Improving Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

Dave Howell discovers how your digital marketing campaigns can increase their appeal to customers

Your customers are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. The average consumer now receives dozens of marketing emails, is increasingly being exposed to online adverts and is being constantly targeted on their favourite social media networks.

Research from discount website NetVoucherCodes.co.uk has revealed that Britons spend nine hours a day staring at screens. The proliferation of smartphones has placed a screen in the pocket of every consumer and social media is the key driver for this obsession.

According to publishing and events company Informa, over 90 per cent of the world’s adult population has a mobile phone subscription, a quarter of them with 3G/4G connections. This delivers a massive opportunity for businesses, which now have a channel that provides unprecedented access to masses of consumers. The question facing small businesses is: how do they ensure their digital marketing messages are reaching the right customers?

EMPHASIS

Research carried out by affiliate marketing specialist Optimus Performance Marketing revealed that nearly half of the small businesses quizzed have increased the emphasis they place on digital and social marketing.

“While in previous years it may have seemed risky or ambitious for small and medium-sized enterprises to invest substantial amounts of money in a marketing spend, it seems from our results that the tables have now turned and marketing, particularly online marketing and social media, is an area with huge growth potential across a plethora of SME industries,” Mark Russell, managing director of Optimus Performance Marketing, says.

What has become clear over the last few years is that marketing has become a highly intimate affair. Gone are the days when homogenous messages could be broadcast to the widest possible audience. Thanks to social media and smartphones, your business’ marketing messages must be highly refined, targeted and understand what motivates today’s mobile consumers to buy. Emotion and mood are major drivers behind each purchase.

A study by YuMe, a provider of digital video brand advertising, and market research company IPG Media Lab looked closely at what motivates today’s digital customers and how important mood, state of mind, location and even the time of day had on the success of marketing messages.

The study looked closely at a number of key areas and concluded:

* Context is key to predicting a consumer’s level of receptivity and attention to digital advertising

* Receptivity and attention are drivers of brand performance.

* Advertisers should think beyond the ‘lean back at home’ mode as being the only optimal context for reaching attentive audiences.

* There are a number of actionable ‘sweet spots’ for reaching attentive audiences.

“Starting with the initial findings of this research, clients may soon have the ability to strategically target attentive audiences to increase brand performance,” Paul Neto, director of research at YuMe, says. “Looking at the research alone, it seems likely that attention will be a valuable metric to measure digital video advertising effectiveness moving forward.”

EMOTION

Marketing messages have always used emotion. Today, however, emotion can be enhanced. Consumers have developed intimate relationships with their smartphones, so it follows that marketing messages delivered to these devices can have their emotional components enhanced.

Research by professor DaHee Han, assistant professor of marketing at the Desautels Faculty of Management in Canada, looked at how marketers can successfully use emotions such as guilt and shame in promotional campaigns.

Consumers who feel ashamed are best targeted by adverts that offer a ‘big picture’ solution, whereas those who feel guilty respond better to a smaller, short-term fix. The study offers conclusive proof that the effectiveness of advertising can be boosted by recognising the different influences guilt and shame have on buying habits.

Professor DaHee Han explains: “To get the best response, a fitness club could produce an advert that induces shame and highlights the bigger picture, such as: ‘Are you overweight? How ashamed do you feel? Stop overeating, join our fitness programme and feel healthy all the time.’

“If they wanted the best impact by inducing guilt, the advert should suggest a small-scale commitment, such as: ‘Overeating again? How guilty do you feel? Stop overeating and come to yoga classes once a week’.”

The use of emotion and the components that make up digital marketing, especially on mobile channels, is important for small businesses to understand. According to a study conducted last year, 49 per cent of UK consumers said they think personalisation is important. This shows that the average customer expects some level of personalisation in the communications they receive. The days are gone when companies could mass market to everyone and expect a good response.

“Marketing communication has become highly fragmented over the last few years and it is putting customers and potential customers off, even though the messages can be beneficial to them,” Az Ahmed, mobile marketing expert at mobile marketing company SmartFocus, says.

“The way to combat this fragmentation is by using personalisation and contextualisation. If messages are personalised to the recipient and they take into account past purchases and preferences, customers are more likely to open them and interact with your company.”

Simply personalising your business’ marketing messages is not enough, though. A deeper understanding of mood, location and content is important to appreciate.

AUTHENTIC

Az Ahmed says: “Gaining attention from customers and potential customers is a great way for a business to make an impact and get its message heard. But more important than that is being relevant and authentic to a number of dedicated followers, who will see these attempts on social media as genuine and not as simply a desire to be the next viral sensation.”

The intention to buy is influenced by mobile devices. The purchase of goods and services via smartphones will mushroom over the next few years. Marketing messages will need to respond to this change in purchasing behaviour.

They will need to be closely linked to consumers’ attention based on a number of criteria, the most important of which are location, mood, device and time of day.