A blend of new technology developments as well as the established trends is causing 2013 to be an action-packed year for digital marketing. Here I have mentioned few themes, which I expect is going to dominate the attention of the marketers in 2013.
-
Cross Device And Cross-Channel Measurement Is Turning Out To Be Dominant
Until now, online marketers measured the effectiveness of digital campaigns with a ‘last-click’ tactic. This worked wonders as most of the people were clicking on the advertisements and then buying it instantly. However, the increased rise of mobile phone usage and upswing of the marketing channels such as social media has triggered a major shift in purchase patterns of online customers. Firstly, customers are making research on products more than ever on different devices at varying points in sales cycle. Secondly, as the offline and online worlds are clouding with cell phones, customers are often trying to store reviews, locations, and information on their mobile phones. Last but not the least; social media is marketing through word-of-mouth, and this marketing platform has become vital as customers usually seek for recommendations before committing to purchase a service or a product.
As we are continuing to use different devices across varying channels, it is becoming important to measure client journey across devices and channels to recognize the real value of an advertisement. For example, few marketers have a feeling that clicks through smartphone don’t convert for clients’ business and they aren’t willing to participate in paid smartphone clicks. But, in several cases, smartphone searches resulted in improved in-store traffic that is not implemented with last-click techniques.
Nowadays, measurement of cross-channel is prepared through heuristic attribution tactics, which give a predefined value of a conversion to various touch points in sales funnel. Though insightful and useful, these techniques are limited and incorrect in calculating the exact media mix. When the right style is to practice algorithms made over granular funnel-level data, doing so presently needs vital human input to do data analysis and collection.
In 2013, you can expect a continuous progression of the products of cross-channel measurement from both analytics as well as reporting standpoint. Google and Facebook are having a benefit over the cross-device measurement front because users log on to both of these platforms from various devices. Thus, search engines should offer advertisers, having purchase funnel data, with device statistics and information. Media mix recommended products, which are algorithm-based, are becoming more conventional. Consequently, we’ll see cross-channel approach’s evolution to something, which is more actionable, precise and real time from attribution.
-
Marketing Is Becoming Even More Granulated
Online marketers always dream of reaching their customers at the correct time and with a factual message. While the display marketers have seen signs of this with behavioral targeting and real-time bidding, granular targeting with cross-channel component is yet to be comprehended. But different innovations symbolize that it is shifting. For example, Facebook has shifted far beyond the interest-level and demographic targeting with potential customers, where advertisers use ads or sponsored stories to target some users with whom they have developed a relation off Facebook already. Google Shopping even changed into paid model. Marketers promote at a granular level here and on different traits of the merchandise like condition, color etc. In addition to that all the Professional SEO Services Company is signing up for Google Adwords too.
What is your opinion about all these targeting? Do you think they are beneficial or are they just an extra headache for the marketers? All these signs show that when increased targeting offers challenges, with a scalable algorithmic approach and right technology, marketers can get substantial performance developments.
-
Marketers Understand The Importance Of Social
Online marketers hardly valued the importance of social media before. A buzzword among them is: “social media does not work.” Basically, the direct response marketers are of this typical opinion, as they are comfortable with the idea of instant purchases after clicking of an ad. This mentality of the online marketers will surely change the next year. In fact, marketers have started realizing the significance of social clicks, which has the capacity of going far beyond an initial purchase. It is all about developing and maintaining relations with clients and also getting access to huge audiences through the intrinsic viral pattern of the social networks. Online marketers have started understanding this. Facebook, other than coming up with new advertisement formats, has already allowed advertisers to keep a track of the view-thoughts. The initial results have proved to be very promising. Moreover, I guess Facebook Exchange will be pretty successful. Even Twitter that had high mobile advertisement revenues, which is included in the eMarketer report, is anticipated to go beyond the sponsored tweets and give advertisers with many more targeting options as well as advertising formats.
So, for the next year, advertisers are surely going to do well to analyze the rising complications of the digital marketing era. Also in search, which at once was a simple matter, a successful search campaign, which had few thousand keywords now include millions of key phrases with various targeting layers— device, remarketing, geolocation etc. Social ad is turning out to be very complicated with Facebook’s announcement of different new formats every month. Online video ads are becoming significant. Thus, it is important for marketers to make their teams augmented with cross-channel marketing podiums.