A new year is the opportunity for a fresh start. It’s a time when we reflect on what we’re doing and where we’re going, and resolve to make changes that will make us happier and more successful.
So what better time to review your digital marketing strategies and check what’s working well, and what improvements you can make in the year ahead to increase your results?
With this in mind, we’ve put together 10 display advertising New Year resolutions we recommend making to transform your results in 2020.
1) Stop re-targeting your regular shoppers with the same message
If you want your display advertising to deliver results, then you need to consider your customers’ lifecycle – from awareness, to consideration, to conversion and loyalty. And you need to have carefully planned messages at each stage of the lifecycle to help gather new leads and engage with them.
We call this intelligent lifecycle marketing.
If you’re currently repeating the same message to the same browsers then you’re only ever going to get diminishing results. You need to keep your funnel fresh by attracting new prospects into it and converting them to loyal customers.
So if you’re not already doing so, in 2020 make it a goal to look at your full customer lifecycle and plan messaging that brings customers through it. (If you want to find out how we delivered a new customer rate of 47% to Miss Selfridge, read our case study here.)
2) Stop relying on out-dated third-party cookies for attribution or targeting
Thanks to entire Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) series by Apple and Google’s impending changes to Chrome, cookies are past their best before date in digital advertising. It’s become virtually impossible to track browsers and attribute sales, leaving advertisers working almost blind.
But there is a solution. Hybrid attribution enables you to track users throughout the display lifecycle and accurately attribute sales – while remaining fully complaint with legislation like GDPR and ePR.
To find out how hybrid attribution works, and why you need to start using it in 2020, if you’re not already, download our free white paper here.
3) Start engaging with your customers with relevancy
There’s nothing more off-putting than seeing irrelevant ads from a brand. Maybe it’s an ad for a product you’ve already bought. Or for something you’re clearly not in the market for.
So with consent, make it your resolution to stop bombarding browsers with poorly targeted ads and use a combination of hybrid attribution and dynamic creative to understand exactly where they are in your sales funnel, what they’re interested in, and connect with them on a more personal level. Then show them products they actually want to buy, and watch your conversions increase as a result.
4) Stop ignoring customers who have already made a purchase
Did you know that after one purchase, a customer has a 27% chance of returning to your store? Or that if that customer makes a second and third purchase they have a 54% chance of buying again?
This makes customers who have already bought from you your hottest sales leads. And yet too many brands fail to recognise these customers when planning their display advertising campaigns, and as a result miss out on a significant amount of sales. Brands are guilty of putting them all in the same bucket.
So if you don’t already do so, ensure your campaigns intelligently reach buyers with relevant and carefully timed up-sells, cross-sells, messages and offers.
5) Stop using the same creative templates as your competitors
It’s a competitive digital world out there, and the brands who are getting real traction on their display ads aren’t the ones with the all-too-familiar cookie cutter creative.
Instead, if you want genuine cut through and protect your brand integrity, you need dynamic creative that will get noticed and encourage engagement and recall. So if your current display advertising company doesn’t do dynamic ads, resolve to find one who does. (You’re very welcome to have a non-committal chat with us.)
Resolve to transform your display ad results in 2020
With an increasing number of brands all competing for the same conversions, it’s becoming harder to win over (and keep) new customers – and sell to existing ones.
So it’s not just important that you squeeze every last bit of value from your digital marketing budget by getting your display advertising right. It’s essential.
Follow these five tips and you should see a significant difference in your results over the coming year – as our clients have done over the last 12 months (check out our case studies here to see the results we’re getting).
And if you’d like to have a no-obligation chat with us about how we can help you reach and convert customers throughout your lifecycle, please do get in touch. We’d be delighted to help.