There are a lot of rapid changes in the digital marketing landscape. As retail shoppers move to make their purchases online more and more each season, here are 5 key digital marketing factors that will impact the future of e-commerce.
- Digital medium will influence majority of sales. It is estimated that 64% of retail sales will be influenced by the digital space by the end of this year with 78% of shopper researching their product of interest online before committing to purchasing. In order to succeed in this competitive area, companies will need to integrate all their marketing efforts, including all touching points such as traditional and digital marketing efforts into a clear and concise message thereby making it easier to its customers to complete their research and purchasing process.
- Mobile has overtaken the digital ad spending. With an estimated of $6.65 Billion going into mobile advertising, mobile now forms 51.5% of ad spending for retail companies. About 67% of customers shop across different devices (tablets, mobile, desktop), it makes sense to seemly integrate a good user experience across all platforms.
- Direct publisher deals going programmatic. Spending on Private Marketplace (PMP) grew 381% in 2015. This will only continue to grow as retailers are looking for new ways to advertise to their target market.
- Video as part of digital marketing ad spending. With a 29% spend in digital ad spent on video advertising, video will be one of the most engaging and rapidly growing factors for retailers.
- Closed-loop attribution. In short, closed-loop attribution is the ability to associate advertising impressions to the outcome they drive. If this sounds “foreign”, think about the customer journey before a final online purchase is made. This by no means is a linear process as it involves certain steps (media impressions). An attribution model can monitor each impression and its relevance in the customer journey to conversion. From this, a marketer can see which impression had the most value thereby making a better informed decision when doing a new marketing campaign.
To sum up, social marketing, mobile ad spending, video ads and new technology such as closed-loop attribution will play a vital role in the online retail space. If you need help in any of the above, we’ll be happy to provide more details on how we can help get more value from your digital marketing efforts.
Credit: AdWeek