Trends in cross-device digital marketing

As consumers are dividing their media time across multiple screens and platforms, digital marketers today are facing major challenges - attribution (i.e. separating each medium's impact) as well as understanding the path to purchase. This trend is forecasted to increase in the future and therefore digital marketers should no longer view cross-channel advertising as good-to have option but rather as a vital component of their marketing strategy. However, the challenges to implementing cross-device advertising strategies are very often underestimated. This is the result of a study conducted by emarketer, the independent consulting company considered as the authority in digital marketing, summarizing cross-device marketing trends in the United States as of August 2014.

The article shows that cross-device advertising represents the top interest topic for US agency media professionals.  It touches on several emergent topics and is backed throughout by robust evidence from high quality sources which include, among others, the National Association of Advertisers or the CMO Council.

What is new on the digital marketing horizon and how can marketing professionals capitalize on the new directions?

Here are my recommendation for the 3 things you need to know:

1. Content Functionality should complement originality across different platforms, especially for the B2C market. It is interesting that as marketing today is becoming more data-driven, content marketing is transitioning towards being regarded as a form of art. It is very difficult even for experienced marketers to distinguish between the next viral hit or junk material especially in the B2C arena. In addition, hard ROI metrics are not easily associated with these, making it more difficult to increase marketing budgets for content generation. This has implications for digital marketers. Although focus should be on attempting to generate more innovative content, distribution and functionality should not be forgotten!! Customers today are looking for high quality, widely available and preferably free content.

The new approach ensures content is created so that it can be easily consumed across multiple mediums. Therefore content creation should either incorporate flexibility or companies should make sure content is tailor for each medium to target broad chunks of the consumers' time. According to a study conducted by Mass Relevance in partnership with the CMO Council, 35.7% of US Fortune 500 CMO view the creation of fresh & new content as one of their biggest challenges and 24.4% of them consider reaching consumers across digital touchpoints to be in their priority list.

2. Mobile searching is redefining the path to purchases
In one of their previous reports (“Desktop Search 2014: Marketers find a balance with mobile”), emarketer analysts expect that with a mobile revolution in the process, “the desktop is finding a long-term piece-but no longer the centre- of the consumer journey".

The report clearly indicates there is a strong trend towards mobile, especially during product research phase, however data shows that when looking at conversion rates - the desktop devices achieve higher superior results. This makes intuitive sense. If you think about it, on average, the amount of time spent researching a desired product increases with the capital to be committed for purchasing (i.e. you are going to spend less time looking at your next t-shirt purchase than your laptop acquisition). The researching phase can be done from your house/office or on the go. However, when making purchases (especially ones that are greater in value), subconsciously people prefer to retreat to their comfort zone, which are represented by the desktop medium.

I see one direct implication for marketers to maximise conversion rates. The "secret sauce" lies in identifying purchase intent by combining signals across different devices. In other words, marketing officers should look at how consumers obtained their information for decision making purposes (e.g. Youtube, twitter, etc.) and align it by utilising a desktop search campaign. Therefore the customer will in the end be facilitates to finalise conversion in the desktop medium (one which generates most digital purchases).

3. Combine online and offline shopping experiences

The eMarketing cites a study conducted a March 2014 study by UPS, where the results point out that 82% of US digital buyers prefer to research products from multi-channel internet retailers on the desktop/laptop (61%), tablet (11%) or smartphone (10%). These numbers dwarf the 13% who stated they would conduct research items in a physical store. So it is clear that consumers are choosing to go digital when looking at researching or purchasing. The study also shows that mobile is still lagging desktop in terms of preferred digital buying method.

So whilst digital shopping might not necessarily result in an immediate conversion, it does influence consumers in their path to purchase. Influencing works both ways. 78% of respondents have reported to engage in "webrooming" in other words researching online and afterwards buying from the shop. Conversely, 72% of respondents engaged in "showrooming", or buying over the internet after seeing the physical product in-store.

This point can be wrapped up by paraphrasing Scott Falzone, the industry director of retail specialty at Google. He recommends businesses today to attempt to increase their marketing efforts in a "channel agnostic" way. 

On another note - although this is correct, I believe the message is incomplete. The distribution is skewed towards webroomers.. The entire concept underlying showrooming is the opportunity to physically inspect the product and decide based on a real life observation whether you are going forward with a purchasing decision.

Are services different? 

Formally services are defined with respect to time as oppose to products which are defined with respect to quantity. So can you "showroom" a service ? Quite unlikely - of course some companies might offer trial period for their services, but what about advertising agencies, law firms, doctors etc. 

Connecting the dots
So there are a couple of patterns you might recognise by now. The consumer purchasing journey is changing, with mobile playing a essential role particularly in the researching and product comparison stages. This implies marketers must ensure consistent content delivery (be it informational/emotional) across the various device. In addition, the question "Is the customers getting transparent, attractive and quality  information?" takes precedence over "What channel to use?"

Successful marketers today must learn to identify the various buying signals a user gives on his devices/screens and transpose it to final conversion in the desktop medium

Sources:
https://www.emarketer.com/public_media/docs/eMarketer_Cross_Device_Trends_Roundup.pdf