In the 4th quarter of any year, as the end of financial year looms, all businesses find themselves in a similar position. Tracking how they have performed against their goals:

– Did they make their yearly revenue?

– Did they reduce their marketing costs?
– How effective was their marketing effort?

The end of financial year is the perfect time to reflect upon what worked, what didn’t and what your plan is for your digital strategy in the year to come.

Start With A Stock-Take

Before you begin, first stop and take stock of your inventory. What do you have remaining to sell? What is likely to go out of season? Are there new versions of a particular product that are likely to come around soon?

Once you’ve identified what you have to sell, it’s time to use all your data from the past year to identify potential customers.

Segment Your Customer Database

Rather than going ahead with an EOFY Sale (End of Financial Year Sale) that is a mass campaign, you’re best to segment your customer data and focus on what specific customers may like to buy.

For example, if you have customers who in the past have purchased a sterling silver bracelet, and you have inventory of sterling silver earrings, this may be a great time to create a campaign that shows off the complimentary products.

Go Multi-Platform

Now that you have your inventory and audience sorted, you’ll want to make sure that you’re reaching those customers through multiple platforms, not just one.

Using the example above, that may mean:

– Creating an email newsletter

– Setting up a Facebook Retargeting campaign

– Running a Google Shopping Campaign

Make sure to plan your digital marketing before you jump right in to ensure that you’re spending your money in the right places to get the right impact.

Batch It Up

Sometimes the biggest problem that small businesses have is finding the time to create a digital strategy or set-up campaigns. If that sounds like you and you don’t want to outsource the problem, our advice is to ‘batch it up’.

Set aside a few hours every week to plan out and setup your campaigns. Doing it in a fixed timeframe every week makes you more likely to make significant progress weekly than if you are trying to fit it around other tasks.

Finally remember that though the end of financial year gives you a great opportunity to reach out and speak with customers about a sale, you should be talking to your customers consistently throughout the year – devise a plan that works quarter by quarter.

Emerging Technology in Advertising

How To Find New Vendors Using AdWords and Facebook

By Anne-Marina on

February 10, 2017

- Emerging Technology in Advertising

WITH over 39,000 real estate agents and companies in Australia, it’s important you’re doing all you can to stand out from the crowd and be seen when customers are deciding they want to sell their property.

But beyond the traditional approach (billboards at train stations and flyers through the door), how can you use online advertising to get the best return on your marketing investment?

One of the great things about new technology is the wealth of data and information that it gives you access to. Using this information you can target your advertising to particular users, reducing cost on ad-wastage and ‘lasering in’ on those who are most relevant.

Finding Customers Who Know They Want To Sell

In the first instance, it’s wise to setup a traditional Search Engine Marketing campaign to capture those customers who are already in the mindset to sell. You need to make your campaign as specific as possible and ensure that you have a landing page created just for it. The messaging in the campaign should link all the way through.

For example, say you are a real estate agent in Surry Hills in Sydney, your campaign may look like:
Target Keyword: “Sell My Property”
Location: “Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW”
Target Details: People In My Location
Ad Unit Messaging: Sell Your Property In Surry Hills Download Your Free Surry Hills Price Guide
Landing Page: Download Your Free Surry Hills Price Guide -> Enter Your Email Address To Download

In the instance above your campaign is very specific and the messaging is consistent throughout. Rather than running a campaign that ends at your website homepage (which is very generic), this instead will get you a good AdWords Ad Quality Score – which is what Google uses to determine in which position to show your ad.

Finding Customers Who Don’t Know They Want To Sell

The trickier part is finding those customers who are not yet in the mindset to sell. This is best done by using demographic and behavioural data and interests to target customers.

A Facebook Example:
Setup your Facebook advertising campaign with a Brand Awareness objective that targets those customers who have recently updated their relationship status to “Engaged” or “Married” – there’s a high chance those customers are looking to move house and sell their existing house.

Alternatively you could setup an ad that targets a lookalike audience to existing pool of vendors by uploading your existing customer list and then creating a Lookalike Audience based on it. Facebook will match the details and information it knows of your existing audience and find people who are similar to it.

An AdWords Example:
Similar to Facebook you can create a Lookalike Audience to your existing audience and target ads to it. We would also recommend that you use the Demographics and Interests targeting to find those customers who have an expressed interest in real estate or home decor.

Remembering That Selling A House Is A Big Decision

Unlike buying a new pair of shoes, selling a house is a huge decision and isn’t something most people enter into lightly. For those who were not already in the mindset of wanting to sell, you should ensure that you have Remarketing campaigns setup and ready to keep your brand front of mind with those customers who saw your initial ads and came to your website.

Use content to bring people along the purchase journey rather than expecting one ad unit is all that is required! There are a tonne of campaigns you can run using the data that is available to you, making it the most targeted campaign possible – resulting in finding you more vendors who want to sell their properties.

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management

How To Match Offline Purchases To Online Marketing

By Anne-Marina on

January 31, 2017

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management

One of the questions we get asked a lot is how it is possible to measure digital marketing efforts when your purchase is offline, either in your own store, or through another retailer. We admit, it’s not the easiest of tasks, but there are ways and means to track back your digital marketing spend to your actual sales.

1. Go Old School – Use Coupons or Voucher Codes
Provide a unique coupon code for each advertisement (whether it’s on your Facebook account or via Google AdWords). Then after the time of sale when the customer presents the coupon, you can later match the number of coupon codes back to the original advert they came from. This provides you with information on the number of people who clicked on your ad, the number of people who reached your landing page and the number of people who actually purchased. A great way to get conversion results. Additionally if you add a retargeting pixel to this page, you can later retarget to these same customers online.

2. Ask Your Customer At Point of Sale
There’s nothing like the traditional method of actually talking to your customers. Ask them when they purchase where they found you and what made them buy that particular item. Not only does it help with you tracking your marketing effectiveness, but it also gets you product feedback.

3. Run Targeted Ads Locally
If your product is being sold through a different retailer and you don’t have the opportunity to ask your customers how they found you then another option that is open to you is to run targeted local advertising that allows you to match upward turns in sales back to your local campaign. This will give you trend data but it’s important that you only are running that one campaign in that area at that time, otherwise your upward turn in sales may be due to some other factor.

4. Track Store Visits Using AdWords
Google very cleverly allows you to link your store with your AdWords account. Essentially what you are doing here is linking your Google My Business Account & AdWords accounts. Google will then use mobile users location details (for those who have switched their location on) to aggregate an estimate of the number of people who came in store after seeing your AdWords campaign. To access this information, you can look under “Distance” in the Dimensions report. Note, you will have to have a minimum amount of customer data so that Google can aggregate this information and make it anonymous, and you’ll also have to have location extensions enabled already.

5. Add Affiliate Location Extensions
This is a reasonably new Google rollout, which allows you to add the locations that your product is sold as a location extension. For example, say you sell mobile phone covers and they retail through JB Hi-Fi. You’d be able to add ‘JB Hi-Fi’ as a location extension. It’s live in the USA and is being rolled out to other territories too! Try implementing some of these techniques to track your digital marketing back to your offline sales, then measure the performance, and adapt your advertising accordingly. Don’t just throw money out there, make sure you’re tracking its effectiveness and putting the right money behind the right initiatives.

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management

Why your digital marketing reports need to look beyond last click attribution

By Anne-Marina on

December 13, 2016

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management

There are lots of different means of marketing your product, and most companies are using a combination of different strategies and tactics to find their customers and then sell to them. But what happens when you only recognise the efforts of the final piece that actually led to the sale?

Imagine a hockey team that only ever rewarded its forwards – the final player who kicks the goal. All the other players on the field: the defence who stop competitor goals going in, midfield who help to set the goal up, the goalie who is the final layer of defence against the competition – they’d all be quite upset. That’s exactly what you’re doing to your other marketing activities every time you reward that last click with the credit for your sale.

What are the types of marketing activities that you should be tracking?

The simple answer here, is all of them – everything from your outdoor billboard to your website landing page, to the Google Remarketing that brought the customer back to the site 3 months after they first saw your billboard. Create a template up front to track all of these activities and work out how they work together to combine into a customer conversion. Make sure you have all the various aspects that work together online hooked up to talk to one another – Google Analytics sync’d to Google AdWords; Facebook Conversion Tracking enabled on your website; your CRM linked to your Google Analytics. This will give you the most
complete picture of how all your marketing efforts are working together.

What is an Attribution Model?

At its simplest Attribution is the term the digital industry uses to refer to credit being given for a sale to a particular customer touchpoint (your marketing efforts). There are many different models, four of the most commonly used below: – Last Click Attribution – gives credit to the final touchpoint that leads to a customer conversion – Linear Attribution – which gives equal credit to all customer touch-points – Time Decay Attribution – which gives credit to the customer touchpoint the closer they are to a customer conversion – Last AdWords Click Attribution – gives credit to the final click on a paid media campaign (for example, through AdWords)

Linear Attribution & E-Commerce

When it comes to e-commerce, 96% of shoppers don’t make a purchase on their first visit to a site. Which means you’re getting inaccurate conversion results if you consider only the last click that led to that customer sale. They may already have been to the site a few times, seen some remarketing ads and then decided to come back and make a purchase. Personally, I’m a huge fan of Linear Attribution because it gives equal credit to all players on the field. If they don’t all exist and play in harmony together, then you’re at risk of never getting the opportunity to score the final goal.

What’s an easy way to get an idea of your customer conversion path?

Helpfully Google provides easy access to this data for beginners. You can start by heading to Google Analytics and clicking on Conversions, then Attribution and this will give you a report that initially will default to Last Click Attribution but gives you the option to choose between and compare different attribution models. The only caveat here is that you need to have Goals and Conversions enabled for your Analytics. Once you’ve done that and it has collected your data, you’re well on your way to understanding how multiple different marketing touchpoint impact your sales funnel.

It’s true what the man said, knowledge is power and once you understand more about how all these marketing efforts contribute to your sales, you know more about where to spend your budget.

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, SEO

Marketing Beyond The Major Portals in Real Estate

By Anne-Marina on

September 28, 2016

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, SEO

Many people love to flick through property images online – they’re well shot, usually highly aspirational and give you an insight into your neighbours lives – but these images are more than just property-porn, and should be used to their fullest beyond just on the property listing on major portals like realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.

Real Estate companies are a bit of a special case when it comes to digital marketing because their primary customer is not the one you immediately think of – the buyer. Even though real estate companies spend a lot of money advertising to the buyer, their primary source of income is the seller but some do not optimise their homepage for that user.

Speaking to all your customers

One of the first things we always begin a conversation with is establishing who your most important user is, and then optimising your website to speak to that person in the first instance – or we review your website user experience in other words. In the case of real estate that person is the vendor. So, rather than having the ability to search for a property as the top item in the content hierarchy – you should first have the ability to search for an agent or office. Champion your office location contact details and think through the content of the agent profile – always with the vendor in mind.

Targeting customers who know they want to sell

If you are spending money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) make sure that you’re getting a good return from it by designing a landing page that is specific to your campaign. Keep it simple, on brand and with one clear call to action. SEM is a great way to put yourself in front of customers who already know that they want to sell their house but what if you want to reach customers who haven’t yet made that decision?

Targeting customers who don’t know they want to sell

Using data and technology to find new customers (programmatic media advertising) is a great way to target potential vendors. Use digital platforms to find users according to their demographics and behaviour, meaning your brand is front of mind when they decide to sell their house.

Targeting customers who don’t know they want to buy

If you’re trying to sell a home that is high-end, which typically would have a long sale cycle because of its high value (and therefore lower number of customers who can actually afford to buy it), doing your own programmatic media campaigns is a brilliant way to reach those customers wherever they are browsing on the internet – not where you think they might be. It’s a low-cost, easily trackable means of advertising, which comes with the added advantage of then being able to understand in real-time who is interacting with your ad and from that create new lookalike audiences, thereby exposing your ad to more potential buyers.

Making sure you join the dots

When you make the decision to go down this pathway, make sure you join the dots between the various parts of this same campaign. Ensuring that your website can talk to your AdWords which can talk to the other buying platforms – the more complete data you have the more knowledge you have to feed back into future campaigns.

Championing your amazing content on social media

As we said at the start, your photography is your hero, so use it for everything it’s worth on social media platforms – Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook are your key platforms here. Don’t just post links to the property listing on your website, use the different types of tech available on the platforms to help sell property – Instagram Stories / Facebook Live videos of auctions and inspections. It’s great to market your properties through the major portals but remember they are only one of the channels open to you to find buyers.

There are lots of other ways you can do more online for you to find new vendors. We love a bit of property-porn so if you want some assistance with your digital marketing – shoot us an email.

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Apps

Pokemon Go: A marketer’s dream

By Anne-Marina on

August 18, 2016

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Apps

There has been a lot of press about the new Pokemon Go app since it came out. There have been people caught driving whilst playing it, entire suburbs taken over at night by people playing in what were once quiet parks and hundreds of middle aged heads down catching them on their way to work.

It’s no wonder, given its birth on the old Nintendo and the target market at the time would now be in their early 30s. It has been downloaded over 100 million times but what potential does it offer beyond just being a once-addictive game? Lots.

Having been 20 years in the making and combines augmented reality, gaming and location based services. It’s encouraging people out and about and offers plenty of opportunity for marketing for small businesses, and a new revenue stream for the game makers.

The game is based on a freemium model at the moment, where you don’t pay to download or play but pay for things to use within the game. Its genius is that in future, it will have a self-perpetuating revenue model which, so long as people continue to use the game, will continue to make money by itself.

The premise of the game is that you need to “catch” pokemon and there are different means of doing that: – Walk around with the app open and catch them as you find them – Use a potion to lure more pokemon to your area to catch them – Go to a pokemon “gym” to battle other pokemon and get points – Go to a pokemon “stop” to pickup more potions

We’ve already seen businesses take advantage of these to increase footfall to their business. McDonald’s in Sydney used a combination of Pokemon lure potions and Facebook advertising to tell potential customers that they were using a lure potion between certain hours of a day to lure not just Pokemon, but customers who wanted to catch Pokemon too.

There will come a time when we foresee that small businesses will be able to pay to become a Pokemon stop or gym in order to bring more footfall to their retail stores. It benefits both the business and the game maker by bringing new customers to a store and keeping users engaged in the game.

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, SEO

Why a digital presence is important for offline businesses too

By Anne-Marina on

June 8, 2016

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, SEO

We spend much of our time talking about digital strategy and how it can impact your business but don’t be fooled into thinking that it only applies to e-commerce sites.

Smartphone penetration is now at an all time high (85% in Australia) and what that means is that Aussies are online a very high percentage of the time and use their phones for research on the fly. Need a bar recommendation in Melbourne? What’s the first thing you do? Google It. Need to find a good brunch spot in Bondi? Google It. Looking for a tradie to fix some things around the house? Google It. Looking for a piano teacher in the local area? Google It.

That’s why it’s important that no matter what your business does you need to have an appropriate digital presence to make sure that you get found in the real world too.

User scenarios apply to all kinds of businesses:
– A massage and chiropractor who uses their site to provide information in their field and book appointments
– A boutique clothing store, who doesn’t sell anything online, but can provide information on the products they have in stock and opening hours
– Independent tutors and teachers who don’t work in schools but work for themselves

It’s important for a number of reasons:
– It’ll improve your brand recognition overall
– It gives you credibility

How many businesses do you use who don’t have some presence online? People are routinely doing more research before making purchases, so if you’re not online you won’t even make the draft. Notice I say “presence online” and don’t specifically talk about mobile apps, websites or Facebook pages.

That’s because the most appropriate form of presence online is entirely dependent upon what your business is. It shouldn’t be a one size fits all approach but bespoke to your business. If you’re the type of business that takes bookings, then it makes sense to extend that online, if you’re a boutique store you may be best to focus on a great Google My Business listing which encourages people to rate and review you and if you’re an independent tutor then a website may be the most appropriate forum – supplemented by listings on things like Hot Frog.

Spend some time researching how others in your field position their offering online and learn from it but whatever you do, don’t ignore it or you may find you become obsolete IRL (in real life ;)).

Featured Image Credit: www.seo-plus.co.uk

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, Publishing

Ad-Viewability – A Quick Start Guide

By Anne-Marina on

May 14, 2016

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, Publishing

Last year we wrote a post on ad-blocking, where we spoke about what it is and how you can take steps to protect your business model from it.

Next into the arena comes ad-viewability. Put simply it’s the move towards ads that are at least 80% viewable on publisher websites and it’s come about because of the proliferation of ad units being served at the bottom of pages where the impression fires off but the user may never scroll to the bottom of the page and actually view it.

What this means for the agency or client is that they’re paying for an unit that the customer doesn’t see. Agencies are now making moves to pay only for viewable ads, which the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) defines as 50% of the pixels in view for one second for a display ad and 50% in view for 2 seconds for a video.

Group M took a stance in 2015 stating the move towards at least 80% of their ads being viewable. So what does that mean for publishers? Well it means that you’re going to have to take a long hard look at all of the ad placements on your site, lazy load them, and bring them more in view.

Do some analysis on how people use your site, where do they typically scroll down to and what do they click on? There are tools like Hotjar available to help you dive into the detail before you begin changing all of your ad placements.

It also means you need to review the types of ads that you’re selling to ensure they’re appropriate for the placement and appropriate for the audience. Long gone are the days of filling remnant inventory with any old ad placement, which also means you need to investigate your business model and define a strategy to future-proof your revenue.

If you need some help thinking through the best way to go about it and what the options are that are open to you, contact us for more info.

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Optimisation, Product Management

How will ad blockers impact ad-funded digital businesses? #advertising #media #digital

By Anne-Marina on

August 19, 2015

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Optimisation, Product Management

It seems that ad blockers are getting more and more air time these days, with many in the digital media industry confused about just what they mean for your business. We’ve taken a look and have given the basic facts on what you need to know if your online business is ad-funded.

What are ad blockers?
Ad Blockers are a software tool that users can download and install to run on their browser (on any device) which will prevent your ads from showing. They can be downloaded for free, or users can opt to pay for a more premium version. Some run on an open-source honour system, requesting that users pay what they think is fair. Typically, they block any ads from being shown on a page, for example on smh.com.au:

With ads:

Without ads:

For the end user, they get a much clearer reading experience and, one would argue, a slightly faster load time.

What is the usage of ad blocking software?
As with any product, there are always early adopters and usually they fall into the categories of adult entertainment, gaming and tech. So if your business falls into one of those categories, it’s time to start coming up with a backup plan. There are 144 million ad blocker users worldwide, which is growing at a rate of 70% year on year. As it grows, your potential revenue pool shrinks – so it’s time to act now. Usage is highest amongst those between 18-29 and skews towards the male demographic.

Who are the companies who are building ad blockers?
There are a good few options out there for users: Ad Blocker Plus, uBlock, AdGuard, Fair Blocker but contrary to popular belief this isn’t something being done only by the little guys. Apple’s next iOS release (iOS9) will make ad blocking a reality for web developers, allowing them to create extensions to prevent ads from loading and block cookies amongst other things. All of which goes hand in hand with some improvements they’re making to their News app (a similar idea to Flipboard), where they are encouraging digital publishers to provide their content and opt-in to iAd (Apple’s ad serving software). So when ad blocking goes mainstream on iOS, the only way to monetize digital content through ads will be through Apple’s own ecosystem.

Where does all this sit legally?
Coming after the business model of a company is nothing new and the internet has transformed the business model of many a company – you only have to look at the music industry to see that. Some ad blocking companies maintain a whitelist which insists that:

Ads are easily identifiable
Ads are non-intrusive to the user experience
Ads must be appropriate for the site that they are being served on

All of which seems to be reasonable. But one company, AdBlock Plus, when reviewing those sites that have requested white-listing, makes a determination of the size of the company, and if they are big enough, then has their parent company request a fee before going through the white-listing process.

What are your options to defend your business revenue?
It’s clear customers have had enough of intrusive pop-ups, overlays and interstitials. At a time when the other buzzword in the industry is viewability, how do you make sure your advertiser clients get their ad seen by your users without hampering the site experience? Native content is one way to go. Rather than having advertising that doesn’t relate to your users, have the kind that is meaningful and useful for them. Just make sure not to ad serve it – otherwise, it’ll get blocked in the process!

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Optimisation, Product Management

What gets better traction for publishers? Mobile Web or Apps?

By Anne-Marina on

February 13, 2015

- Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Optimisation, Product Management

A study from eMarketer notes that adverts on mobile web gets considerably more click throughs than adverts displayed via mobile apps. It’s a fairly significant difference, with 35% on mobile web, and 26% on mobile apps. So what does that mean for publishers who run an advertising model? Likely that it’s time to pursue a two pronged strategy similar to the one that the New York Times has been attempting.

Give those customers who are new and find you via search, Facebook and other social channels access on the mobile web with ads and native sponsored content and focus the effort on developing apps which are single purpose and not free to download – similar to the New York Times Now app which is $6 per month and gives users a summarized version of the top stories from NYT.

These apps should be directed towards your loyal customers, who are coming to you because of the types of content you provide and the brand recognition you have built up. Key to this strategy is remembering the different use cases that your customers have on mobile, and then the difference use case between mobile web (often a push scenario which is more transient) and apps (a pull scenario which is more consistent). Monitor your results, and in true agile style – inspect and adapt.

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Digital Strategy, Emerging Technology in Advertising

How To Increase Your Sales Using Digital Marketing At The End Of Financial Year

Start With A Stock-Take

Segment Your Customer Database

Go Multi-Platform

Batch It Up

Emerging Technology in Advertising

How To Find New Vendors Using AdWords and Facebook

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management

How To Match Offline Purchases To Online Marketing

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management

Why your digital marketing reports need to look beyond last click attribution

What are the types of marketing activities that you should be tracking?

What is an Attribution Model?

Linear Attribution & E-Commerce

What’s an easy way to get an idea of your customer conversion path?

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, SEO

Marketing Beyond The Major Portals in Real Estate

Speaking to all your customers

Targeting customers who know they want to sell

Targeting customers who don’t know they want to sell

Targeting customers who don’t know they want to buy

Making sure you join the dots

Championing your amazing content on social media

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Apps

Pokemon Go: A marketer’s dream

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, SEO

Why a digital presence is important for offline businesses too

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, Publishing

Ad-Viewability – A Quick Start Guide

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Optimisation, Product Management

How will ad blockers impact ad-funded digital businesses? #advertising #media #digital

Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Optimisation, Product Management

What gets better traction for publishers? Mobile Web or Apps?

Digital Strategy

Music & Media Industry Expertise

Digital Marketing

Product Launches

Mobile Optimisation