Given the tools and technologies available today, there has never been a better time to launch a high ROI-producing digital marketing campaign. Take a look at three of the top digital marketing strategies for success in 2013.
Remarketing
What it is: Remarketing is a form of advertising that targets users who have previously visited a website in an effort to bring them back. Advertisers can choose different types of media with which to retarget—text, images or video—while controlling other variables (e.g., retargeting only those visitors who saw a certain page or those who spent a certain amount of time on the site). The most common application of remarketing is targeting visitors who came to the website but did not convert.
Image credit: http://www.impactradius.com/blog/industry/what-is-remarketing.html
Why it’s important: Traditional display advertising targets large audiences across the web in the hopes of receiving clicks or raising brand awareness. On the other hand, remarketing targets visitors who have already demonstrated an interest in your product, service or business. That’s why remarketing is a solid addition to any holistic marketing mix—it stretches the dollars spent on other channels, such as email, search and display, by bringing visitors back to your website. Here at Dana, we have consistently seen remarketing efforts lower cost-per-acquisition and improve ROI.
Real-Time Personalization
What it is: This is a way to serve visitors customized content based on their behavior or attributes. For example, a website could serve one homepage slider to visitors that arrived with the word “resort” in their query, and another to visitors with the word “wedding venue” in their query. Other examples of segmentation variables include device type, location, visit count, time of day and referring website.
Image credit: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/features.php
Why it’s important: If your PPC ad, organic search listing or referring page does not match the content on your landing page, visitors are more likely to bounce. Conversely, the better your landing page matches the user’s expectations, the better the user experience and the likelihood for conversion. That’s why companies like Amazon, eBay and Google invest in personalization—it works. But personalization technology is no longer limited to large companies. Today, many affordable solutions exist to enhance websites with powerful personalization features, with little to no coding required. At Dana, one of our favorite personalization tools is Visual Website Optimizer.
User-Centric Analytics
What it is: This type of analytics tracks users across devices and sales funnels. Currently, Google Analytics uses cookies to track visitors. But cookies are cleared or, more commonly, lost between visitors who use multiple devices. In an effort to solve some of these tracking issues, Google recently launched Universal Analytics (beta), which is a major upgrade to the current cookie-based system. Instead of relying on cookies to collect session-based data, Universal Analytics will use IDs to collect user-based data.
Why it’s important: Not all conversions happen online, making it difficult for companies to track offline conversions that were originally driven by digital efforts. With Universal Analytics, companies can integrate their offline data (CRM, phone, etc.) with online data to get a more complete, accurate picture of digital’s ROI.
Image credit: http://www.jeffalytics.com/introducing-universal-analytics-google-analytics/
Moreover, visitors are assigned user IDs, making their behavior traceable across multiple devices. This technology is not only a shift from session-based analytics to user-based analytics, but also a fundamental shift from web analytics to business analytics. Universal Analytics is already available in beta, and we are looking forward to implementing it where possible after its full release later this year.
If you’re ready to boost conversions with remarketing, engage in personalization or implement the next generation of analytics, be sure to contact Mark D’Amico at mdamico@danacommunications.com to get started.
