Digital Marketing Transformation

Last year had a lot of marketers scrambling to get their marketing strategies optimized and up-to-speed. 2020 was a year like no other and on the marketing front, many brands were largely unprepared for the massive shift to online channels and massive ecommerce growth.

Marketers were forced to quickly adapt in order to survive. Although many changes were implemented to better meet consumer expectations, now, a year later, many brands still have more work to do. In a recent survey by Bright Talk and Smart Insights, brands were asked if they had a clearly defined digital strategy in place. The survey found that nearly half (48%) of respondents had no defined strategy at all.

Additionally, only 37% stated they have an omnichannel marketing strategy.

Economic Impact of Coronavirus

At a time when marketers need to persevere and continue engaging with consumers, economic difficulties slashed budgets for 40% of brands surveyed. The cutbacks made digital initiatives hard to achieve as many brands went into survival mode.

However, of those who have been able to maintain or increase spend, the majority of respondents (56%) actually reported an increased investment in digital marketing activities.

What Strategies Should You be Focusing on Now?

Identify and Target Online Shopping Behavior

With the massive migration to online channels, marketers should be looking for ways to capture and identify online search behavior. Tactics such as SEO, paid search, web retargeting and online purchase intent identification are taking center stage.

• SEO/Paid Search
  Search trends are changing and now is the time to do an audit of your content and keywords. One way to uncover search behavior trends within is by utilizing tools such as Google Search and other keyword search tools. Begin by compiling a list of relevant search terms and analyze how your paid ads, website and organic content is performing. Also pay attention to how competitors are performing on keywords and make any adjustments accordingly.­­

• Web Retargeting
  Ecommerce was growing fast before COVID-19 hit. However, the pandemic pushed even more U.S. consumers online, contributing an additional $105 billion in U.S. online revenue in 2020 and accelerating ecommerce by two years according to estimates by Digital Commerce 360.
  
  As more consumers browse online and hopefully your website, you should consider implementing campaigns to retarget anonymous visitors.  Consider some of these statistics on why you should be engaging in website remarketing:
  
  • 25% of online viewers enjoy seeing retargeted ads. While the majority of them (60%) remain neutral about seeing retargeted ads, 25% enjoy them because they are reminded of products and services they were looking at previously. [Source: CMO]
    
  • Website visitors who are retargeted are more likely to convert by 43%. [Source: Criteo]
    
  • 3 out of 5 online viewers notice and consider ads showing products they viewed from another page. [Source: eMarketer]

The click-through rate (CTR) of a retargeted ad is 10x higher than the CTR of a typical display ad. [Source: Wishpond]

Learn more about Porch Group Media Signals WebID to identify and convert your high-value website traffic and skyrocket your sales. Leveraging Signals technology and Porch Group Media’s broad catalog of consumer data assets, brands can now identify 50+% of visitors on their website and market to them across email, direct mail and social.

• Online Shoppers
  In a recent survey by Bizreel (2021), the statistics prove that ecommerce is being embraced by an increasing number of consumers.  Check out some of their great findings below.
  • 57% of consumers prefer to shop online, 31% of consumers prefer visiting the physical shop, while 12% of consumers said both ways are the same for them.
  • 45% of consumers said they prefer to shop e-commerce websites with more testimonials.
  • Consumers spend an average of 5 hours a week shopping online.
  • 92% of consumers said they shop online at least once a year, 67% of consumers shop online at least once every month, 25% of consumers said they shop online at least once a week, and 4% of them said they shop online daily.
  • 87% of consumers have made an online purchase.

Consumer shopping habits will continue to evolve in favor of online channels. Understanding how to identify, target and message these consumers with the right message along their purchase journey is becoming crucial for businesses to compete.

Porch Group Media’s Signals Online is online behavior data collected in real time, leveraging a broad network and innovative techniques to discover behavioral keywords, phrases, and terms. Using this intelligence, we are able to create complex and effective formulas, which classify user intent. The result is an in-depth insight into browsing habits, which enables us to identify leads and execute a marketing strategy focused on relevant and highly precise outreach.

We provide visibility into behavioral data and searches occurring on over 90% of internet-connected devices every month.

Digital marketing will only continue to evolve and smart marketers must keep an eye on changes in trends and consumer behaviors in order to continually adapt. The last year also taught us the importance of adapting quickly in order to ensure your brand doesn’t lose any footing as well as to take advantage of new opportunities to the fullest.

Ready for more great tips and strategies? Download Porch Group Media’s Email Marketing Success Kit – full of blogs, articles, webinars and resources to help you learn the latest trends and best practices to boost your email marketing success.