Planning and optimising across the whole customer journey is the most effective way to win and retain customers.
Anyone who's worked for an Ecommerce business, or indeed just about any kind of business, will know that customer retention and re-activation is the key to driving consistent growth in profit.
Attracting entirely new customers at the top of the funnel can often become the focus of Ecommerce campaigns because you naturally want to get more and more people into that funnel to convert and thus make you money. But if you have not invested sufficiently in creating an engaging customer lifecycle which converts and re-engages your customers to tempt repeat purchases then attracting new customers will not be the most effective tactic. You should be focusing on improving the customer lifecycle itself.
I'm going to show you why with a nifty little tool I like to call maths.
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A look at marketing through the lens of economics
I wouldn't call Mark Ritson a hero of mine, that'd be far too lame and I'm sure he'd laugh at me if he found out. But I think he makes some rather important points and I tend to sit up and listen whenever he has something to say.
Recently he has been bemoaning the 'tactification of marketing', which I think is an important enough issue to warrant making up the word 'tactification'. Marketers are increasingly distracted by the latest 'shiny object', and go chasing after it. This leaves them with less time, inclination and ability to sit down and think long and hard about the things which really make marketing campaigns successful; proper research, segmentation, positioning and strategy. The result is to dumb down the discipline and open the door to a whole host of people who are great communicators to call themselves…
Use Hofacker's 5 states of information processing to understand how your web copy communicates with your intended audience
Professor Charles Hofacker originally created the 5 stages of information processing in his book ‘Internet Marketing’ originally published in 2000. It was intended to help marketers and advertisers consider how well their websites and adverts/promo panels communicated value to website visitors. The book explained how web browsers work (can you imagine reading an article on how Chrome or Firefox work today?) for an audience that was new to the Internet.
What are the 5 states of information processing?
Exposure
Ensuring the web visitor is exposed to the website for long enough to absorb the content or the ad. Within online advertising today, this is measured and media traded based on the concept now known as “Viewability”
Attention
Physical factors such as movement and intensity that attract attention when visitors are on a website
Comprehension and perception
How well visitors understand…
Use the 6Cs of online customer motivation to help you structure your website's conversion funnel
The 6Cs of motivation is a recognised tool used in higher education and looks at ways to improve classroom motivation and student participation. In 2004 Dave Chaffey suggested the 6Cs of customer motivation in a world where the online offer was developing. The aim was that a model of customer motivation would help define the Online Value Proposition.
How should this model be used?
The 6Cs provide clarity when building or refining a website. You can use the template below to assess the benefits a website and online services offers online audiences, as well as those of your competitors.
What are the 6Cs?
Content
‘Right content’ including more detailed product or service information or value-adding content ‘Right context’ of content for the site visit ‘Right media’ including…
How to structure your thinking when planning for the future
You can't predict the future. I don't care how smart you are, how prestigious the Univeristy you got your MBA from is, or what your horoscope said. The top economists never saw the 2008 financial crisis coming. The top political commentators didn't think Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination. Even the pollsters couldn't get the result of the 2015 UK general election right, and they were only having to predict what would happen the next day.
So given that you aren't going to be able to work out what will happen in future, you shouldn't base your business planning on a single scenario, which we can broadly define as 'business as usual'. Instead, you should plan for multiple scenarios, which will allow you be more responsive to future changes that will impact your business.
But how do you know what scenarios to plan…
A framework to help you get the best results from marketing tools
You don't need me to tell you that there are a lot of different options when it comes to marketing technology. Just one look at Scott Brinker's infamous martech graphic shows just how bamboozling the 3000+ strong field of marketing tools can be.
With new marketing tools and available to us almost daily, it can be difficult to know where to prioritise your marketing activities to get the most 'bang for your buck'.
As marketers we need to be agile by reacting to new developments to gain an upper hand on the competition, but at the same time, we need to avoid being 'technology magpies' following seductive, shiny new tools which may distract us from working on optimising the most effective channels.
Our CEO Dr Dave Chaffey,…
Advanced Keyword Research using Search Engine Marketing funnels
Since search is the main source of new sales and leads for many businesses who get it right, the competitive landscape has become even more aggressive. Search terms, both organic and paid, are becoming increasingly difficult to target. This is due in large part to the following factors:
Paid search traffic is getting more expensive as an increasing number of companies compete to bid for top 3 positioning.
Organic search algorithms have evolved and become more difficult to 'game'. Companies can no longer expect heaps of organic traffic just because their SEO firm has built-out a sophisticated backlink profile.
Because traffic acquisition has become such a competitive (and costly) activity, web marketers will need to place more emphasis on converting the traffic they already have. Additionally, marketers will need to start intercepting potential customers earlier in the buying process if they want to remain competitive.
These two objectives…
A tool for reviewing the options for online customer acquision and monitoring for social media and other sites
You will have noticed that there's a fair amount of choice online for reaching and interacting with your audience, in fact it's overwhelming! You can't be everywhere, so it's important to prioritise which types of sites and partnerships you invest time and money in to try to gain visibility through outreach, partnering and advertising.
2015 update - introducing the Marketing Bullseye
Since we introduced the Radar in 2010 we have evolved it into the infographic shown below. In this update, we introduce the Marketing Bullseye Framework - a great new tool to review customer acquisition from Traction which has a similar purpose - see the end of the post for a description.
To help you review and prioritise, we developed the "Digital Marketing Radar" which gives a prompt on the different types of…
Plus three ingredients that you can combine to create a powerful name and strap line
The name you select for a brand, product or service will clearly have a major impact on how prospects and customers perceive your service, but what are the options for choosing the best name? There are lots of ways to name a business, a service, or a product. The addition of a strap line can take the name a little further. From nonsensical words, like Google, to highly descriptive names, like Compare the Market – there are just so many ways to think about naming! Whilst it's true that naming is a bit of an art and today we are often constrained by domain name availability, there are certainly a few issues to consider to guide you to choose a name that can work much harder for you.
1. Nonsense names – e.g. Google
The benefit of a name like this is that once you’ve lodged…
Essential techniques for making your communications more customer-focused
It’s no secret that effective timing is an essential ingredient of successful marketing. Spotting seasonality and maintaining frequency are the easy things to manage. Getting people to want to spend time with you is more of a challenge.
This doesn’t just mean showing up at the right time, it means earning the right to person’s precious time
To pull people through the buying decision, you need to understand how much time they want to give to the process. Then, ensure that you have the right tools and techniques of an appropriate duration, available when they want them.
Grabbing someone’s attention is something that’s done in seconds. A person will either notice you, or they won’t. Then the moment has passed. If they then start to consider buying from you, they will gradually increase the time that they’re happy to devote to finding out about your products…
