The digital world has expanded quite significantly over the last decade. Where there was once just the normal PC browsing the web, today there are PCs, smart phones, tablets, laptops, smart watches and more. Having all of these different channels allows marketers to ‘meet’ their potential customers wherever they are. This can make for a very powerful marketing strategy.
According to recent research, however, the vast majority of marketers are not measuring the effectiveness of their advertising across platforms, or even tracking what types of efforts are being made. There are many reasons given for why both individual marketers and large brands are missing out on the many opportunities having all this data can provide.
The following tips can help you to improve the way you are measuring the data and effectiveness of your marketing efforts across a cross-device environment.
Know What to Measure
Most marketers are still stuck looking just at things like click through rates or conversion rates. While these can certainly be important, they really just scratch the surface. Measuring other things such as whether or not people are seeing your ads and how much time they are spending on a specific screen can be extremely valuable over the long term.
Following Users Across Devices
Most people today access the internet from at least two devices. This could be a desktop and a tablet, or a smart phone and a laptop or any other combination. If you are gathering data as if each connection is a unique user, you’re missing out on a lot of insight. Instead, make sure you have the right tools and systems in place to follow users across multiple platforms. This can help you to identify whether someone does research on a desktop and then later makes a purchase on their tablet, or something similar.
Looking at Household Behavior
Another important way you can gather information is by looking at an entire household as one unit. This can be done using WiFi or IP information quite simply. This is important because in most cases, people will be buying items for each other in the same household. Parents will buy gifts for children after the children discover them through browsing the Internet. Knowing how households behave can help you to ensure you are displaying the most targeted ads possible.
Know Where Users are Located
Using geo-targeting you can display ads based on the physical location of your target audience. In addition, however, you can often have information about individuals based on where they often are. If someone frequently drives through a specific neighborhood, you can predict that movement and display ads accordingly. This combines offline data with online marketing and can be very effective. It all, however, starts with proper gathering of data.
How to Collect Data
While many major corporations have the resources to track this type of information on their own, smaller companies or individual marketers often can’t. This is why having a third party advertising partner can help you to dramatically improve your overall marketing strategy.
