Precision Targeted Marketing

Homebase recently ventured into the world of digital marketing with a fantastically popular campaign through eBay!  

In late 2013, Homebase used geo-targeting via eBay to try and increase the customer awareness of the refurbishment of their Chelmsford store. Nothing I have seen before. The only form of marketing a new/refurbished store was from B&Q when they were using paid advertising on Google to increase the awareness of one of their stores opening.

I'm personally a firm believer of the thought of targeted marketing. I have not seen much practice of this, but from what I've read, it does work.

I've also been reading up on the fact that Facebook's targeted marketing is getting more targeted, as such. Marie Page talks about Targeting ad of Facebook and how precise you can start to get through advertising on Facebook. Statistic Brain reports that there are currently close to 1.31 billion users on Facebook, so Facebook certainly is not short on people to target. however it would be ridiculous to target all of these people as the return on investment (ROI) will not be something to be raving about. However, using Facebook's targeted advertising tools, you can target down countries, age ranges, likes and possibly many more categories.

Geo-targeting marketing is certainly becoming ever so popular. With my earlier example of Homebase using it on eBay, however this sort of marketing would work wonders for a SME. Being a smaller company, budgets are stretched, meaning they need to get a much better return for the money. As these SME's could be on a small geographical scale, geographically targeting a certain area could see massive returns. One article reported that a regional medical branch saw revenues increase by a whopping 333%!!! This figure is evidence to me how targeted advertising is going to be something we will see a sharp rise in over the course of 2014.

Successful Interactive/Digital Marketing

I've just read an interesting article by Tara Hershberger talking about 'Successful Interactive/Digital Marketing' within the Banking Sector.

The journal article explains that there are five considerations that will need to be thought of when choosing what form of online media is best to use. With such a variety of online media that can be used today, it is important that using the most effective for what it is you need it for, is vital in the success of that campaign.

The considerations include:

• The cost of the particular option
• Ensure you target the correct geographic location and it reaches the specific areas you want it too
• Keeping flexibility with that online media option and getting tied into long-term contracts
• Whether you have to report yourself or whether it is reported for you and also ensure the right depth of reporting is used (e.g. not just CTR and clicks but tracking what the viewer did on the specific page).
• Analysing the report to evaluate the success and/or the failure, the positives, the negatives and seeing what could be done differently next time.

From an amateur digital marketers perspective, I would agree that all five of these things need to be considered. However, I feel the most important, for the pure basis of being able to improve from previous experiences, is the analysing part. The analysis of a marketing campaign is one of the most important stages of the campaign. Here it is a chance to see what has worked for the business, what didn't work and this will then set things up for the next campaign. The learning process, especially for a novice at this form of marketing, will give them so much information and knowledge about what option works in what ways.

Source: ABA Bank Marketing Journal by Tara Hershberger. Date: 01/10/2012 Volume 44, Issue 8, Page 34/35. 

Happy New Year!

I know its January 7th, but I've been enjoying my Christmas break, as it can be seen as my last blog post was November 21st, wow.. did'nt even realise it was that long ago!

Anyway, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Doug