The US completed Google’s Shopping’s transition from a free to a paid PLA model back in November 2012 and, so far, it’s been a success as both a significant and profitable source of traffic.  The additional costs involved with PLAs mean advertisers must consider spend efficiency when thinking about their strategies, and this is something that the UK can look to the US to learn what has and what hasn’t worked.

Click on the video below to see what Jonathan Beeston, director, new product innovation at Adobe has to say on what marketers and advertisers can expect from Google PLAS, looking at:

·         What are PLAs?

·         How are PLAs implemented?

·         What have we seen in the US?

·         What do you need to do?

Check out Jonathan Beeston’s blog on Econsultancy for more insight and have a read of our whitepaper for new ways to enhance search marketing.

I was surprised to read in the Financial Times (subscription required) recently that “two-thirds of companies in the FTSE 100 have websites that are difficult to use on smartphones”.  The recent study found 69 of the companies haven’t yet optimised their websites for mobiles, with many “wasting millions of pounds” on sending visitors to sites that do not meet their expectations.

Another interesting point that caught my attention in the piece was made by Sam Roddick from Deloitte Digital that if big companies don’t move quickly to adapt their websites for mobile, they risk losing business to more nimble start-ups. It’s clear that big brands can no longer ignore mobile.

But what is it that’s holding them back? We’re now in an era where the tools and technology to implement, update and optimise web presence across channels and platforms is quicker and easier than ever before.

With the start of the New Year, now is as good a time as any for big companies to take a good look at their web infrastructure and think seriously about re-platforming. Just having a website and assuming most people will view it on a PC doesn’t cut it anymore, consumers expect to be able to shop, browse, research, engage with brands via smartphones, tablets, PCs, laptops, even their TVs.  Whenever they want and wherever they are.  This experience should be tailored to each customer, depending on what device they are on.

It’s clear that companies need to look for a platform that can deliver consistent web experiences no matter the screen size, browser or operating system and that can be managed centrally so updates can be made quickly.  Crucially they should also look for one that can examine and feedback on how customers are engaging so that web strategies can be refined according to where successes are achieved.

At Adobe, we’ve been working hard to address these needs and have developed tools which meet the dynamic needs of marketers today.  Using Adobe Experience Manager, marketers can create, manage, and optimise customer experiences to build brand, drive demand and extend reach into the digital world.

Specialist bank and asset manager Investec invested in web content management tool Adobe Experience Manager to help it manage global website content. The impact has been striking: since going live Investec has more than doubled its online traffic, vastly increased the volume of both global and local content published, and laid the foundation for multichannel communication, notably mobile. Externally – Investec saw a 130% increase in website traffic, as the new service increased website reliability for all the countries with quick load times, ensuring a seamless customer experience across all platforms and devices, be that an iPad, smartphone or laptop, to ultimately fit in with their core customer’s dynamic lifestyles.  Now wherever Investec’s clients go, and wherever its business takes it, it is able to deliver a rich mobile experience that meets its highly valued client expectations.

In 2012 Ofcom reported that 39% of people in the UK use their mobiles to access the internet, this is clearly a big opportunity for brands and one that Carphone Warehouse was quick to take advantage of.  The UK retailer of mobile phones and other consumer technology products used data to change its mobile strategy after research revealed that 23% of internet visitors were accessing websites through mobile channels, and that 22% of all retail purchases were browsed on a smartphone prior to purchase. Seeing this channel as key to its online marketplace, it decided to prioritise its mobile experience.  Using solutions from Adobe Marketing Cloud, Carphone Warehouse developed a tailored mobile experience and using the analytics function were also then able to gain deeper insights into its mobile audiences to further refine its mobile strategy and marketing programmes.

Based on these examples – my question to those 69 FTSE 100 companies is, what are they waiting for?

Tresilian Segal, Head of Marketing, Northern Europe

Digital Marketing Business Unit, Adobe

2012 will be remembered in the marketing world as the year that digital marketers finally got around to writing the rule book on mobile.  Whilst the move was visibly in an effort to better adapt to the huge shift in con­sumer behaviour, it’s clear that there is still room for improvement.

At the start of the year in Adobe’s Q2 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update, we predicted  that one in five paid search clicks would come from a mobile device and whilst this seemed ambitious, we have surpassed that mark. However on the other side of the coin – many brands still don’t have fully optimised websites or apps for mobile.

So what should digital marketers look out for next year?

Gartner predicts the sale of smart devices to rise by as much as 1.2 billion in 2013 and we think mobile search will continue to grow as a significant portion of SEM campaigns. By the end of 2013, we think one in three paid clicks will come from a tablet or smartphone, with consumers increasingly making purchasing decisions solely with their mobile devices. With this shift marketers need to recognise that a mobile strategy is not optional. Finding ways to monetise and personalise mobile traffic through apps, publishing and optimised web experiences are critical to success.

As well as mobile, we are expecting to see a combination of trends and new technology innovations cause 2013 to be an eventful year for digital marketing. See more on the following 2013 predictions from Adobe on ad exchanger:

-          Cross-channel and cross-device measurement will become paramount

-          Marketing will become even more granular

-          Marketers will understand the true value of Social

Jonathan Beeston, director, new product innovation at Adobe
@searchbeest

This is one of the findings from the latest advertising expenditure report from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB); with advertising spend shooting up by 12.6 percent to £2.6 billion in the first half of the year.

Fuelled by the rocketing number of smartphone and tablet users, mobile advertising alone grew by 132 percent to £181.5 million in the first half of 2012, from the previous year, and now accounts for seven percent of all digital advertising spend.

These results support the findings of Adobe’s Q2 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update, which we blogged about back in July.   Our report showed that whilst conversion rates for tablets are 120 percent higher than those for PCs, Cost Per Clicks (CPC) rates are markedly less than desktops or laptops, 30 percent less in fact – opening a window of opportunity in the digital advertising market.

“Mobile traffic continues to demonstrate a significant opportunity for advertisers as the industry is still yet to normalise click through rates” comments Jonathan Beeston, director of new product innovation at Adobe. “With results remaining strong for mobile, there is a growing emphasis on mobile devices as tablet conversion rates outshine desktop conversion rates.”

However, the gap in that window of opportunity is starting to close and it won’t be long until the cost per click rate starts to increase. To make the most of this, brands need to act now to make sure they don’t get shut out by their competitors.

“There’s still time for brands to get in there and reap the benefits delivering greater ROI but they need to move quickly before this ever shrinking window shuts,” adds Beeston.

Existing customers provide greater ROI for retailers. So, why are the bulk (80%) of interactive marketing budgets spent on trying to attract new shoppers?  Surely the number one priority should be existing customers?

The financial rewards for marketing to return and repeat customers are significant.  It is estimated that for every 1% of shoppers who return for another visit, overall revenue will increase by 10%.  The impact of this is obvious and incredible.  Based on the sample used for our study, in both Europe and the US, on average, 40% of revenue comes from returning or repeat customers, who represent only 8% of all visitors.

This is magnified even further during Christmas, with the increase from repeat purchasers being a massive 23% – nearly 500% higher!

As well as Christmas, repeat purchasers also deliver greater returns during slow economic growth.  With the Eurozone issues over the past few years, where overall GPD growth in Europe has been either weak or negative, repeat purchasers have become even more important to the bottom line.

So how can your brand benefit from this information and turn shoppers into return and repeat purchasers?

1.     Firstly, conversion rates need to be considered as this is the main driver for higher return per visit.  The conversion rate for first time shoppers is just 1%, whereas for returning and repeat customers it’s five and nine times as much, respectively.  Marketers need to optimise site conversion rates across the board to bring customers back to the site.

2.     Secondly, you need to look at better targeting customers; personalisation is key! Companies that personalise the experience increase the likelihood of both sales and recommendations.  A pretty obvious statement, but many marketers are not taking advantage of all the customer data they have on existing customers, that makes personalisation possible.

3.     Lastly, offering rewards, loyalty programme promotions and using tactics such as email and display ad retargeting, are all great ways to encourage return visits and bring those sales figures up.

If you’re going to give one piece of advice to your colleagues across the marketing department as you gear up for Christmas, make sure you prioritise the present list according to ROI.

For a more detailed look at how Europe compares against the US, click on our infographic below and see a copy of the full Digital Index Report here.

Jamie Brighton, Product Marketing Manager, Digital Marketing Business, Adobe

@JamieBrighton

Marc Blinder, Director, European Operations, Adobe

Just as data from the computer age helped shape finance in the 1970’s, it has also become the digital revolution’s gift to marketing. Gone are the days where marketers are on the back foot as to justifying how their campaigns are working; the availability of real time data gives them instant access to exactly what is and isn’t working on their campaign so they can tweak and optimise it accordingly. This coupled with the availability of tools which predict and measure campaign results, has given marketers a much bigger say into the company strategy and budgets – much like the role of the finance team.

In order to get to this stage however, marketers need to understand exactly which metrics to measure for each channel, in order to successfully play back that channel’s ROI in the boardroom. With the ease of capturing behavioural data online there’s certainly no shortage of such metrics, but the trick is to know what key indicators are important for each channel and observe these accordingly.

Take Facebook ads for example. There has recently been some interesting debate around just how effective this form of marketing is. On one hand, reports have suggested Face­book adver­tis­ing is not very effec­tive and in com­par­i­son to Google pro­vides sig­nif­i­cantly less value. Other reports however have highlighted brand successes through the same method which begs the question, are people measuring this form of marketing correctly?

Typically, Facebook ads should be mea­sured by soft and hard met­rics. Soft metrics include reach and engage­ment and hard metrics include the impact on rev­enue, profit, mar­gin and offline store sales across all mar­ket­ing and sales chan­nels of a business. Where some marketers have struggled in the past however is because they feel that social chan­nels should be mea­sured using the same mea­sure­ment mod­els and account­abil­ity as search mar­ket­ing efforts.

Unfortunately, this method is flawed because consumers are not spending time on social chan­nels to imme­di­ately buy goods and ser­vices, like they often are when engag­ing in online searches. Instead, they tend to use social plat­forms to con­nect with their friends, social­ise, share con­tent, and par­tic­i­pate in dia­logue around things that they are expe­ri­enc­ing and think­ing.  Advertising on Face­book, for brands who don’t sell online games or flash deals, is more like adver­tis­ing on TV – it increases the likeliness to buy, but it often takes time for a user to convert.

Read on for some common themes we have seen from some of our clients’ suc­cess­ful Face­book campaigns….

1. Sig­nif­i­cant and sus­tained ad budgets – suc­cess­ful Face­book cam­paigns must have mean­ing­ful ad bud­gets with sig­nif­i­cant reach, as a Facebook ad only sees the desired effects when it reaches a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of users.
2. A strate­gic long term view -  the best social cam­paigns are well thought out with strate­gies designed to build audi­ences and engage with them in a mean­ing­ful way, so they: 1) grow a fan base, and 2) increase loy­alty to the brand. For the mar­keter this means a strat­egy to cre­ate mean­ing­ful con­tent that is rel­e­vant to the fan base at a given point of time, and con­stantly updat­ing con­tent so that the mes­sage remains fresh.
3. Data is used as an asset – the remark­able thing about Face­book adver­tis­ing is both the tar­get­ing and data that the adver­tiser can obtain with appro­pri­ate per­mis­sions from the user. A good exam­ple is to build apps where the user vol­un­tar­ily agrees to pro­vide infor­ma­tion and then launch and mar­ket to them with the sup­port of Face­book ad buys. Through this, the ad buys drive audi­ences to the app and the data from the app can be lever­aged to make the app expe­ri­ence more inter­est­ing and the whole process more effi­cient.
4. Good con­tent is key – adver­tis­ing will have min­i­mal impact if you don’t have mean­ing­ful con­tent. You need a good com­mu­nity man­ager and mod­er­a­tor to under­stand when to place con­tent, what con­tent to place and how to mea­sure the effi­cacy of con­tent. If you fail to develop good con­tent, your fans and the Face­book plat­form will ignore your mes­sage.

For Investec – an international specialist bank and asset manager serving corporate investors and high net worth individuals – the challenge was to move from a single on-line presence in Johannesburg to a 15-region digital marketing platform that would allow the company to take advantage of local opportunities, often at relatively short notice.

Using Adobe CQ, part of Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, Investec now has a global web experience platform that delivers a distinct, local visual and user experience without being limited to generic-looking templates or designs.

What does this mean for Investec? It now has a highly decentralised web experience management platform with powerful content authoring tools and global brand management capabilities. In practice this means its digital marketing team can now react quickly to local opportunities and changing customer trends with relevant regional and customer-specific content.

And the results? Because Adobe CQ takes away the organisational complexity normally associated with multi-region content creation and publishing, Investec has been able to focus on delivering compelling, creative content that drives the business forward. For example, when Investec signed a midnight deal to sponsor Tottenham Hotspur football club in the English Premier League (seasons 2010/2011 and 2011/2012), the firm was able to launch a major microsite the following morning

Online traffic has also doubled since the system went live, along with a vast increase in the volume of both global and locally published content. It has also laid the foundations for multichannel communication, enabling Investec to respond to, and engage with, its customers regardless of time-zone, location or device.

“Our web presence plays a vital role in providing the level of service our clients expect from a world-class firm,” says Diarmaid Crean, Global Online Marketing, Investec. “Having our web infrastructure on Adobe CQ makes it simple for personnel throughout our organization to author and publish content, everywhere we do business, quickly and easily.”

Manny Vaghuela, Adobe’s Solution Consulting Director and Fahim Salim, Investec’s Web Development Manager can be seen discussing Investec’s moving to the Adobe CQ platform (a process described as re-platforming) during a recent webinar.

The discussion also covers the evolution of content management software and how Investec is using Adobe CQ to optimise its content to meet marketing goals and keep up with evolving consumer and technological demands.

The full case study, with more information on the Adobe CQ platform including how it allows Investec to add local, dynamic content can be found here.

Check out our webinar around replatforming web marketing systems in the age of the multi-channel consumer below.

CORE is a data-driven marketing intelligence platform from Mindshare that empowers both analysts and non-technical users to make informed marketing spend, audience targeting and creative optimisation decisions across all touch points, in real-time. It brings together data sets such as CRM, sales and supply chain data, with media channel spend, social, audience profiles and real-time trading information. It reveals consumer actions and insight at a granular level, taking away the guesswork, latency and siloed nature of marketing-spend decision making.

The digital marketing team here at Adobe (@AdobeUK), has been working closely with Steve on CORE, with Adobe Insight, part of the Digital Marketing Suite, powering the user interface for data visualisation, modelling, data mining and reporting.

In an age where the amount of data available to marketers has never been greater, the value of all this data lies in the ability to deliver actionable insight in real-time.  It was great to see CORE in action!

On Friday morning we held a  a digital marketing briefing ran by our specialists to help clients gain a better understanding of how to optimise marketing investments via search engines and social media.

First off we heard all about paid search optimisation, and were told about three key things to remember when planning a campaign:

• Completely understand how your money is being spent and leverage your campaign structure to maximise conversions.
• Decide on goals before your campaign begins, once you’ve got your targets set make sure there is a decent amount of phrase and exact matches to give you better control over the campaign, and hopefully give you higher conversion rates as the audience will be more relevant. Be careful about using broad match as it is known for being the most expensive but with the least results.
• Make sure copy is engaging and calls for action. Automatic bidding will also save much more time than doing it manually, it’s more effective at choosing the best price to make sure you’re not overpaying.

Next up was social ad optimisation and how it compares to search advertising. The key learning was that it is imperative to have best practice when running a Facebook ad campaign. This can be done by having a mixture of different creative executions of the same ad and by ensuring that all ads are targeted to a specific audience as this will give you the highest conversion rates.

Finally we heard about the seven key points to think about when designing a successful Facebook app:

1. Content is king – sometimes too much effort is put into making it pretty. The content of the app is ultimately the main reason for a fan to share or like app.
2. Simple is best – Facebook is all about instant gratification, engaging visitors in a few seconds will keep them interested enough to stay on your page. If there are too many barriers to entry or an overload of information, their typically short attention span will lead them elsewhere.
3. Don’t hide content – your messaging should be apparent, too much clutter will lead to confusion, as will having too many pop ups and distractions. Likegates are fine as most people expect to have to like a page in order to use the app, but other gates could deter people.
4. Incorporate social – the app should make you want to get your friends involved, after all Facebook is about social networking. If your friends have used an app, you are much more inclined to give it a go, so giving lots of opportunities to share will allow for your app to be more social, and consequently reach a wider audience. You need to show how the content relates to the users for instance, ‘you like ‘xxxx’ page therefore you would also be interested in this great app’.

The final three points looked at social and search from a client’s perspective:

1. Prioritise goals – make sure the app is in line with your key messaging and goals in order to get the best ROI.
2. Continue the conversation – once the competition or game has ended on the app, you should make sure that engagement does not end there. You have their attention, so now make the most of it by either directing them to another app or competition, or add them to your email marketing list.
3. Learn from every application – test certain styles as some work better for particular audiences than others. For instance if a ‘pet photo contest’ app is very successful, why fix what isn’t broken? Make a ‘Valentines pet photo contest’ next followed by an ‘Easter pet photo contest’ for example.