Last year internet advertising spend in the UK grew to £6.3bn* and the latest UK Expenditure Report forecasts that this will grow by a further 14.0% in 2014 and rise even further in 2015. While positive news for the industry, I cannot help but wonder if budget is being spent effectively.
Advertisers can often focus on how they can increase the overall number of consumers reached by an advertising campaign rather than how to target the right type of consumer. And with online conversion rates remaining as low as 2-3%, compared to in store rates of 20%+, I would argue that online advertising strategies need to be revised if brands are to achieve the one to one engagement and return on investment (ROI) they will be hoping for from this additional budget.
So where should advertisers be focusing their attention? It’s widely recognised, even if poorly addressed, that consumers want to be understood. Online advertising should reflect this; it should be about ensuring you target the right customer with the right product, at the right time, based on what that individual’s motivations and needs might be. It’s not about generalising your audience and basing your campaigns on the online activity of your average customer
To be able to do this, advertisers must start looking beyond solely using demographic and transactional information to identify which consumers to target and start to also understand who is actually buying the products and – crucially - why.
By understanding a consumer’s personality drivers and the motivations behind their purchases, advertising teams can gain better insight into, the right channels and the right messages for the right audience. Presenting this relevant content in a timely fashion is the key to ultimately enabling brands to drive improved conversion.
The key is embedding a psychometric data layer within the existing digital marketing activity. This is based on the Big-Five personality traits, or OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism), framework for psychometric evaluation. This rich data set can be tightly integrated with a raft of tools already used by the majority of digital businesses, from Google Adwords and A/B and multivariate testing solutions, to analytics platforms, email service providers and display side platforms. These integrations make it a simple process to plan and deliver campaigns to specific customer audiences based on their emotive, motivational and behavioural data.
By adding this additional data layer to their existing transactional and behavioural data, advertisers will be able to provide customers – through all stages of their online experience - with timely and relevant adverts that have a higher chance of achieving a click through and improving conversion rates. It also allows them to prioritise and focus their advertising activity and spend on those activities that are going to deliver maximum value to the brand. Surely the crux for any advertising campaign?
*The Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report July 2014
By Harry Parkes, Product Director for WHY Analytics from VisualDNA.
PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.
comments powered by Disqus