As we continue to kick off the new year, we find ourselves in some of the most challenging times in recent memory.

Aside from the challenges from the recent COVID surge, inventory levels continue to be very tight. “The automotive team at IHS Markit calculated that semiconductor supply won’t catch up with industry demand until late 2022… [or even] into 2023.” – IHS Markit, WSJ.

At the same time, consumer automotive loyalty is at the lowest levels ever recorded. In a Google Consumer Survey in June 2021, 339 auto intenders were asked, “When you are ready to buy, what would you do in case your preferred choice of model is not in stock?” 46% of shoppers said they would wait for it to be back in stock (meaning you should retain their consideration!). 53% of shoppers said they would buy another model from the same brand or competitor (!). Looking at the same data in Q4, almost 3/4th said they would buy a different model/brand. Even more interesting is that consumers are jumping between brands that we have never seen before. For example, someone in-market for a BMX X5, upon lack of availability, would now jump to a next-door Chevrolet dealership and buy a Chevrolet SUV – something we rarely saw before.

Looking at another data set, we see more and more consumers willing to wait out the industry shortage and pricing spikes (thinking that it will end very soon). For those who continue to be in-market (which is a shrinking majority), 50% reported their reason for replacing an old or failing vehicle. Another 54% reported looking for new features or technology. And finally, 26% indicated looking for better performance or efficiency (prompted by rising gas prices!) or newer safety technology. Data provided by a Google/Ipsos US Dealer Customer Study of 325 in-market shoppers.

And the last major consumer trend we’re watching is the jump between segments and categories. From a recent Google/Greenberg survey of nearly 10,000 respondents – more than half of those in-market for a new car have considered a used car. Similarly, half of the luxury brand shoppers have considered a non-luxury brand. And lastly, half of the new car buyers had considered a segment other than the one they purchased.

Another confirmation of this consumer jumping trend is Google Search Data which shows a 79% YoY increase in “how to find the right car for me,” along with a 46% YoY jump in “what type of car should I get quiz?”

How do we capitalize on these trends? For starters, you want to make sure that you are targeting audiences – and not just search terms. More importantly, you have to prioritize your audiences – remarketing those who have visited your site before. As consumers are waiting more and considering more brands/models, it’s more important than ever to continue to be top-of-mind to your potential customers. That also means being present in search results, optimizing your Google My Business, and being as visible as possible while minimizing your spending (especially if your current inventory is low).

I’ll leave you with one more golden nugget of data. A recent Google study conducted from May to June 2021 asked: along with inventory constraints and pricing challenges – what is the third biggest consumer pain point right now? Too much waiting and too many processes! 31% of new car buyers said, “The process takes too long,” “they spent too much time waiting,” or “the paperwork takes too long.” With your marketing efforts, it will go a long way if you optimize your in-person experience, keeping in mind that consumers are already very frustrated and agitated by inventory and pricing and try to lessen their waiting and process as much as possible.

Original Source: https://read.nxtbook.com/digital_dealer/dealer_magazine/jan_feb_2022/navigating_the_road_ahead_202.html

Before we talk about how you can drive digital success in 2021, 2022, and beyond – let’s take a step back to look at why digital is important. Pulling up one of my favorite websites, internetlivestats.com – there are over five BILLION internet users in the world. On Google, there are six BILLION+ searches performed every day. That’s only Google,
and Google isn’t the dominant search engine in many countries – Russian users, for example, prefer Yandex.

Even more interesting – out of the billion searches made on Google every day, 15% have never been seen before and are completely new. That means the consumer journey is now more unique and unpredictable than ever before, with more searches happening during discovery, research, and consideration. 75% of U.S. consumers have tried different stores, websites, or brands during the pandemic. And three in four surveyed CMOs said post-pandemic changes in consumer behavior will impact marketing strategies.

At the same time, search engines continue to dominate everything we do. In the automated space, consumers used search engines 79% of the time to decide on what car they will buy; followed by online video (57%), dealer websites (57%), OEM websites (46%), and vehicle review/comparison sites (41%). On the used-car side, those in-market
used search engines 92% of the time, followed by endemics at less than 50%.

Search engines continue to be an integral part of our lives and thus should be an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. A recent study by Google showed that $1,000 invested in Google Search Ads produced results for up to nine months from the initial sale. Over that period, that $1,000 was shown to impact the decision of 6.5 car
purchases. In other words, $1,000 invested today can develop your sales pipeline for months to come and will directly influence up to 6.5 car purchasing decisions.

So, how do you ensure you are getting the best bang for your buck in your search engine advertising? The must-haves are:

• Implementing auction time bidding, utilizing Google’s AI algorithm
• Switching to value-based bidding – optimizing on the value each conversion brings
• Enhancing your profile – making sure you’re utilizing all of Google’s extensions
• Implementing audience targeting – target your existing customers whose leasesare ending soon, or perhaps those who haven’t been in for service in a while. Youcan also target individuals based on what they searched on Google (and targetthem outside of Google!)

And, of course, there is a world outside of Google Ads. Microsoft Ads continues to be more relevant, expanding its reach, partnering with Niche search engines like DuckDuckGo, and integrating LinkedIn audiences into their platform.

And last but not least on everyone’s radar should be SEO. While the ranking signals that determine your rankings continue to change – the basics continue to hold firm:

1. You need to have a GMB profile (and make sure it’s optimized).
2. You need to make sure your site is fast, has good usability, and has no technical
   errors.
3. You need to create unique content on an ongoing basis
4. You must have an outbound link-building effort to get relevant, authoritative
   websites to link to you.

Original Source: https://read.nxtbook.com/digital_dealer/dealer_magazine/nov_dec_2021/driving_digital_success.html

Before we talk about how you can drive digital success in 2021, 2022 and beyond – let’s take a step back and talk about why is digital important. Pulling up one of my favorite websites, internetlivestats.com – there are over 5 BILLION internet users in the world. On Google, there are over 6 BILLION searches performed EVERY DAY. That’s only Google; and Google isn’t the dominant search engine in many countries – Russian users for example prefer Yandex.

What’s more interesting is that out of the billion searches made on Google every day, 15% have never been seen before and are completely new search terms. What that means is the consumer journey is now more unique and unpredictable than ever before, with more searches happening during discovery, research and consideration.

In fact, 75% of US consumers have tried different stores, websites or brands during the pandemic. And 3 in 4 surveyed CMO’s said post-pandemic changes in consumer behavior will impact marketing strategies.

At the same time, search engines continue to dominate everything we do. In the automotive space, consumers used search engines 79% of the time to decide on what car they will buy; followed by online video (57%), dealer websites (57%), OEM websites (46%) and vehicle review / comparison sites (41%). On the used-car side, those in-market used search engines 92% of the time, followed by all endemics at less than 50%.

Search engines continue to be an integral part of our lives and thus should be an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. In-fact, a recent study by Google showed that $1,000 invested in Google Search Ads, produced results for up to 9 months from the initial sale. Over that period, that $1,000 was shown to impact the decision of 6.5 car purchases. In other words, $1,000 invested today can develop your sales pipeline for months to come and will directly influence up to 6.5 car purchasing decisions.

So, how do you ensure you are getting the best bang for your buck in your search engine advertising? The must-haves are:

• Implementing auction time bidding, utilizing Google’s AI algorithm
• Switching to value-based bidding – optimizing on the value each conversion brings you
• Enhancing your profile – making sure you’re utilizing all of Google’s extensions
• Implementing audience targeting – target your existing customers whose leases are ending soon, or perhaps those who haven’t been in for service in a while. You can also target individuals based on what they searched on Google (and target them outside of Google!)

And of course – there is a world outside of Google Ads. Microsoft Ads continues to be more relevant, and expanding their reach by partnering with niche search engines like DuckDuckGo and integrating LinkedIn audiences into their platform.

And last but not least on everyone’s radar should be SEO. While the ranking signals that determine your rankings continue to change – the basics continue to hold firm:

1. You need to have a GMB profile (and make sure it’s optimized).
2. You need to make sure your site is fast, has good usability and has no technical errors.
3. You need to create unique content on an on-going basis
4. You need to have an outbound link building effort to get relevant, authoritative websites to link to you.

Original Source: https://ncmassociates.com/about-us/up-to-speed-blog/driving-digital-success

I recently signed up for a seven-day free trial to an OTT service with, admittedly, very low intention of becoming a paying subscriber. I had the cancellation deadline on my calendar.

I was surprised to receive an email from the service two days before I had to cancel, notifying me that the trial was soon to expire, and offering me a link to actually change my subscription status and to avoid paying them a dime. When I was done watching the sports event for which I’d taken on the trial, I simply went back to the email and clicked on the link.

This was no typical sales hook. By making it easier for me to do what I’d intended, the business never became an adversary. They’d gained some first-party data from me as a customer. And in the evolving TV landscape, where cord-cutting streamers are constantly shuffling their app subscriptions, they remained a possibility for my future consideration.

And, yes, the service looked top-of-the-line in 4K high-def. But it was a simple old-school email that delivered the customer experience.

Chris Wood,

Editor

Getting value from your data requires testing

Data isn’t free. It has to be gathered, stored and analyzed. That means storage, apps and IT. For the digital marketer, data produces no revenue until it is activated, and even then, the payoff may not be immediate. Yet data is more valuable than gold. It can find customers, tease out their preferences, and convert those wants into sales. Data enables action. Marketing is impossible without it.

That’s what we heard from a number of agency representatives and practitioners, although they each had slightly different spins on strategy. For example, James Fedolfi, VP for Product Development at OMI, the B2B business intelligence platform, said: ““If something is not working, interpret and re-engage…Many [campaigns] start with the wrong question.” Alex Melen, co-CEO at SmartSites, a web design and digital marketing agency, had a slightly different approach: “I think ‘asking the right question’ is pretty much a shot in the dark,” he said. “The approach is to try, experiment and test everything. With the correct metrics in place, the correct data analysis, you will then zero-in on what will be most successful.”

But all were agreed on one thing: Test constantly. Start with defined success metrics, ensure you’re collecting the right data to monitor those metrics and analyze it on an ongoing basis. “There is a lot of building out of data management internally,” Fedolfi noted. “The technical resource requirements [have to be] large scale to be competitive. It’s putting a lot of stress on IT departments.” But those efforts are means to an end, as it allows a digital marketer to quickly move into a market space and quickly understand it, Fedolfi said. “That is the foundation of data.” 

Read more here.

What DAMs can do for your stack  

Digital asset management platforms, DAMs for short, are marketing software that store, organize and make useful an organization’s entire library of digital assets. A DAM is the “single source of truth” where marketers can find every relevant version of the media assets that have been created for the brand — images, PDFs, photographs, audio, video and even virtual reality or other cutting-edge formats. 

The further benefit of a DAM is that these assets are appended with metadata that can provide information on anything the marketer might want to know before using the asset, such as whether the company owns the perpetual rights to use a photograph (and in what markets), whether the legal team has approved a video, and that an infographic or whitepaper has been checked to ensure it complies with the brand’s design standards.

Today, enterprises are using DAMs in a variety of ways. Marketing agencies might leverage DAM technology to help their customers maintain consistency across in-house content and creative developed by partners. B2B businesses might use DAMs differently, drawing on the benefits of a centralized hub for sales collateral and event marketing materials. 

Read more here.

The 2021 CDP marketplace is diverse

Real Story Group says that the CDP marketplace in 2021 is far from homogeneous. “While most vendors will claim to do everything, the fact is they can’t,” writes RSG  VP, Research & Advisory, and MarTech contributor Apoorv Durga.

The other two categories are process-oriented and engagement-oriented solutions. The former (in which RSG includes ActionIQ and mParticle, for instance) are primarily focused on data management and cleansing, identity resolution and the creation of profiles. The latter emphasize activation of profiles — engagement, orchestration, personalization and so on.

Why we care. The CDP marketplace is not static. On the one hand, we’ve seen a steady picking off of independent CDPs by marketing suites which don’t have that capability natively. On the other hand, we’ve indeed seen enterprises using CDPs for their own specific needs rather than according to what the CDP offers. We heard from Oracle, for example, that many customers use the Oracle Unity CDP by loading in data needed for a specific purpose — they don’t attempt to load all their data and create a single source of truth.

Interesting times. Let’s see what the CDP space looks like a year from now.

Original Source: https://martech.org/old-school-email-can-still-deliver-wednesdays-daily-brief/

Data has a cost. It has to be gathered, stored and analyzed. That means storage, apps and IT. For the digital marketer, data produces no revenue until it is activated, and even then, the payoff may not be immediate. 

Yet data is more valuable than gold. It can find customers, tease out their preferences, and convert those wants into sales. Data enables action. Marketing is impossible without it. 

The value proposition

“It’s partly the invisible hand out there,” said James Fedolfi, VP for Product Development at OMI, the B2B business intelligence platform. Data is a lens into the market, he said.“ Theoretically you are targeting prospects perfectly.” But it’s never perfect, he added. 

“Data comes in abundance in the digital world, which often leaves it overlooked,” said Alex Melen, co-CEO at SmartSites, a web design and digital marketing agency. “[W]ithout proper analysis and interpretation, data in itself isn’t worth much.”

For email platform SparkPost, email is “true to a person’s intent,” observed April Mullen, Director of Brand and Content Marketing. The marketer knows if the customer is engaging with the content, when they open the message or subscribe for updates. “Marketers take for granted the value of first-person data,” she said. 

This is partially due to the short life-spans of chief marketing officers, who have “18 to 36 months to prove value, or they are out,” Mullen said. So they look for easy KPIs. “They are addicted to the acquisition side of the ecosystem. You can spend money and acquire new customers.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the value of data into bright relief, as businesses had to go online overnight as a matter of dire necessity. “If you didn’t go online, you went out of business,” noted Niki Hall, CMO at Contentsquare, the digital experience analytics platform. Vendors and customers were no longer face-to-face. Data replaced the customers’ verbal and non-verbal cues. Data shows its value by enabling the marketer to understand why the customer is there at the web site and how they engage with it, what they want to achieve and where they get frustrated, Hall explained. “Without data, you are at a disadvantage.”

Right question? Right answer?

While data helps target the campaign, it cannot ask the right question, much less find the right answer, by itself. Marketers need to use data to bring a campaign into focus. “For me, the value proposition, first, is being in line with the goal,” Fedolfi said. 

OMI picks up 14 billion “signals” a week, which have to be separated from the noise through analysis. “Data helps in the pre-marketing prep,” Fedolfi said. User intent is revealed when users are searching for goods and services, he noted. Knowing this, one can push “information” to grow the mindshare of a potential customer. A marketer has to get there first to be effective.

So rather than starting the campaign by asking the right question, be prepared instead to learn from mistakes, but quickly. “You need to iterate,” Fedolfi said. “If something is not working, interpret and re-engage…Many [campaigns[ start with the wrong question.”

Melen altered the emphasis slightly: “I think ‘asking the right question’ is pretty much a shot in the dark,” he said. “The approach is to try, experiment and test everything. With the correct metrics in place, the correct data analysis, you will then zero-in on what will be most successful.” And even when analysis is spot-on, keep testing, Melen added.

“The good part is that you can see what works and what doesn’t,” Mullen added. A digital campaign can pivot quickly if the data shows a downward trend. Yet even if the trend line rises, “audiences are evolving,” Mullen noted. What worked today is not going to work forever. E-mail’s ability to engage is pretty close to one-to one, “so you can get a good read — and pivot.”

Numbers, letters and metrics

“I believe that a successful campaign starts first with the definition of your KPI and the metrics you’ll be tracking. Then, you set up the correct data collection in place, and specific intervals at which you will evaluate your ROI and make adjustments.” Melen said, “In the end, a campaign is successful if it hits it’s originally-set ROI metrics.”

“I don’t think the poor use of data is a prime suspect [for failure],” Hill said. “I expect to see some failure.” Data is used to lay out assertions, then prove or disprove them, in the marketing effort. “Without failure, I wonder if [the marketing team] is pushing themselves hard enough.”

Reviewing performance early and often is key, added Sparkpost’s Mullen. “Understand how the audience responds to the campaign.” That means taking stock of “signals” — opened e-mails, clicks, impressions. Gauge the direction of the signal. Each one is a “micro-conversion,” and these form a chain that can lead to a sale, Mullen pointed out. If there is a drop-off from one micro-conversion to the next, then re-examine that “break point” to see if the offer or the message is the issue. Modify from there.

Actions Have Consequences

Marketers have to bring their strategies to bear. There is more than one way to do that. 

“There is a lot of building out of data management internally,” Fedolfi noted. “The technical resource requirements [have to be] large scale to be competitive. It’s putting a lot of stress on IT departments.”

But those efforts are means to an end, as it allows a digital marketer to quickly move into a market space and quickly understand it, Fedolfi said. “That is the foundation of data.”

Mullen offered a different approach for marketers: have a data strategy. This is a tough one to pull off, as marketers are usually very busy executing the marketing strategy. But they should make that time, Mullen said. “All parties should come together to form the goals that will be helpful to develop the strategy that feeds into that goal.” 

For Hill, marketers must ensure they have the right kind of data. They should not be looking for “who”,  but “why”. Contentsquare did a study that found that 73 percent of all brands could not provide a consistent customer experience across all channels, while another 71 percent said they could not act on information in real time. Marketers should be “using data to understand the customer. This is the new digital competitive landscape.”

Finally, Melen offered a checklist:

1. Proper success metrics must be defined;
2. Data collection must be set up to be able to track the success metrics;
3. Attribution models should be well defined and configured;
4. The data should be analyzed on an on-going basis and decisions made at statistically-significant intervals;
5. Reporting needs to be set up to help the client understand and fully digest the data; and
6. Always continue to test and experiment: All decisions should be data-based (not based on gut-feel).

Original Source: https://martech.org/data-the-value-proposition-for-marketers/