A recent study shows that CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) rank business growth as the top priority in marketing goals. Following are insights into achieving this objective, as well as other strategies and challenges*.

What are the top priorities in marketing?

Business growth ranks first as the primary role of marketing:
• #1: Delivery of business growth.
• #2: Ensuring effective brand management.
• #3: Developing the overall customer experience.

How do CMOs support business growth?

Building lasting relationships with customers is key to delivering business growth:

• #1: Securing long-term customer relationships.
• #2: Driving revenue growth.
• #3: Enhancing margin growth.

CMOs see a battle for consumer attention.

There are challenges in building long-term customer relationships:
• #1: Increasing levels of competition.
• #2: Consumers’ less responsive to traditional advertising.
• #3: Information overload.

*Top 3 rankings for each category

Source: Dentsu Aegis CMO Survey Report, reported by Marketing Charts

Online activity is a two way street:  consumers are “showrooming”— browsing businesses and going online, and “webrooming”— researching online and purchasing in brick-and-mortar establishments.  Following are insights about success in the connected commerce space.

What Consumers are Doing Online (activities scoring high):

• Looking up product information.
• Checking/comparing prices.
• Searching for deals/promotions/coupons.

What Consumers are not Doing Online (activities scoring low):

• Clicking on email ads.
• Subscribing to product/store emails.
• Liking/tweeting/commenting on social media.

Consumers Pursue Information All the Time (see chart):

• 87% before visiting a business.
• 79% while visiting a business.
• 35% after visiting a business.

Strategies for Omni-Channel (Online/Offline) Success:

• Be customer-centric: Understand consumers’ demographics, purchase habits, path to purchase.
• Prioritize personalization: Provide clients with relevant, personalized information/offers.
• Think digital, but don’t neglect in-store: Physical establishments maintain many key advantages over online-only channels.  Customer service is a differentiator in every channel — providing exceptional service should be a primary focus for businesses.

Connected consumers = smart consumers, and they are using digital options to make informed purchase decisions, from reviewing products/services online to using in business establishments.

“Digital is viewed less as a threat to brick-and-mortar… and more as an opportunity.  Today’s winning brands use a combination of on and offline strategies to… help consumers make more informed decisions… [and] add value throughout the entire [purchase] experience.”

— Patrick Dodd, President, Nielsen Global Retailer Vertical

 

Source:  thinkwithgoogle.com

 

Awareness is the first stage in the customer purchase funnel — a buyer must be aware of your product/service before making a purchase. While ROI (Return on Investment) focuses on sales, ROO (Return on Objectives) focuses on defining metrics, such as increased awareness, brand impact, and purchase intent. Awareness is an important metric to be measured as it can be a major asset when trying to influence purchase decisions.

STRATEGIES

Strategies for how awareness contributes to driving objectives and sales defines the metrics used to measure effectiveness:

• For short-term gain, generate a spike in awareness just prior to an integrated campaign; also, condition the target audience with awareness of key attributes that educates potential buyers.
• For long-term strategy, re-position brand perceptions that builds awareness of advantages relative to a competitor, leading to higher preference, sales conversion, and loyalty.

METRICS
Awareness works well as a “diagnostic” tool to understand why other metrics, such as consideration, intention, purchase, etc., may be under-performing:

• Place increased weight on your primary target audience since they are a good fit with your brand and are more likely to move from awareness to consideration and purchase.
• Assess awareness among buyers currently in the purchase funnel, which is a better measure of effectiveness than from consumers not likely to buy for a long period of time.

MEASUREMENT
To measure ROO and ROI from awareness-building initiatives, design the measurement to understand customer behaviors:

• Assess the short-term lift in engagement and purchase actions associated with increases in brand awareness; allow for a slight lag time using modeling or market testing.
• Track perception metrics and your brand attribute ratings relative to competitors with ongoing or pre-post campaign surveys; closely monitor awareness changes relative to other metrics (consideration, intent, purchase, etc.).