How do you measure success?

It is critical to measure the success of your digital campaigns to determine whether the original goals were met, and where improvements can be made. No matter what type of online tools are used, it is important to review the available web analytics and define which ones yielded the best results. By doing so, you will have a clear understanding of customer behaviour and the next campaign will be easier to plan and achieve better results using the most effective channels.

Marketing campaigns cost money and time. Analytics help business owners see what parts of their website or campaign are doing well and what parts need work. They can be used to measure a number of things: 

• Where is your traffic coming from?
• Which of your pages are popular?
•  Is your social media marketing working?
• Are your blogs popular?
• How is your traffic volume compared to sales?
• Which parts of the world is your website most popular in?

All this information is readily available with the right tools.  It’s a fantastic resource that allows businesses and brands to connect marketing outcomes and customer behaviour.

It’s also important to consider current economic factors, competitor analysis and consumer trends when completing a post campaign evaluation. The more you measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, the more they will improve as times goes on. Gone are the days of traditional market research; online analytics have created a level of depth that can bring brands closer to the needs of their customers.

In this excellent blog post: How to Measure Success by Early Bird Strategy, there are five questions you need to ask before you begin any project:

• What is my goal?
• What is the idea?
• What is the call to action?
• Can I define "success"?
• How will we measure success?

All great questions that give you a starting point for your next campaign!

The most important part of any marketing campaign is the analysis after it’s over. Was it successful? Did it produce an increase in sales? If you can’t answer these questions, then you can’t know whether your campaign was worth the money.  Avoid throwing good money after bad – learn from previous mistakes and improve your future marketing efforts!

Marketing: What's not to love?

Let me begin by stating marketing was not a career I originally thought of when I entered college way back in the dark ages. We courted for many years before realizing we were made for each other. Then the relationship really took off. Now, on the verge of celebrating a significant anniversary, I am reminiscing about why our union has stood the test of time.

There are so many reasons, a few of which I’ll share with you here:

Creativity

I have worked with many creative people in my career and every one of them have inspired me to be creative myself. Ultimately, marketing is all about finding creative ways to build relationships with the customer and stimulate certain behaviours. Successful marketing changes that behaviour to drive action, spur a purchase, encourage a sale.

Change

I love marketing because it is always changing. Over the past 50 years there have been drastic changes. It's an industry that's always adapting and morphing to the tastes of the consumer. Not even 10 years ago social media was something that only a few people knew about, now it's a global phenomenon.  A few decades before that, television was invented. Marketing embraced each of these innovations and used them as a medium for communication.

Technology

The magic marketers can make with technology is fascinating. Technology has changed so much over the years and has permeated everything a marketer does from design to content creation, metrics and distribution. I love it, and continue to enjoy the journey of learning more about how technology is making my career in marketing more effective, measurable, creative, diverse in distribution and dare I say frustrating too!

Storytelling

Who doesn't like to hear a good story? Marketing is the art of telling the story of a brand. Each time you encounter a brand name, that’s marketing. Down to even what colour the text is on the package or where the logo is placed, it’s all part of the story the company is trying to convey, and that is part of marketing. It’s fun to watch customers interact with media as they become advocates of our brand and pass our story along.

Innovation

This stems from our genes that make us want to be creative and to create. This sounds like it's all the same thing, but it's not. Being innovative is really a desire to do something completely different than the competition. As marketers, we like to poke, push and stretch the boundaries of what's considered normal, and make it behave differently.

Starting to understand why I love marketing? It's not like any other industry. Marketing is everywhere. It permeates every culture, industry, and media channel. You can't leave the house without experiencing a marketing message somewhere and the quality of that marketing often determines a business’s success or failure. I love this because it helps me to be a better student of my own industry.

Everything old is new again

Today I read one of BuzzFeed's listicles: "31 Lunch Boxes From The 1970s That Are Worth A Lot Of Money". As a seventies kid, it really took me back. Not that I ever owned a lunch box growing up, but the themes were near and dear to my heart. The list read like the after school TV Guide listings from my childhood. Oh, happy day!

This is what brought me to this month's blog topic: Nostalgia in Marketing. Nostalgia is unique to each of us, but there is one common thread - it has a sensory trigger that brings back happy memories. This idea plays a significant role in many aspects of marketing, from new product development to marketing communication campaigns. Evoking a memory of an experience or situation in the past helps to create an emotional link between the consumer and the brand.

Warm memories that conjure these emotions are exploitable assets in today's market and the increase in nostalgia-driven marketing may be associated with rapid technology change. In these days of high-speed living and the related stress, technology creates a distance between the process of production and consumption. Nostalgia addresses some deep societal need for authenticity and reaches back to a time when things were slower, simpler and more peaceful.

According to Eric Devaney of Hubspot, experiencing nostalgia can have a bunch of psychological benefits, including:

• Enhanced mood
• Increased self-esteem and feeling that your life has meaning/purpose
• Increased feeling of being socially connected
• Reduced stress
• Positive feeling about the future

Sign me up!

It doesn't hurt that nostalgia has proved effective at loosening consumers' grip on their wallets, according to Entrepreneur.com. We are more likely to spend money when feeling nostalgic, says a study in the Journal of Consumer Research. The role of new media cannot be discounted in their era of nostalgic marketing, as 'classic' brands that are well established in our consciousness are available in the digital environment.

For example, last September Coca-Cola announced the reintroduction of Surge, a citrus-flavoured beverage it discontinued 12 years ago. An online group called The Surge Movement spent years pushing the company to bring it back to market. The group raised enough money to buy a billboard near Coca-Cola's headquarters and used YouTube videos to get their point across. A fine example of a group successfully putting social media to work for a common cause. Many popular brands are taking a walk down memory lane with their customers - proving that living in the past isn't such a bad thing for profits.

Another way companies are using social media to promote nostalgia is #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT on Twitter and Instagram to share old images and posts, in order to connect with longtime customers. For brands that don't have that kind of reach, or quite as much history, #tbt can be used to share photos of your first store, early employees and customers, or share how your product has evolved.

Nostalgia allows people to look back fondly, and when used wisely, it can also create excitement for what's coming next. Social media has made nostalgia a simple marketing strategy that even young brands can use. Take advantage and you can build and keep loyal followers for life.

Hmmm, here's a BuzzFeed list that sounds interesting: "9 Totally Awesome And Kind Of Weird 1970s Celebrity Dolls". Gotta read that one!

You say you want a revolution?

Being of the generation that walked the earth when debit cards first arrived on the scene, I remember the marketing push from the banking industry was convenience. We no longer had to race to the bank between their business hours (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.), fill out deposit/withdrawal slips, stand in line with our bank books and wait for an open teller (because there were usually only one or two available). No tellers for us now - we could go to an ATM for cash. We could now bank on our own schedule!

Then came online banking - another miracle of technology. Now we didn't even need to leave the comfort of our own home to pay the bills. We have broken free of the shackles of "bricks and mortar" banking! Could it get any easier than this?

The next big thing

The latest advancement is the "digital wallet". Now parting with our hard-earned dollars is even easier. Sounds a little too easy to me - I already spend too much. It seems the social payment revolution experts are already helping me part with my money (Apple, Amazon, Google and PayPal) and are now big players in the digital wallet game.

If a tree falls in the forest...

The difference between using the digital wallet and a debit card to make purchases is the simplicity of it. I don't even have to punch in a PIN number or confirm the purchase with a cashier. Yet, when I look at my bank balance, it still went down. "Frictionless spending" is the new term, according to this article from HubSpot. Spending isn't "real" anymore. Have you ever been the victim of a pickpocket? Well, you have now! But in this case, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Out of sight, out of mind

One of my favourite financial gurus is Gail Vaz-Oxlade. Not only has Gail authored a slew of books to help people take control of their financial future; she also had two television shows on the subject. One way she helps people to understand how they are mismanaging their money is to make them budget specific amounts for each expense (transportation, food, entertainment, etc.) and to use cash for daily purchases. This makes them aware of how much they are spending each day and makes it tangible to them. This lack of tangibility is why the digital wallet worries me.

You can bank on it

Working in the banking industry, I know how stiff the competition is already. In Canada, banks and insurance companies have been waging a battle for years. Now, with the digital payment surge, there is a new addition to the competitive landscape. Many retail financial firms still haven't grasped the full potential of digital disruption, according to Oliwia Berdak, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Show me the money

If I look in my wallet and see I don't have the money to pay for that fabulous pair of shoes, there's an excellent chance I won't buy them (at least until my next pay arrives in my account). Can I say the same if digital wallet technology is my new reality? I can't say for sure - and I watch my spending closely. 

My "two cents"

Although I never thought I'd become nostalgic for the pre-debit card days of banking, maybe I am. I have to admit, when there was some effort involved to withdraw our money from the bank, we were less inclined to spend it. For those in the crowd who are impulse buyers, there's no telling what kind of trouble lies ahead.

Stay strong, and watch your bank balance prosper!

Naughty or nice this past holiday shopping season?

It was clear from the number of retailers who made at least some effort to have a mobile presence that the retail sector is starting to realize the importance of mobile for shopping during the holidays.  According to HubSpot, the number of sales on Christmas Day 2014 increased by 101% over the previous year and 36% of those were on mobile devices. Mobile is so crucial during this time of year because consumers are time-crunched and pulling out their phones to sneak in some gift-buying and party-planning when they are free for a few minutes or to support their in-store shopping.

Evidence of the increased focus on mobile included more opportunities to search out-of-stock items and place orders online via a mobile phone while in a bricks-and-mortar store. Many retailers also took the extra step during the recent holiday shopping period to give their mobile sites and apps a holiday feel with gift guides, seasonal deals and featured products. 

Target (US) gave traditional holiday-shopping a mobile-era makeover with a wish list application enabling parents to see, manage and share kids’ favorite items that also integrated with the retailer’s print catalog via augmented reality. “The experience was designed to be an easy and fun way for kids to create their holiday wish lists," said Jamie Bastian, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based Target. “Kids have the opportunity to select Target Wish List items from hundreds of must-haves and are also able to interact with the printed toy catalog through the augmented reality feature.” 

Retailers like Home Depot and PetSmart altered web content throughout the season to provide a more relevant and timely experience for customers. Waiting until checkout to provide customer shipping assurances is too late, especially on mobile web and apps where clicks and steps matter. Little things like prominently advertising key shipping dates go a long way in building confidence with shoppers.

Another important lesson from the recent holiday shopping season is the need for consistency across devices, with many retailers making the mistake of emphasizing desktop experiences over mobile. This meant that experiences available to shoppers when they were at home on their desktop or laptop were unavailable on the devices they carried with them while out shopping.

Also, the need to find the right balance between consumer demand for all-encompassing mobile experience and mobile sites/apps that are quick to load is important. As mobile traffic spiked during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, many U.S. retailers such as Best Buy, Neiman Marcus and J. Crew experienced outages and slowdowns. Having a mobile site that under performs during the holidays causes shoppers to simply jump to another brand’s site and not return.

If there is a common theme with marketers and retailers during the holiday season, it is the importance of real-time analytics in reaching shoppers in the moment. The need to recognize the value of big data and analytics in designing their campaigns is a major leg-up for marketers during the most competitive time of the year. Consumers are not only hunting for the best bargains, but are paying attention to the brands who know them best, personalize offers, and provide a relevant and engaging experience.

Analytics can also be used to eliminate any potential pain points throughout the consumer shopping experience. Identifying and exploring the “why” behind mobile app failures, website usability issues and other obstacles that led to failed transactions, shopping cart abandonment or negative feedback on social media. Taking some time to understand the “why” as well as the “how” can eliminate potential issues during the make or break holiday rush.

So folks, let’s learn from our mistakes before ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ is upon us again.