The Evolution of Search

Search marketing continues to evolve, and digital marketers must keep pace. While Google has dominated the search landscape for years now, how and where customers search is changing. From visual search, to retail marketplaces like Amazon, to platforms with video content, customers have more channels than ever with which to engage with your brand. That can impact what Google has described as the “messy middle” of a customer journey, when there’s potential for a customer to get stuck in loops of exploration and evaluation or give up on their search altogether. A thoughtful marketing strategy that unites these channels can help you funnel a customer out of that messy middle into a sale for your business.

SEO and paid search are still critical digital marketing tools, but new options are emerging to help your brand reach your high-value customers. Consumers increasingly encounter exceedingly curated content, like that on TikTok; other platforms are working to replicate the kind of algorithms that make TikTok such a success. With advancements in technology, the metaverse is slowly becoming more accessible – which means a future where the digital and real worlds mesh together is closer than you might think. Brands will need to continuously innovate and invest to learn what content and channels resonate best with their customers. Shoppers, meanwhile, will continue to explore and adopt new platforms to find what they are searching for.

The Potential of Generative AI

ChatGPT has made headlines recently, and here at NetElixir we’re already thinking about how generative AI is disrupting search. ChatGPT’s algorithms are well suited for providing specific answers to questions, with higher quality answers coming directly from higher quality questions. Traditional search engines like Google still continue to harness a wealth of data to effectively connect with potential customers and offer a range of solutions and information, but numerous ads have made search engine results pages (SERP) less user-friendly and customers will appreciate search options that help them focus on relevant results.

Other types of disruptions are already being developed. Generative AI also has the potential to elevate content creation by providing thoughtful first drafts of copy, and NetElixir’s AI-powered digital marketing platform, LXRInsights, already uses predictive analysis to help e-commerce businesses track and understand the journeys and decisions of their high-value customers. As more brands become aware of the benefits of AI-infused digital marketing, businesses will invest the vast majority of their Google Ads budgets in AI-driven modules like Performance Max for hyper targeted and automated campaigns. We will see even more personalized brand experiences, including campaigns that make automatic, real-time adjustments in response to data gathered and analyzed through AI. 

Work with NetElixir To Create Your Future of Digital Marketing Strategy

NetElixir experts stay on top of digital marketing trends, and we have been leveraging AI to inform our growth optimization strategy for years. Our proprietary LXRInsights platform offers actionable insights to optimize your customer acquisition and engagement strategy that improves your ROI and integrates with Google Ads. The future of digital marketing is quickly becoming the present, and at NetElixir, we predict trends and act accordingly, integrating new advances into our strategies to ensure we offer your brand cutting-edge techniques for connecting with your high-value customers and converting their shopping into sales.

Interested in Learning More?

Check out NetElixir’s e-book 10 Retail and Digital Trends to Watch in 2023 and contact NetElixir today to discover how we can help your e-commerce business prepare for the future of digital marketing.

Watch Udayan’s full interview with Emily Dougherty at WWD Digital Beauty Forum here:

Additional Resources:

• NetElixir’s Insights and Trends for 2023
• Deep Dive into First-Party Data: How to Collect it and Use it Responsibly
• The Importance of Trend Research in Your Marketing Strategy

The post The Future of Digital Marketing appeared first on NetElixir.

Artificial Intelligence

A set of tools, including machine learning, algorithms, and data modeling, which can be used by marketers to analyze customer data and optimize content with the goal of improving key metrics such as campaign performance and customer conversion.  

AOV (average order value)

A measure of how much a shopper generally spends when they purchase from a site. 

B2B (business-to-business)

Commerce transactions which occur when one business sells a product to or performs a service for another business.   

BOPIS (Buy Online Pick-Up In-Store)

A purchasing method and retail strategy in which a customer makes their purchase via an e-commerce site or app and retrieves their purchase at a nearby store, reducing shipping costs and returns.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors to an e-commerce site who arrive and then leave the site without clicking through to other pages. 

Click-through rate

The ratio of the number of clicks on to the number of impressions of a particular ad.

Conversion Rate

The ratio of the number of visitors to an e-commerce site who made a purchase to the number of total visitors.

CPC (cost per click)

The amount paid for each consumer click on an ad in a PPC (pay-for-click) marketing campaign.

Cyber 5

The shopping period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. 

Cyber 6

The recent phenomenon of the Thanksgiving shopping period extending through Giving Tuesday.

FACES

NetElixir’s annual customer insights report that introduces you to your industry’s high-value customers. This report charts the customer journeys of high-value customers across key retail industries to understand how their online shopping behavior changes throughout the year.

First-party data (1P data)

Customer information collected directly by and owned by a business. 

HVC (high-value customer)

A customer who spends more than average customers, makes large purchases from the brand frequently, and is important to the business’s bottom-line. We find that a high-value customer is likely to spend three to five times more with a brand than average customers.

Latency

The amount of time between when a customer visits a site for the first time and when they make a purchase.  

LTV (lifetime value) and CLV (customer lifetime value)

A metric that indicates how much money a customer spends with a brand throughout their lifetime.

LXRInsights

NetElixir’s proprietary customer intelligence platform, which segments customers into high-value, mid-value, and low-value customers. The platform tracks a customer’s paths to purchase from first point of attribution to final purchase to help businesses understand the nuances of each customer segment.

LXRGuide

NetElixir’s paid search management solution for small and midsize businesses, which uses 25+ optimization algorithms built on the experience of over 7 million hours of successful, hands-on paid search campaign management to help marketers grow their businesses.

LXRMarketplace

NetElixir’s hub of free web-based applications to help small businesses and freelancers improve their online marketing management and campaign performances and learn more about the functions of their e-commerce sites.

Machine learning

The use of systems and algorithms that can automate improvement to performance metrics by analyzing data and adjusting accordingly. 

Omnichannel

A business strategy that involves seamless transition for customers between a variety of points of contact, including e-commerce sites, dedicated mobile apps, advertisements, and various social media platforms.

PPC (pay-per-click)

A type of advertising in which a business pays for each click made on an ad.

ROAS (return on ad spend)

The ratio of revenue earned as a result of advertising to the amount of money spent on advertising.

SEO (search engine optimization)

The improvement of the content of an e-commerce site and its associated marketing channels in order to increase the number and quality of site visitors. 

SERP (search engine results page)

A website viewed after entering a search term into Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines, on which certain sites are ranked via algorithms that determine how relevant the sites are to the search term.

Third-party cookies

A piece of data added to a customer’s browser by a domain other than the one they are visiting that can be retrieved later. Third-party cookies are the standard method of collecting, distributing, and using customer data which is facing major changes as blocking cookies become the norm.

YoY (year-over-year)

The comparison of data from a point in time in a particular year to data from that same point in time in the previous year. 

The post NetElixir’s Glossary of Digital Marketing Terms appeared first on NetElixir.

Record-Breaking Ad Spend

Historically, the Olympics is a reliable event to boost international brand awareness and skyrocket sales. Amid the uncertainty of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, many brands faced difficult choices in regards to how they could market themselves around the games. While the fate of the games rested in uncertainty at the beginning of the year, an event like the Olympics is irreplaceable, reports Digiday. The viewership numbers, even if currently in decline this year compared to prior years, is a once-in-a-four-year opportunity; no other event could rival the brand recognition efforts quite like the Olympics. 

Geography and consumer sentiment matters in terms of how ads are directed at viewers; when polls showed that Japanese viewers weren’t interested in the event amid pandemic concerns, Toyota rescinded their ads to their home market in Japan and has subsequently become the biggest spender in the U.S. so far. 

However, the spectator-less games this year hindered some of the brands that relied on in-person signage for part of their promotions. As brands got creative last year when fans could not attend sporting events in-person, the 2020 Olympics should be not different in terms of how brands engage and connect with their customers. Newer avenues like social media proved to be an effective route to connect with fans no matter their location.

Branding the Olympics

Now more than ever it’s important for brands to find the right tone with their ad campaigns. The International Olympic Committee’s (I.O.C) guidelines mandate that ads should be generic, according to Marketing Brew. However, generic ads have to still strike the right balance between sensitivity to the conditions surrounding the Olympics and generating an enthusiastic connection between the brands and the games. Brand trust can be a delicate thing, especially in the limelight of such an international event. Just as SuperBowl™ ads leave their impression in popular culture and consciousness, Olympic campaigns can make their mark — if they stick the landing.

But the Olympics themselves are a brand that only an exclusive few have the right to use. There are expansive trademarks over the Olympics’ intellectual property and only sponsors have the right to use official terms like “Olympics,” “Olympic Games” and “Olympiad(s),” as well as the Olympic rings symbol. All other non-sponsor brands, as well as athletes, have to be careful about their messaging and imagery when campaigning around the games. Brands have to be clear about their standing with the I.O.C., in that they differentiate between official and non-official sponsors. Non-official sponsors and other brands have restrictions on the language they can use beyond the official terms and logos, as they cannot use terms that even suggest the Olympics, depending on the context, including “victory,” “Games,” “medal,” etc., reports AdWeek.

Despite the restrictions, many modern athletes are turning to social media to dictate their own stories and personalities, without any of the sports marketing ties. 

A Social Media Sequence

As the social media landscape expands, fans are able to interact more with athletes and follow their individual journeys. Social media has the unique ability to bring people from all over the world together through mutual interest and intrigue and allow them space to be a part of the Olympics, without setting foot in the arena.

Social media marketing for the games first took off with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, spurred on by the fledging Twitter and burgeoning Facebook. However, the International Olympic Committee sites the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics as the ‘First Social Media Games’. The Committee created their own Facebook page about a month before the 2010 games started; this page attracted 1.5 million fans, and attracted a younger audience, with 60% of these fans being under the age of 24. YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr helped promote the games through their respective mediums, giving fans behind-the-scenes glimpses of their favorite athletes, live updates, and photos. Social media quickly became as prominent an aspect of the games as the athletics themselves. 

“Olympic athletes and professional and amateur athletes can use social media to put themselves on a stage, to represent who they are, to represent their values beyond just their skills. Because they are role models,” Scott Campbell, PhD, Communications and Media Department Chair and Constance F. and Arnold C. Pohs Professor of Telecommunications, says to Michigan Minds. “It also makes them more vulnerable. These are young people and the dynamics on social media are so very hard to keep up with.”

A Personal Performance

Through social media, we can see the humanity and struggles of the top athletes. Gymnast Simone Biles took to Instagram to say, “it wasn’t an easy day or my best but I got through it. I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times. […] The olympics is no joke!” Biles pulled herself out of the competition to focus on her mental health and ensure she was in the right headspace to perform to the best of her abilities. Biles told of her feeling what gymnasts call ‘the twisties’ through a dozen-plus Instagram stories; the immediacy to connect with her fans and the personalized aspect of the platform proved to be the best space for Biles to share her story. The subsequent outpouring of support for Biles from her fans helped to normalize prioritizing one’s mental health and humanizing one of the most viewed events in media.

Biles stayed to cheer on and help her teammates, writing to Instagram later, “I’m SO proud of these girls right here. You girls are incredibly brave & talented! I’ll forever be inspired by your determination to not give up and to fight through adversity!” 

Social media has been beneficial for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to promote newer sports, like skateboarding, and promote the personal branding of athletes distinct from partnerships and sponsorships. Personal branding worked wonders for weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, reports Bloomberg, as she got enough money to represent the Philippines — and win the country’s first gold medal — after posting an Instagram story in 2019 asking for financial support. 

While there’s undeniably more pressure to always be at their peak, athletes can turn to social media to connect with loved ones and fans and to better tell their own story. 

TikTok as an Olympic Sport

While social media interaction gives fans a sense of the athletes themselves, the rise in digital resources makes the games more accessible to people around the world. Ilona Maher of the U.S. women’s rugby team has used her personal TikTok channel to show what life is like inside the Olympic village, all while sporting Ralph Lauren and Nike sponsored Team USA apparel. Fans may not have been able to sit in the arena or reliably stream the games from NBC, but they can follow along through alternative mediums like TikTok. And brands are taking note to reach fans where they are.

By living in a global, omnichannel world, we have to take advantage of every platform we can to better reach fans and customers alike. Fashion brands specifically are greatly benefiting from this increased exposure, as athletes show off their latest sneakers, bucket hats, and loungewear. Who wouldn’t want to dress like an Olympian?

Relying more on TikTok, however, can give priority to the athletes themselves and their personalities, rather than the brands they are repping. People relate best to other people, to their journeys, their struggles, their humanity. Olympic advertising and campaigns may be a game-changer moving forward.

The post Going For Gold: Digital Marketing & the Olympics appeared first on NetElixir.

After properly investing in digital marketing and building a strong foundation, you can use the power of digital marketing to sustainably and profitably grow your business. NetElixir’s Sr. Business Development Manager, Anthony Turco, partnered with the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce in an installment of their Small Business Friday segment to provide actionable insights into starting and sustaining a profitable business. Anthony uses insights from his diverse background to help businesses find their footing. He aims to teach start-ups how to properly leverage the power of digital media investment for predictable and profitable growth. 

Digital marketing is a crucial element of your e-commerce strategy. Learn how you can set the right goals for your business and understand how your digital investment pays off.

Setting the Right Goals for Your Business

To set the right goals for your business, your first need to compile your internal and external resources. Have an honest look at your cost of goods sold and desired profit margin by keeping bidding structure and logistics costs in mind. Understand how you fit into the market and your current client base. Don’t be afraid to use any and all free tools at your disposal, such as:

• Google Trends analyzes the popularity of search queries in Google across different regions, languages, and timeframes and compares search volume of different queries. Use this as a general guideline of rising and falling trends.
• Google Analytics tracks and reports your website traffic, so you can have a sense of who visits your website, what pages get heavy traffic, which pages have a high bounce rate, and more. 
• Google Ads to display brief advertisements, services, products, etc. to web users to attract new and retarget returning customers.

Use the profit and loss equation template below to accurately set your campaign expectations:

What is in green in the chart to the left is what you can control and levers you can play around with to test different scenarios. Note that in the above chart, your ad budget is at the end of the equation; do not start with a predetermined ad spend until you finalize your target outcome. Start with an idea of your market share of how many customers, clicks, and conversions you can attract and add how many you want to attract and then calculate your ad spend to help you hit those numbers. Digital marketing helps you achieve your end results, but should not determine your overall goals.

Agencies will help you figure out a budget, as they have a deeper understanding of if customers are converting and clicking and can monitor progress more closely. Anthony stresses that decision-makers should be on as many marketing conversations as possible to ensure marketing goals and strategies align with the overall company goals. Your whole team should be on the same page, as different departments can bring different insights into cost variables, customer expectations, and more.

Understanding Your Business’s Assets

In allocating your assets, you have to understand the role of various digital marketing assets from SEO, social, advertisements, and more. Paid and organic content work together to drive your business’s growth:

What the symbols mean:

• Question mark: these business units require resources to grow market share
• Star: positive returns and market growth
• Dog: unexpected returns
• Cash cow: opportunities for reinvestment

Paid search is an investment that can accrue great rewards and offers faster returns. Once those ads stop running, your business stops pulling in revenue and clicks so you want to have a complementary long-term growth plan running alongside any paid marketing efforts. 

Organic search, on the other hand, grows slowly, but once it takes off, it can immensely help your business. SEO is structured, so over time, the systems already in place will help your website rank higher. SEO, however, requires time and a larger upfront investment but will pay dividends in the long run. Use SEO to build brand visibility and promote your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Structure your content to educate your audience by answering questions and tagging images.

Organic marketing builds loyalty and authority; it should be nurtured alongside the more immediate gains of paid marketing.

How Important is User Experience?

User experience is everything in the digital marketing world. Your website needs to be user-friendly in order for your hard work in both the paid and organic landscapes to matter. “We haven’t even said ‘alright, let’s start marketing’, right, because all this setup is so important to make sure you have everything squared away. UX is everything,” Anthony says. 

Perfecting your user experience early on will protect your time, money, and business. Consider the following stats from Google:

• 85% of searchers don’t return what the user is looking for. Solution: Research and invest in the highest-rate plugin for search navigation on your website.
• 35% of consumers will abandon their cart if there is no guest checkout. Solution: Have an option for guest checkout to reduce checkout friction.
• If your homepage has a carousel of images, almost 90% of clicks go solely to the first image, while images in positions 2 onwards, receive only about 5% of the CTR. Solution: Consolidate above-the-fold CTAs and images to showcase your most pertinent offer.

In analyzing your user experience, Anthony reminds us, “Think about every bad experience you’ve ever had on a site that you’re shopping on or you’re going to look for something or a service – remember that. Write it down and make sure your site’s not doing the same thing.”

If you aren’t sure what your customers like, survey them! Your website is not about how good you think it is, but how good your customers think it is. Plus, customers like to know they have input on a brand that matters to them.

How Do I Best Sustain My Digital Investment?

Tracking.

Tracking.

Tracking!

Tracking is critically important to sustaining your investment in digital marketing because you know the exact results of your efforts and what to tweak for the next campaign.

Google Analytics helps with understanding the basic demographics of your visitors, their conversion rates, how they found your site, percentage of mobile vs desktop traffic, etc. There are five things that you should be tracking for your business that are not standard in Google Analytics:

1. Revenue, orders, and conversions
2. Events and goals
3. Customer behavioral funnels
4. UTM codes for emails, phone tracking, etc.
5. Custom segments

You want to understand where your customers are dropping off so you can easily fix problem areas and maintain customers. Custom segments can include specific timeframes, such as a strict Cyber 5 analysis when the holidays roll around again or a YoY analysis of specific holidays relevant to your business.

Your end audience goal should be a build of your high-value customer. On average, high-value customers have a 3X higher growth potential. NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics tool, LXRInsights, offers a holistic approach to guide and power your digital marketing investments and business decisions by delivering game-changing insights about your high-value customers.

You want clear, concise, and consistent reporting to maximize your investment in digital marketing. Reports should easily and simply display information so you can make easier business decisions.

Further Resources to Empower Your Digital Marketing Investment

This is a continued recap of a presentation with the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce as part of their Small Business Friday segment. You can watch the full presentation yourself for more insights into specific aspects of your business, like LinkedIn marketing, analytics, web hosting, and more.

Request a demo for LXRInsights, NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics tool, to target, engage, and win high-value customers. Begin growing your e-commerce business with the latest real-time analytics into what makes your customers click.

Have any further questions regarding how to properly invest in digital marketing? Contact an expert at NetElixir!

• Google Ads Tips for Small Businesses
• Google’s Match Type Update Explained
• 2020 Holiday Consumer Trends

The post How Digital Marketing Can Grow Your Business appeared first on NetElixir.

Investing in digital marketing can be a cost effective way for businesses to reach a large number of people so that they can promote their products or services. By taking the time to properly understand how to invest in digital marketing, build out the blueprint of your online site, choose the right platform, and establish specific goals for your digital investment, you can better create a sustainable growth plan for your business.

NetElixir’s Sr. Business Development Manager, Anthony Turco, partnered with the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce in an installment of their Small Business Friday segment to provide actionable insights into starting and sustaining a profitable business. Anthony, who has been with NetElixir for over 6 years, has extensive financial and entrepreneurial experience. 

From his diverse background helping businesses find their footing, Anthony aims to teach start-ups how to properly invest in their digital marketing foundation, as well as key tips for any intermediate business owner to continually refresh their strategy. 

Building a Digital Foundation

“If there’s anything 2020 taught us, it’s the need to be online,” Anthony started. 

The formula seems simple enough – an online presence attracts valuable website customers which in turn helps grow the business. 

The foundation of your online business is the most crucial; we all know the moral of the house built on sand. Building your online site should have a similar care and mindset as building a brick-and-mortar store. Investing in your digital infrastructure takes three initial steps:

1. Visualizing how your business will be represented and positioned
2. Planning where and how you will reach your customers
3. Understanding your role in the overall market and what need you fulfill to your customers

To get you thinking about how your business will start and how it can grow, ask yourself how do you want to grow your market? What does your market look like? Is your market a small niche market, more of a market that can expand over time, or is it an entirely new market? 

Equally as crucial as the market is your customer analytics. Anthony stresses that, while a brick-and-mortar store can physically meet and greet their customers and directly see how they interact with products, for an online store it is easy to get lost in the numbers. A human is behind every click, conversion, and impression; how they click around your site is similar to how they mill about your store; how consumers find your site is similar to if they simply walked in, are returning, or were referred by a friend.

Your E-Commerce Foundation

The average start up of a business is anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000. It is no mean feat. Never skimp on the following when starting your online business:

• Professional design
• Customer experience tools and plugins
• Fulfillment service(s)
• Social presence
• Product and service photos

Your website is your 24-hour a day, never take a break, never sick, never on vacation salesman. Why not make that the best it can possibly be?” – Anthony Turco, Sr. Business Development Manager, NetElixir

Companies dedicate a lot of time, energy, and resources into training their personnel; the same care should be given to their website as it is constantly promoting your brand’s personal message to each and every customer who clicks through. 

Finally, you need to choose the right platform to launch your site, laid out in the chart below:

You can build an Etsy store into a fully customized website down the road, but that Etsy store is the foundation of how you grow your business. And every business needs to start somewhere. For your e-commerce stores options, read through NetElixir’s white paper outlining the pros and cons of Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify.

Beginning Your Digital Marketing Investment

In his experience, Anthony thinks that many entrepreneurs typically underestimate their ability to execute their digital marketing strategy for fear of failure. By clearly defining your goals first, you can lay out a strategy of how to realize those goals, whether it is through an agency or your in-house team. 

Anthony suggests following the 5/3/1/6 model – write out your goals for your first 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, and 6 months and then work from the top down; your 5 year goals will filter into your 3 year goals and so on. Quantify specific goals (more than simply “increase revenue”) and define target values with target dates to keep your team and agency on track. 

“When you can see what you’re aiming at, the likelihood of hitting it is significantly better,” Anthony says.

Further Resources

This blog provides an overview of Anthony’s presentation with the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce as part of their Small Business Friday segment. You can watch the full presentation yourself for more insights into specific aspects of your business, like LinkedIn marketing, analytics, web hosting, and more.

Request a demo for LXRInsights, NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics tool, to target, engage, and win high-value customers. Begin growing your e-commerce business with the latest real-time analytics into what makes your customers click.

Have any further questions regarding how to properly invest in digital marketing? Contact an expert at NetElixir and we’ll be happy to help!

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The post How to Properly Invest in Digital Marketing appeared first on NetElixir.