Snapchat is great for the demographic aged 13 to 21, and Instagram’s demographic falls right in the middle of these two, ranging between 20-35.

Aside from demographics, the style of the platform is important to consider. For example, due to Instagram’s inherent visual nature, it’s the perfect platform for promoting products with eye-catching photos. YouTube, on the other hand, stands as an ideal channel for sharing video content with a longer duration in which a product’s functionality is explained or product reviews are shared.

Price is also an influential factor, as each channel is likely to result in a different ROI. To compare performances on each platform, At Stargazer, we gathered data from roughly 300 influencers to determine the average Cost per click (CPC) / cost per swipe of mobile apps across 3 social platforms. Our results found that YouTube came out the highest at $0.9 per CPC, Instagram at $0.5 and SnapChat the lowest at $0.45. With these values, you can understand what you may receive from each media channel, and how much it will cost to obtain the best performance.

Data makes the difference

As the old saying goes, knowledge is power, and that is definitely true for a successful influencer campaign. Followers can be faked, and as a result, it can be challenging to find influencers that exert real influence. But, in an age where data is ubiquitous and omniscient, we can see the genuine impact these influencers are producing.

For Poshmark, a social commerce platform where people can buy and sell new or used clothing, shoes, and accessories, the utilisation of data was essential to produce a wildly successful influencer campaign. For example, analyzing data made it possible to predict influencers performances, thus providing insight into how many impressions and clicks influencers would get.

In addition to this, algorithms were utilised to indicate the right price to pay to get a positive ROI. These methods allowed Poshmark to run one of its most successful influencer campaigns to date. The campaign produced 2,135,000 clicks & 347K installs of the Poshmark app in 2018.

We now have more data at our fingertips than ever before, and with this unprecedented access to incredible knowledge comes the potential to see and understand more than ever before, allowing businesses to truly see the true ROI of influence.

Identify campaign goals and desired metrics

Before starting a campaign, a company should know what they want to achieve as a result. Your business should also identify what it wants and pinpoint methods of tracking goals.

The visual impact of an influencer campaign can have a profound impact on sales, for example, studies show that after watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online and users have the ability to recall 65% of the visual content that they see almost three days later.

Therefore, leads and sales conversions through referral traffic stand as one of the best metrics for influencer campaigns. According to Search Engine Land, in 2017, social media accounted for 25.6% of referral traffic. Essentially, referral traffic statistics let you know which influencer content is driving traffic to your website or specific landing page. It provides meaningful, actionable insights into which campaigns are having an impact on their audiences and across which social media platforms. Trackable links and promo codes are also popular methods to track the effectiveness of influencers on a given campaign.

By utilising these three strategies, it is possible for any influencer campaign to reach the right audience, with the right influencers to produce the results they want to see. 

The post Top Three Marketing Hacks for YouTube and Instagram appeared first on PerformanceIN.

As digital continues to transform the way businesses go to market, the demand for marketers who are equipped with an ever-expanding skill set will increase. The marketer of the future will need to be equally proficient in analytics, creative thinking and AI integration. Not to mention their growing obligation to responsible marketing and business practice ethics under the GDPR.

Learning and development programmes are essential if the data and marketing industry is to continue to thrive and restore our reputation as a highly skilled, innovation-driven industry.

Data-related skills are in demand

It is hard to imagine any marketing role that will not be driven by a need to use data to develop the customer insights that inform every aspect of the customer journey.  We will need marketers who think more like data analysts and data analysts who think like marketers.

Data skills will become even more central as the marketing industry continues to transition from analogue to digital, where real-time data analysis will be a key part of any marketer’s role. Marketing teams of the future will be able to identify opportunities and act on them instantly.

Automated systems will only increase the availability and scope of data, and so marketers will need to be able to interpret this information effectively and understand how to communicate this back to management teams and adapt their marketing approach accordingly.

Technology integration

Future-proofing a business requires a commitment to supporting the development of knowledge workers and their ability to take advantage of technology in the form of AI in particular.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are driving modern marketing analytics, which is already resulting in a rise in jobs requiring different skills. According to 2017 analysis from jobs site Indeed, the number of roles in AI has risen by 485% in the UK since 2014, and there are twice as many jobs requiring AI and ML skills as there are applicants.

The IDM’s ‘Professional Skills Census’ shows that AI and ML have the biggest skills gap present within the data and marketing industry, with a 25% difference between perceived importance between marketers’ current roles and for future career progression.

Behavioural economics

Getting the right message to your customer at the right time and in the right format for the context will be a key business driver.

Behavioural economics is a field that is becoming increasingly important to data and marketing teams. In order to understand the value of content and the creative, it is essential to understand how they fit into your customer’s increasingly granular interactions with the brand. In this respect, the effect of programmatic marketing on campaign planning, strategy development and budgeting will also present marketers with a wide range of new challenges.

Ongoing data protection training essential

Regardless of the amount of education people have been exposed to up to this point, changes brought about by the GDPR are significant and will continue to make waves for years to come.

Recent research by the DMA, ‘Data privacy – An industry perspective 2018’ found that almost half (43%) of respondents recognise this, saying they would like access to ongoing training. In fact, 32% say it’s already available to them.

Training should not be treated as a one-off, particularly as case law will likely throw new light on some aspects of the regulation as time goes on. The onus is on organisations to equip employees with the right knowledge to remain compliant, and even though marketers generally feel confident in this area – senior management teams should be promoting a culture where marketers are confident and proud to be held accountable.

Changing attitudes towards learning and development

In order to keep pace with the changing environment, attract and retain talented data and marketing teams, organisations need to cultivate a culture of continuous upskilling and professional development.

Organisations need to tackle the issue head-on and provide their marketers with a structure/framework to work within. They need to create an environment where marketers (and in fact all staff) are rewarded for continuous personal development. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean financial rewards, it could even be extra autonomy in their everyday work or opportunities for project management tasks.

Equally, it is the responsibility of marketers/staff to proactively seek new training opportunities. It is their future at stake and an organisation can only do so much – they must show a desire to learn and develop their skill set.

Our industry needs to be seen to invest in the skills marketers use today, but also those they will need in the future. Training staff should not be seen as a cost but as an investment.  

The post Data, Technology and Attitude: Why You Need to Invest in Staff Development appeared first on PerformanceIN.

As the end of the year approaches, so do the busiest days in the e-commerce calendar. From November to December, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas all offer enormous opportunity for seasonal sales. Indeed, in an effort to stand out from the crowd Acceleration Partners found that three-fifths of UK online retailers have already begun planning for the biggest of these, Black Friday.

It’s no surprise as to why. In November 2016 the Telegraph reported that Black Friday bargain hunters – preferring to stay away from the high street – spent approximately £5.67 billion online. The result meant that in 2016, 4.3% of total online sales were spent on Black Friday weekend alone.

With such high online sales constrained to limited seasonal dates, the fight for online traffic this Black Friday is sure to be intense. Yet, for such an intense fight, the fighters seem to throw the same weak punches.

Year on year, companies present the same unimaginative promotions, and year on year, consumers look right past them. Retailers need to use promotions to fight their way to the front of consumers’ minds, and yet their dull discounts do nothing of the sort.

Asa Griggs Candler realised the power of intuitive promotions back in 1887. In an attempt to promote his beverage company, he created the first-ever coupon, an offer for one free drink. This unique marketing tactic – coupon codes – changed the game for his company and 8.5 million redemptions’s later transformed it from a tonic to “the most popular soft drink” in the world – Coca-Cola.

His unique marketing tactic of using coupon codes are still effective. As many as 58% of UK consumers say that vouchers are most likely to influence their purchase decision. However, as more companies cotton onto the value of coupon codes, this once unique marketing tactic has become commonplace.

Marketers should now be – and should’ve been for the last 130 years – creating a unique coupon code campaign that stands out; winning the battle for traffic.

To save ourselves from yet another dull year of 10% off’s, here are some quick, innovative and unique ideas to help your coupon campaign win the fight for traffic – and subsequent sales – this Black Friday.

1) Mystery discount

With so many retailers offering big Black Friday discounts, a standout discount is needed to really catch the eye of the consumer. Although offering huge discounts like 50% off can certainly drive traffic towards your site, these same discounts can completely destroy your margins, and are not worth the risk.

So, why not create a mystery discount promotion that offers the possibility of these discounts but doesn’t harm your margins? A Black Friday mystery discount is a discount that only reveals its true promotional saving at checkout.

The idea is that your mystery discount code advertises anywhere from 10% to 50% off. The possibility of a 50% discount is certainly going to draw consumers to your site first, and if you could make these mystery codes give out varying percentages off, averaging out to the typical 30%, then you would be offering just the same deal as your competitors but certainly have the more attractive looking offer.

The real beauty of this promotion is that it only reveals the discount once at checkout, so even if the discounts are a somewhat measly – for Black Friday standards – 10% off, they may still convert the purchase simply for convenience sake.

Indeed, part of the appeal of Black Friday is the mystery. What items will be discounted? Which discount will be the best? Which retailer will discount what? So, not only will this promotion help your site be the first port of call but also provide an additional mystery thematic to your Black Friday e-commerce.

2) Diminishing discount

With Black Friday we’ve all seen the videos of crazed people rushing to stores, squashing others underfoot for the best deals. However – and perhaps predictably – more and more people are moving away from the high-street scrums and heading towards the safety of online channels. Last year high streets and retail parks saw footfall fall 3.6%, while online sales jumped 11.7% to a record high.

Creating a diminishing discount voucher would be a great way to create the same in-store Black Friday craze but for online channels. Marketers could create a coupon code that reduces the discount the longer it isn’t used, forcing people to consider their site first, and hopefully grabbing the lion share of Black Friday budgets.

Creating an even more crazed Black Friday, with deals that don’t just expire at the end of the day, but within a couple of minutes would certainly create the strongest call to action possible. Data shows that 83% of customers make unplanned purchases when they’re bombarded with a limited time promotion so simply portray your offer as scarce as possible and your coupons will be used more.

Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director of IMRG, notes “People shop in a lot more places than they would normally. Because they know everyone is offering massive discounts then they are inclined to shop around more”. So, having a promotion that gets people to your site first is vital for Black Friday success.

3) Gated content

Early access to Black Friday deals is something Amazon regularly does. It’s a good idea to help reap the most of this seasonal spending time, however, it reduces the craze factor that does so much for call to actions.

A great initiative would be to have gated content that can only be unlocked with a coupon code.

This could be hugely successful for several reasons as it would reward loyal/other targeted customers with early access to deals, boosting customer experience. It also teases and excites with a ‘You can look but can’t touch’ aspect, boosting anticipation and craze. Thirdly, it allows you to create promotions that don’t harm margins. Instead of giving access to deal, give access to limited, exclusive products. It may also boost email sign-ups.

Ultimately, this, as well as these other concepts, would be successful because of their uniqueness. As the market for online stores is getting 20% plus larger each year, the pool consumers can pick from becomes bigger, making your dull 10% off promotion impossible to spot amongst the waves of others.

Making your coupon campaign unique, individual and ultimately stand out is essential for getting noticed. Black Friday is a highly intense battle for traffic – with a whopping £1.4 billion up for grabs, intuitive ideas will grant success – just look at Coca-Cola.

The post How Creative Coupons Can Secure Traffic This Black Friday appeared first on PerformanceIN.

With traffic to retail websites expected to soar over the sales period (Black Friday 2017 saw web traffic increase 150% compared to a normal sales day), it’s imperative that your on-page SEO is fully optimised to deliver successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns across all your digital activity.

While the scope for site improvements is vast, there are a handful of areas that I recommend you focus on in the run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

1. Create or update an optimised page for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which includes information related to ‘page title’, ‘H1’, ‘URL’ (minus the year to future proof) as well as engaging, informative, keyword-rich content around the trading days.

   These pages could include the history of Black Friday or Cyber Monday, or previous year’s stats if you have any to hand, which can be used to drive interest and engagement. If you’re creating a new page, make sure it’ live at least 12 weeks prior to the actual trading period, and never disable, delete or redirect the page as these will impede page authority gains that are garnered over time.
    

2. Depending on your site, create subcategory-specific Black Friday pages with appropriate taxonomy logic incorporated, meaning that all sub-pages sit beneath the main Black Friday or Cyber Monday page. This can help to rank for product-specific Black Friday or Cyber Monday terms, which will drive far more traffic for your products. Volume has increased for these terms, however, they’re still dwarfed by the volumes gained by Black Friday or Cyber Monday head terms.
    
3. Keep your optimised pages live all year-round. This increases out-of-season relevancy, so also include a link to ongoing sales if you have any.
    
4. Ensure your pages are mobile-friendly, especially as the days of the mobile-first index are fast approaching, meaning that mobile experience will impact authority and rank of your page in a far greater way than before.
    
5. Conduct an internal link project to ensure Google understands the pages that are important. This includes adding a link in the main navigation (at least nine weeks prior) to ensure PageRank flow is optimal. If possible, one or two weeks later (depending on the nature of your site), add a link to your optimised Black Friday or Cyber Monday page from the homepage, as this will ensure maximum equity is transferred.
    
6. If you’re expecting a large volume of traffic, make sure your site can handle it. Load test it well in advance as there’s no point doing all this work to rank high for your site just for it to crash on the day.

Last few months and on the day

As you’re approaching the big day, it’s key to monitor ranks leading up to the month of November. From the November 1 onwards, keep an eye on ranks on a weekly or, even better, daily basis. This will help identify ongoing performance and any need for maintenance or reviews.

One of the most important things to get right on the day is to ensure that you’ve included plenty of call-to-actions that link to your actual deal pages – you’ll be penalised for not directing users to the relevant content or pages they intended to land on, so don’t get caught out here.

Post-event

Don’t undo all your hard work – keep your optimised pages live all year-round to increase out-of-season relevancy; this can be done by including links to ongoing sales if you have any on.

While there are plenty of considerations and factors that need to be considered to create a winning campaign, the above outlines the must-dos for any retailer. So, make sure you plan in advance, select the appropriate products and pages to promote and make sure you continue to optimise right up until Black Friday to make the most of the busy trading day.

The post How to Maximise Your Sales Ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday appeared first on PerformanceIN.

With a total of 2.17 billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the most important platforms for retailers to target when looking to drive brand awareness. However, it can be tricky to know where to begin when converting this traffic into leads.

The journey to generating more leads requires retailers to focus on the customer experience more closely and ensure they are investing in the right resources. Providing a more personalised experience on Facebook and utilising the tools available to facilitate this, such as algorithms for example, which tailor product recommendations based on search and purchase history, can help encourage users to buy more as a result of being treated like an individual with unique interests.

From both an organic and paid approach, this guide will help retailers determine the changes they should make in order to generate greater leads from Facebook.

Investing in social for the entire customer journey

Despite the word ‘phone’ in the name, smartphones today are rarely used to make calls. They are more often used to research and purchase products on digital channels, which offers retailers the opportunity to interact with customers at any time, regardless of where they are in the purchasing journey. In fact, 88% of Facebook users access the platform almost exclusively via their mobile devices, which means retailers can engage with consumers at almost any point, right up until they tap ‘buy’.

Device-specific targeting is incredibly important in this process. Facebook’s Pixel targeting and retargeting capabilities enables brands to channel adverts alongside particular points in the customer journey. An advert can be tailored to register whether the customer has ever engaged with the brand before, so the tool knows to showcase content that raises awareness.

As a result, when users are engaging with the brand on separate devices, they are then retargeted based on whether it’s to drive conversion or to complete a sale. With the user ID mapped, a retailer can achieve success for the brand by mapping adverts that appeal most to the stage the customer’s buying journey – regardless of the device a customer decides to purchase from.

Making the most of the social advertising budget

Aside from device-targeting or retargeting, ‘email bonuses’ can help retailers maximise on leads when users are no longer on Facebook. For example, retailers offer prospects free trials or discounts in exchange for an email address. This then allows marketers to deliver a personalised email series to potential customers, based on the offer they initially expressed an interest in.

However, what exactly is offered in this email campaign is critical to its success and requires time and creativity, otherwise, it may be difficult to differentiate from what other brands and competitors are offering. The increasing demand for a unique experience means that failing to invest properly in this approach will likely lead to potential customers scrolling straight past the offer.

Data is critical to the entire process

Facebook’s Pixel feature and an email bonus scheme are just a couple of avenues in which social advertising can help generate greater leads. Adverts can be an effective measure to help brands test particular messaging and creative assets to ensure they have the best impact on customers. This ‘test and learn’ approach enables retailers to fine-tune marketing efforts to meet customer expectations.

However, data is critical to perfecting this stage. Social data is invaluable for retailers in determining the thoughts and feelings of customers to particular experiences, processes or products.

By analysing the data available on Facebook, retailers can identify which content resonates best with the target audience and leverage this insight to drive improvements. For example, by monitoring customer complaints, retailers can identify common product faults or service issues and remedy them as soon as possible.

With changes being made intuitively to customer feedback, customer expectation can continue to be met and exceeded, and as a result, encourage more sales and repeat purchases.

Don’t forget Insta

Whilst Facebook is growing at an exponential rate, so is Instagram, which Facebook bought for $1billion in 2012. Instagram has rapidly become an integral marketing tool for retailers and those neglecting it risk losing out on a significant number of leads.

For instance, the launch of Instagram’s shoppable posts feature has revolutionised the retail sector. The ability to tag and buy products directly from posts means that consumers can complete the buying journey without ever leaving the app. With no need to click on an external link or use a browser resulting in fewer touch points, there’s no real opportunity for the customer’s interest to be lost.

Ensuring that a customer completes this journey requires a multi-faceted approach. The first is making sure that messaging and items are presented in a creative and eye-catching way that maps with the user’s interests.

The other is maximising on the potential of the influencer community. The boom in Insta bloggers means that brands can market through these individuals to attract different demographics in a way that eliminates the need to engage with the brand itself. With this human-level interaction, leads are generated authentically and naturally and customers feel more obliged to tap the buy button as they engage with people like themselves, or who they admire, using a particular product or service.

The stretch of Facebook’s dominance across the social sphere is difficult to ignore, which is why many retailers are increasingly active on its platforms, particularly Instagram.

However, it’s clear that generating leads as a result of increasing brand awareness can be a tricky conversion to drive. Simply pushing sales collateral with little consideration of the interests and motivation of specific customer demographic will help drive awareness but fail to boost the bottom line. Retailers must focus on making every stage of the customer journey both personalised yet receptive in order to maximise the chances of a particular advert, bonus or offer converting a regular Facebook user into a qualified lead.

The post How Can Retailers Generate More Leads on Facebook? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Social media. Mobile apps. E-mail. Search. Today’s digital marketing landscape continues to overflow with opportunities for reaching consumers across a diverse array of devices, platforms and channels. But more choices don’t necessarily make things easier when it comes to boosting return on advertising spend (ROAS).

To maximize digital investments, brands need to be able to measure and understand both the individual and collective impact of each and every step along the “customer journey” to a conversion, so that their marketing teams can make decisions based on real data rather than guesswork.

This, of course, is where multi-touch attribution comes in. When marketers can evaluate and accurately attribute a score to each digital touchpoint that a consumer encounters before making a purchase, they are armed with the insight they need to zero in on the most effective campaign strategies. Easy, right? Not so fast.

According to eMarketer, improved measurement and attribution are top priorities for marketers. The research provider last year cited an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Winterberry Group survey that scored interest in “better reporting, measurement and attribution” at more than 73% among respondents. But, while the majority of marketers believe that attribution is important, they often find themselves struggling to make it work in practice. What’s standing in their way?

Let’s take a closer look at the “Big Three” attribution challenges and explore how marketers can get better at capturing a more complete and accurate view of the customer journey.

1. Tracking across devices

According to comScore, people who regularly use multiple devices – smartphones, desktops/laptops and tablets – make up the majority of digital users. A consumer who sees an ad on their social media feed on the way to work in the morning, for example, may well end up making a purchase on their laptop later in the day.

The problem is that most analytics platforms that rely on cookie-based tracking can’t identify users as they move from one device to another, leaving marketers with a fragmented and inaccurate picture of the customer journey. Capturing an integrated view of the customer’s path to purchase requires advanced analytic capabilities that are able to surmount this obstacle.

Cross-device user identification – which applies a different approach to tracking – is a must for marketers who want to be able to follow a consumer’s journey across multiple devices and touchpoints.  

2. Measuring mobile app performance

Anyone whose smartphone is littered with apps that rarely get used knows that a download doesn’t necessarily equal engagement. This is why an ability to capture insights on in-app activity (for example, frequency of log-ins, usage, purchases, etc.) is key to helping marketers get better at leveraging mobile within their campaigns.

Marketers need to be sure their analytics solutions are capable of tracking and measuring mobile app interactions before and after the download, starting with the touchpoints that triggered the download in the first place to any and all actions that push a consumer closer to a purchase within the app itself. There’s little point in creating a mobile app if you can’t accurately measure whether or not it’s doing what it was designed to do.  

3. The disproportionate weight given to “last touch”

UK consumers typically interact with up to nine marketing touchpoints before making a purchase. Nine. Yet many marketers still rely on “last touch” attribution to measure campaign performance, giving most of the credit to the final marketing message a consumer might have encountered before making a purchase. This is the attribution equivalent of making the same mistake over and over, and expecting a different result.

What if, for example, the consumer was most deeply influenced by an interactive product demo they viewed somewhere around touchpoint number five, but because the product was expensive, it took a few more “reminders” for them to decide? Which touchpoint was more valuable?

The demo, which did most of the selling, or the reminder that popped up on the consumer’s social media feed? The beauty of multi-touch attribution is that it helps marketers see which of their tactics are most effective in driving conversions so that they can allocate their creative resources and budgets accordingly. Doing this accurately requires advanced modelling techniques and machine learning that is able to evaluate a broader range of key data points.

Although the use of multi-touch attribution has yet to reach its full potential, the good news is that technology innovations are steadily driving change. Marketers who do their due diligence when choosing an analytics platform will be ahead of the pack when it comes to making smart decisions about how to get the most impact from their digital advertising spend.   

The post How to Capture a Complete View of the Customer Journey appeared first on PerformanceIN.