Make the Most of Digital Touchpoints

CU360
January 9, 2009 | COMMENTS

As online advertising investment continues to grow along with the number of digital touchpoints, the interactive landscape is becoming increasingly complicated, with marketers left to wonder how to best allocate their digital budgets.

The best thing companies can do in the way of a digital strategy is to master their own Web sites, according to a study, "Identifying the Drivers of Digital Effectiveness," from the Corporate Executive Board's Advertising and Marketing Communications Roundtable, in partnership with Nielsen/NetRatings.

Four digital touchpoints—Web sites, e-mail, display advertising, and paid search—were evaluated on their power to boost the effectiveness of four intended outcomes:

1. Consumer awareness and information gathering
2. Consideration and purchase
3. Brand favorability
4. Consumer engagement

The study offers insight into how marketers can leverage their arsenal of interactive tools to create the most effective digital strategies. "The goal of this study was to provide our members clear direction on where to invest digital media dollars to drive deeper consumer engagement," explains Molly Maycock, executive director of the Corporate Executive Board's marketing practice.

Web sites rule

When it comes to the most effective touchpoints by outcome, there's one common thread: Web sites rule.

In general, Web sites generated the greatest increase in online-marketing effectiveness. The effectiveness of a touchpoint also hinges on the targeted outcome. While e-mails are very effective once a consumer is moving closer to a purchase decision, for example, they are quite ineffective at changing brand favorability.

"The Web shouldn't be viewed as just one consumer marketing vehicle, but rather a series of different engagement opportunities, each with various degrees of impact within the stages of the purchase cycle," says Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics at Nielsen//NetRatings.

If marketers want to attract consumers, they must make sure their Web site is up to snuff. Web sites continue to serve as a key platform for communicating a brand's message through the purchase cycle. Overall, Web sites were the most effective digital touchpoint for all four outcomes. For most marketers, efforts to build gold-standard sites with the consumer's activity in mind will pay the largest return on each digital dollar invested.

The study determined Web sites should contain a combination of up-to-date product and service information, along with branded entertainment and downloadable consumer incentives. Furthermore, a site's content should change in relation to a consumer's intent.

Display ads

While display ads have been hammered in the press, the study demonstrates that a marketer should not count them out.

Most notably, display ads have a strong ability to deliver product information and affect brand favorability. In fact, marketers who focus on delivering strong display ads improve their overall digital marketing effectiveness by 19% and 13%, respectively, for each of these outcomes. But among the three industries analyzed in the study, display ads performed best for travel services.

Purchase behavior

E-mail proves most effective when a consumer is about to make a purchase decision or, alternately, when companies are trying to drive consumer engagement. Not surprisingly, the best way to boost e-mail's effectiveness is through attaching a compelling consumer incentive— effectiveness was improved 37% in the consideration and purchase stages.

E-mails associated with consumer incentives are an excellent way to engage consumers, thus serving two purposes for marketers. E-mail gained 25% effectiveness in improving consumer engagement when a consumer incentive was included.

That ability to drive purchases translates especially well to the financial services industry, as it was first in its ability to drive purchase behavior. Consumers in the purchase consideration stage are looking for incentives. Financial services e-mails enjoyed a 43% boost in effectiveness when a consumer incentive was included.

Financial services firms would benefit from sending e-mails with consumer incentives to customers who have already visited their Web sites or clicked on a display ad.

Overall, consumers reported that paid search was one of the least effective touchpoints of the four measured in the study. The one exception was in the financial services field. Consumers seeking financial services put the highest value on paid searches, ranking it the second most effective touchpoint for improving awareness, stimulating purchases, and improving consumer engagement.