How evolved is your digital marketing strategy?

Mobile has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed con­sumer shop­ping behav­iour and pur­chase jour­neys. How well has the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try kept up with these changes in con­sumer behav­ior?

Troy Smith By Troy Smith from Search Optics. Join the discussion » 0 comments

In less than a decade, mobile has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed our lives. Shop­pers now rely on mobile for every stage of the buy­ing jour­ney, from ini­tial aware­ness to final pur­chase deci­sion. When Google made the announce­ment last year that mobile had become the pri­ma­ry plat­form for online search­es, they con­firmed some­thing most dig­i­tal mar­keters already knew: we’re liv­ing in a mobile-first world. But just how well has the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try kept up with these changes in con­sumer behav­ior?


Search Optics part­nered with ClickZ Intel­li­gence to sur­vey 400 dig­i­tal mar­keters world­wide about the tac­tics they cur­rent­ly uti­lize, as well as their plans for the future. Now that the results are in, we have a clear pic­ture of the state of mobile adver­tis­ing today.

The good news

There’s cer­tain­ly some good news. For exam­ple, the evo­lu­tion of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy has enabled wide­spread adop­tion of some indis­pens­able mobile-first tac­tics. A healthy 84 per­cent of client respon­dents and 79 per­cent of agency respon­dents report lever­ag­ing a respon­sive web­site design that offers full func­tion­al­i­ty on any size screen. This essen­tial mobile-first tac­tic ensures audi­ences can access con­tent when and where they need it, so it goes a long way toward greater engage­ment and con­ver­sion for brands.

Lots of room for improvement

But in oth­er ways, the indus­try still has a lot of catch­ing up to do. The study makes it clear that many dig­i­tal mar­keters are fail­ing to use every tac­tic at their dis­pos­al to reach mobile users—and they know it. In fact, 56 per­cent of respon­dents rat­ed them­selves as “begin­ners” in mobile mar­ket­ing, and 46 per­cent said they do not believe their cur­rent mobile adver­tis­ing spend is in line with their cus­tomers’ con­sump­tion of media through mobile. In a mobile-first world, that’s a big prob­lem.

The path forward

The bot­tom line: while some exper­tise exists in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, the indus­try also has a lot to learn. It’s crit­i­cal that dig­i­tal mar­keters lever­age a broad­er range of tac­tics to reach shop­pers at every stage of the pur­chase funnel—and in all the mobile chan­nels in which they seek out infor­ma­tion. Here are three key tac­tics all dig­i­tal mar­keters should con­sid­er when build­ing a mobile-first strat­e­gy for 2016 and beyond:

1. Top of fun­nel: pro­gram­mat­ic

Pro­gram­mat­ic is more pop­u­lar than ever: more than half of respon­dents report plans to increase their bud­get for pro­gram­mat­ic dis­play, pro­gram­mat­ic mobile, or pro­gram­mat­ic video in 2016. And it’s no won­der: pro­gram­mat­ic offers dig­i­tal mar­keters an unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to tar­get audi­ences based on data—so it’s well-suit­ed for rais­ing aware­ness among shop­pers who may not have heard of a brand, but are like­ly to be inter­est­ed in it. Users exposed to Search Optics Pro­gram­mat­ic Mobile cam­paigns were 35 per­cent more like­ly to buy a new car com­pared to a geo-nor­mal­ized bench­mark, demon­strat­ing programmatic’s effec­tive­ness for increas­ing cus­tomers’ inter­est in a brand.

Addi­tion­al­ly, pro­gram­mat­ic offers a num­ber of ways to mea­sure cam­paign per­for­mance and ROI. Giv­en that only 31 per­cent of sur­vey respon­dents believe their approach to attri­bu­tion enables them to see the true val­ue of mobile adver­tis­ing, pro­gram­mat­ic could offer a much-need­ed solu­tion. From mobile-enabled loca­tion stud­ies, to advanced match­back using third-par­ty data, to mea­sur­ing pur­chase intent among audi­ences exposed to ads, pro­gram­mat­ic adver­tis­ing offers a new degree of cer­tain­ty for dig­i­tal mar­keters.

2. Mid­dle of fun­nel: hyper­local

Sur­pris­ing­ly few dig­i­tal marketers—only 22 percent—say they are cur­rent­ly exploit­ing hyper­local adver­tis­ing to its full poten­tial. What’s more, not a sin­gle hyper­local tac­tic is used by a major­i­ty of adver­tis­ers. That means many dig­i­tal mar­keters are miss­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with the rapid­ly grow­ing num­bers of con­sumers who con­duct “near me” search­es on a dai­ly basis.

Using loca­tion data to deliv­er rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion to audi­ences at exact­ly the right time can deliv­er aston­ish­ing results. For exam­ple, in one Search Optics hyper­local cam­paign, audi­ences were 42 times more like­ly than a con­trol group to vis­it a client restau­rant loca­tion after expo­sure to ads. Giv­en con­sumers’ grow­ing appetite for cus­tomized, rel­e­vant com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try has only begun to scratch the sur­face of hyperlocal’s poten­tial.

3. Bot­tom of fun­nel: paid search

Dig­i­tal mar­keters have achieved great results with paid search, with agen­cies rat­ing call exten­sions (90 per­cent), mobile bid mod­i­fiers (89 per­cent), and loca­tion exten­sions (87 per­cent) as good or excel­lent for return on invest­ment. Their suc­cess with this tac­tic comes as no sur­prise, since paid search per­forms espe­cial­ly well on mobile. That’s because it’s easy to mea­sure, and it’s fre­quent­ly used by bot­tom-fun­nel shop­pers who are active­ly search­ing for solu­tions. (Plus, ads appear at the top of search results, and small­er screens tend to dis­cour­age users from scrolling fur­ther down the page.)

Dig­i­tal mar­keters can achieve even more suc­cess with paid search by lever­ag­ing new, mobile-spe­cif­ic tac­tics, such as enrolling in Google’s store vis­its beta pro­gram, which uses Android data to track the loca­tion of users click­ing on ads. When a user walks into a client loca­tion after see­ing a paid search ad, Google notes the results and dis­plays them in AdWords next to clicks and impres­sions. This lev­el of track­ing rep­re­sents the next step in ad tar­get­ing and will like­ly expand as mobile con­tin­ues to grow.

It’s true that with the rapid expan­sion of mobile, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing has grown more com­plex. As audi­ences seek out infor­ma­tion in an increas­ing­ly diverse array of chan­nels, mar­keters can no longer depend on large, homoge­nous audi­ences with a sin­gle set of needs and inter­ests. How­ev­er, by devel­op­ing a holis­tic strat­e­gy that com­bines a range of mobile-first tac­tics, dig­i­tal mar­keters can reach their cus­tomers in all the chan­nels in which they seek out information—and in every stage of the buy­ing jour­ney. With broad­er, more rapid adop­tion of the newest inno­va­tions in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, we can dri­ve our indus­try for­ward in lock­step with the pace of dig­i­tal evo­lu­tion as a whole.

Troy Smith

Written by Troy Smith

President, Search Optics

Troy Smith is president of Search Optics, a leading digital marketing provider with a specialty in automotive. Troy has a diverse background in digital marketing, technology, automotive and sales, and he helps thousands of automotive dealers and OEMs integrate digital marketing campaigns that emphasize quality lead generation.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

Discover why brands and agencies choose Linkdex

  • Get started fast with easy onboarding & training
  • Import and connect data from other platforms
  • Scale with your business, websites and markets
  • Up-skill teams with training & accreditation
  • Build workflows with tasks, reporting and alerts

Get a free induction and experience of Linkdex.

Just fill out this form, and one of our team members will get in touch to arrange your own, personalized demo.