Web Marketing Strategy Update

Remarketing is a powerful way to attract new users and expand your customer base using Google Analytics together with AdWords. It offers a way to more effectively target potential customers so they are more likely to make a purchase.

Combining these tools makes it easier to show different ads to your customers based on their browsing and purchasing history, which makes your online advertising far more effective.

How Remarketing Works

Remarketing is the displaying of different ads on your website to users who have visited your site previously. These ads can be used to influence return visitors to buy a product and increase your sales. For example, say a user to your website brought a card for a family member for Easter. You can tag the user using cookies so that the next time the user visits your site he or she will see an ad for Father’s Day cards. Other ads could offer discounts to users who place items in baskets but then fail to complete the purchase. Studies have shown that users who have been retargeted are significantly more likely to make an actual purchase.

Previously, remarketing could be done solely through Google AdWords, although the process was time-consuming. It involved placing code on various pages of your website. Google Analytics, however, now offers the opportunity to manage remarketing lists by tagging visitors with a cookie when they look at pages of your website. If you see that a user spent time looking at a certain product, you can then target ads for related products. You can also make use of the information of the location, technology, and time spent on a page for each visitor in Google Analytics.

How to Implement Remarketing in Google Analytics

Before you develop advertising campaigns on your website, it’s best that you begin building your remarketing lists first. You can do this by logging into Google Analytics and updating your tracking code and turning the Display Advertiser Support button on. With a little manipulation of the code they supply, you can begin pasting it into the HTML of your site. You will also want to update your privacy policy so that users of your website will be aware of how you are using cookies to track information and give them the option of participating or not. Plus, you will need to make sure that your account in Google Analytics is linked to your AdWords account.

The first step to a remarketing list is to determine how many advertising campaigns you want to establish and their purpose so you know how many lists you will need. To set up a remarketing list in Google Analytics, go to the Admin controls and choose Remarketing Lists. You can then set up a new remarketing list, create a name for it, determine which type of remarketing strategy you want to use, choose which AdWords account the list can be accessible in, choose a duration for how long the information for visitors will be kept, and even set up your own custom remarketing types. Once they have been created, your remarketing lists can then start acquiring user data.

Using AdWords to Build Campaigns

Once you have set up your remarketing lists, you can then build your advertising campaigns in Google AdWords. Your remarketing campaigns can be set up the same way as standard campaigns in AdWords except that instead of using specific topics or interests as the target audience, you will use the lists that you have set up. AdWords will help you organize your lists and you can create new ads based on what you want return users to see. Campaign ideas can be anything from cross selling products, discounts or special offers to lure customers back to your site, special deals so that customers will complete transactions or ads for busy times of the year.

To be more effective with your online advertising try remarketing Google Analytics and AdWords. The retargeting of ads for your site based on users who have already visited it. By tagging users with cookies, you can more effectively influence visitors to make purchases of your products. Remarketing can make your advertising campaigns more productive in terms of influencing customers to buy your products and help expand your business.

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Whether your goal is a better understanding of the customer experience to shape your product development process, or understanding forthcoming trends so you can beat the competition in cracking new markets, market research is the most direct route to getting that information.

The challenge is that not all methods of market research are the right choice when you’re trying to decode individual pieces of customer information. Depending on the specific insights you need, various methods of market research have distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Surveys

Customer market research has become synonymous with online surveys. New platforms spring up every day that allow you to easily draft a survey, email it to all your customers, and analyze the data. Surveys are the right tool for collecting a large range of data or statistics, such as basic behaviors, demographics, and how people behave. They have the tremendous advantage of being easy to develop, cost effective, and allowing you to easily ask anything you want to know.

But surveys also have their limitations. In order to be effective, the questions must be crafted clearly and without an opportunity for confusion. The sample size must be large enough to be representative. You’re relying on the honesty of the respondents, which can be difficult as self-reporting has some limitations. This is especially true when you’re dealing with potentially difficult or sensitive topics. Another factor to consider about surveys is that they will tell you a great deal about what a customer does – but your ability to dig down and uncover the “why” is far more limited.

Interviews

During an interview, a researcher sits down one on one or in a focus group session with customers and facilitates a discussion. Common uses for interviews can be uncovering the deeper motivations customer behavior or understanding more complex data points, such as the associations that customers have with a specific product or brand. Interviews, because they occur in real time and in a face-to-face environment, allow researchers to probe more deeply on unclear answers, promising threads of inquiry, and to note non-verbal cues during the interview process.

Interviews, however, also have their limitations. They are expensive and hard to scale. You can only speak to so many people at a time, and cover a limited number of people during a process and come in under budget. While you can go more in-depth, it’s hard to generalize the data to a broader population because statistically speaking the results might be anomalous. As an add on technique to add texture and depth to survey results, interviews can be very valuable.

Ethnography

Ethnography, or participant observation, is a tool originally from anthropology that has been ported over to market research. Yet instead of observing exotic tribes hunting and gathering, market research ethnographers observe customers using products. Whether its understanding how teenagers really use their iPod, watching workers in the office using accounting software, and observing the workflow of an entire warehouse over the course of the day, ethnography can reveal the intimate and objective details of the customer experience. These insights can be invaluable for user interface design, design modifications, and developing effective training materials.

The issue with ethnography is one of time and scale. Trained ethnographers are highly skilled, highly educated people with big salaries. Ethnography takes a long time to get conclusive data, and getting enough data to really inform a product development process or product redesign can be an expensive, long process. Ethnography can also feel intrusive to the research subjects being followed around, so there can be a selection bias in the customers willing to participate.

Social Listening

One of the latest trends to enter the market research discussion is the art of social listening; using tools and methodologies to “listen in” and track social media conversions. This allows brands to draw important conclusions on brand awareness and brand sentiment. It can provide critical insights into how word of mouth marketing functions around their brand and products. It can also offer an opportunity to publicly address problems and concerns in real time and head off customer service issues and bad PR before it occurs.

Social listening’s main limitation is one of the source materials you have to work with. It’s essentially digital ethnography; but rather than observing action, you’re observing conversation. The insights you gather can be powerful, but you’re limited to what people are saying rather than being able to prompt or ask direct questions

Each method of market research can peel back a layer of your customers’ activities, preferences, and buying potential to help you better understand their needs. But before you embark on a market research process, it’s important to have a clearly defined goal. With specific advantages and limitation, different market research methodologies can be the right choice depending on what you’re hoping to achieve.

Denise Wilson is a recognized marketing leader, and often consults businesses on brand renovation. She’s constantly analyzing and critiquing the marketing strategies she reads about online and in the news.

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Consumers these days aren’t like they used to be. Today, they are well informed, confident, understand the significance of their market actions and choices, and are enabled to making better purchasing decisions.

With that said, marketers need to be more aware and careful when analyzing data and their target market. Data doesn’t lie like people do. Often, consumers will not lie out of spite. They may not want to appear harsh or critical, or they may not clearly articulate their sentiments about a certain product or experience.

One of the most important aspects of any customer loyalty platform is the ability to differentiate between the informed consumer and the browser. In either an online or brick and mortar retail environment, the informed consumer is far different to the browser. The browser will typically make several, small impulse purchases whereas the informed consumer will want to make a specific purchase. It is important to note that the two groups are not exclusive. For example, some people might act as browsers only when buying holiday gifts whereas others might browse exclusively. By effectively utilizing customer data and omnichannel marketing strategies, you can often increase brand loyalty from both groups.

Which Group Should You Cater To?

The good news is that there is no definitive either or as to what group you should focus on overall. However, data gathered loyalty program analytics can help you decide where your marketing efforts will be best spent. An aggressive omnichannel marketing approach caters more to the informed consumer than to the browser.

Logically, few people will spend the same amount of time doing independent research before buying an item that costs $4 compared to an item that costs $400. One easy illustrative example would be a large store that sells furniture as well as home accessories. Instead of only looking at the average ticket price, examine the prices of items sold. If the majority of customers purchase many smaller items instead of one large item, dig deeper. Does the store appeal to the browsing crowd? Or, do many customers make multiple purchases within a year of varying value? Loyalty platforms can help collect the right data to determine which approach is best.

Instead of only focusing on demographic data, focus on numerical data as well. Using the example of a store that sells furniture and home décor, it is logical to surmise that people purchase small items more frequently than new living room sets. Applying statistical data is both a science and an art. First, you must collect a body of evidence to be analyzed in a meaningful way. Next, you need to question why and what if. Why does this furniture store make 85% of its revenue on low-priced gift items? What could happen if the store only sold gift items?

Listen To Your Numbers As Well As Your Audience

Your numbers may tell you that gift items are a goldmine, and a less aggressive omnichannel approach might be better than an extensive educational campaign. What does your audience say? In the end, loyalty program analytics helps you gather data from personal opinions, demographic data, and straight from quarterly financial reports. The best approach to pleasing your audience is to sort through all evidence and give customers what they need, even if they didn’t know exactly what it is. By meeting customers’ needs, you will be able to create meaningful brand loyalty. In the end, brand loyalty and positive public perception is the ultimate foundation of any successful business.

Thomas Gibbs writes for the Themarketingrobot.com

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Countless blog posts have been written about the reasons why it’s so important to communicate with potential and existing customers. While every business knows that customer communication is important, what happens when feedback is negative? Or what if a business suddenly receives an avalanche of feedback?

Dealing with these types of situations can be more challenging than most people expect, so here are some tips to help you make the most of what your customers tell you:

Consider Who the Feedback is Coming From

If someone takes the time to send feedback about your business, it means they’re most likely in one of two groups. The first group is made up of customers who feel that what you offer is so useful or important to them that they feel a connection to your business and want it to succeed. The other group is made up of those who have had some type of bad experience and are using their feedback as a way to vent.
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