Sounds brilliant, right? In theory, mobile geofencing is a smart way to reach a handful of shoppers when they are in the immediate area. But if you want to reach a large enough crowd of shoppers that really makes an impact on your business, then geofencing falls short. Some of its flaws include:

• Lack of meaningful targeting. An effective advertising campaign draws the consumer in with messaging that speaks to their interests. Perhaps the shopper is a first-time mom in the market for her first SUV/minivan. Or maybe she’s a local college student looking for a cool place to hang with her friends when she is home on break. An effective advertising campaign targets its message and call to action to a specific, well-defined audience—not just shoppers who happen to walk by a place of business.
  A geofencing advertising campaign, however, may not allow an advertiser to communicate in a way that’s meaningful to a specific consumer. Rather, geofencing generally takes the “you are in the area, you must care” approach, which is ineffective for most campaigns. To be fair, some geofencing solutions are starting to address this by targeting both location and demographics, but it’s important to remember that effective and meaningful targeting takes into consideration where consumers come from, not just where they are at the moment.

• Tracking can make consumers uncomfortable. Even though geofencing requires that consumers opt in, many users may not understand the full ramifications. By opting in, consumers allow advertisers to track their every move. Although advertising becomes more effective when it takes into consideration more consumer information, there are some things that people do not want to share—like how often they visit the doctor’s office, where their child goes to preschool each day, or how many times they visit their favorite bar each week. Do you want someone to know every time you leave the house?

• Scale is missing. Geofencing focuses on a very tight radius, making it hard to scale a campaign. You can reach only a handful of consumers traveling within a limited area. By casting such a small net, geofencing limits the ability of mobile ads to generate long-term, sustainable growth and customer return.

So is there a better way? Yes. A hyperlocal digital or mobile campaign works much better. Geofencing targets customers when they’re in the vicinity of the store, but how do you drive them there in the first place? A hyperlocal digital campaign helps you target crowds, rather than a handful, of ideal customers. Hyperlocal advertising goes beyond geofencing, ultimately allowing you to reach local neighborhoods full of shoppers likely to buy your products and services. In the long run, this strategy of reaching the right people at the right time with the right offer combines the precise targeting you need with the scale missing from geofencing.

Mobile advertising must go beyond targeting shoppers simply because they’re within a few feet of a business. There are many tools and technologies available today that empower advertisers to be very precise and focused while also reaching many qualified shoppers.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint Blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

The most robust loyalty card programs can track what consumers are buying, when they are buying it, and at which locations. As a result, retailers can target consumers with timely promotions, messages, and rewards while learning more about those shoppers’ interests to aid future personalized marketing efforts. These same insights are also very valuable to brands looking to sell their products in these stores.

According to the story, “personalized marketing has proven its ability [to] drive increased basket size, increased shopping trips, and increased shopper retention over time. And if you’re a top-tier retailer, you get all these benefits paid for by manufacturers funding those personalized promotions to your shoppers.”

So, what’s a midsized or independent retailer to do? These retailers have neither the budget of the big guys, nor the same kind of sophisticated technology. Yet, they still need to push product and drive sales.

Additionally, the Kantar report suggests that there will continue to be a “more extensive collaboration between the retailer and brand, with a focus on clear objectives and performance accountability,” a trend that clearly favors larger retail partners, especially those on which the brands have focused entire teams.

Of course, sophisticated loyalty programs are effective if you can afford them and have the resources. But equally as effective is investing shopper marketing dollars in hyperlocal digital advertising campaigns. With limited budgets and a need to focus on consumers within a very tight radius, independent and midsized stores know that focus is key. What’s more, they understand their target customers, where they live, and what they are interested in. Hyperlocal digital advertising allows them to target their ideal shoppers to drive traffic and in-store sales.

For instance, if an independent grocer is selling a new brand of gourmet coffee, it knows that not everyone who happens to live near the store is going to be interested. In addition to traditional advertising efforts, such as the weekly circular and local paper, the grocer can get more precise by creating a hyperlocal digital advertising campaign that focuses on shoppers ages 25–50 with an interest in more expensive coffee (maybe those without a hip cafe in the neighborhood).

And to make the campaign immediately actionable, the grocer can leverage real-time interest data, such as which consumers are planning to shop within the next few hours (based on past habits and social media posts), which are looking for a local coffee shop, or which have disposable income. The campaign can go beyond simply raising awareness for the new brand by offering a coupon to incentivize consumers to come into the store and buy.

That may sound just as difficult and expensive to pull off as the big guys’ sophisticated loyalty programs, but with a partner such as MaxPoint pulling all that data together and executing the program, both the brand and retailer can realize a big return for a relatively small investment.

The other advantage is that a digital campaign doesn’t have to involve long-term planning. In cases when a retailer is carrying an abundance of a brand’s product that needs to move before it expires or becomes irrelevant (think turkeys at Thanksgiving or champagne at New Year’s), the retailer can activate a campaign within hours to help drive sales at the specific locations where it has excess inventory.

The truth is that independent and midsized retailers have a lot to offer the communities they serve. They can compete fiercely against the larger, national chains not by using the same tactics as the largest brands and retailers, but rather by teaming up with partners that focus on targeted, locally focused campaigns.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint Blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

Recently, Adweek ran a piece on how many retailers are tailoring their digital campaigns around factors like weather patterns. These retailers have found that contextual ads are quite effective when they encourage a consumer to take action based on the weather. For instance, ACE Hardware has started to use real-time mobile ads to target consumers with deals on shovels and de-icers in advance of big snowstorms. They plan to do the same this spring by targeting consumers with fertilizer brands and other garden products when the weather is prime for planting and maintaining one’s yard.

This strategy seems obvious, yet smart. The examples shared in Adweek just scratch the surface when it comes to where the market is going and what brands and retailers are already doing to drive real-time interest and sales. At MaxPoint, we’ve built our business around empowering brands and retailers to target consumers with the right product at the right time, regardless of which digital medium consumers prefer.

For example:

• Let’s say you run a large grocery store chain. Your store in downtown Akron, Ohio, has a surplus of holiday Pop-Tarts, and there are just seven days until Christmas. Why not target consumers within an eight-mile radius who are likely to buy Pop-Tarts (young kids, college students) with a special offer to drive traffic and demand at your store?
• Or perhaps your vodka brand is introducing a new flavor and would like to target consumers within a 10-mile radius of a liquor store who score highly for an interest in holiday cocktails.

MaxPoint can identify hot spots of real-time interest and align that data with key demographics and physical locations to roll out a campaign that captures your audience when they are in the buying mind.

With information flowing so fast and furious, and billions of data points on consumer behavior and preferences being created every day, there is no question that real-time advertising is the real deal. We will soon live in a world where traditional advertising campaigns planned well in advance of their flights will fall by the wayside.

Advertisers are getting smarter and quicker. Are you keeping up?

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint Blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

Glocal Strategy
The authors of the piece—Jerry Wind (professor of marketing at the Wharton School), Stan Sthanunathan (vice president of marketing strategy and insights at the Coca-Cola Company), and Rob Malcolm (former president of global marketing at Diageo)—shared some interesting insights about brands’ successful and failed endeavors to appeal to a global audience. They said that a successful glocal strategy rests on three pillars:

1. A global concept that addresses a universal human motivation
2. A unified brand vision with creative delivery that respects local nuances and empowered consumers in each locale
3. An organizational architecture, including culture, technological platform, and dedicated resources, that emphasizes and facilitates dynamic and effective collaboration between the developers of global strategy and local strategists and implementers

The authors note the importance of starting with a theme that appeals to a global audience but that also includes elements that would appeal to the local audiences that will see and hear the campaign. It is important to appeal to the subset of consumers and potential customers within each market. They say that

the framework respects and encourages local decision-making while at the same time supporting a unified brand identity. Moreover, the organizational architecture aims to tap into the best ideas and talent, no matter where in the world they come from; this fluid process lets more innovative ideas get recognized and become the basis for a global strategy.

If done strategically and with the right mix of creative and branding elements, this approach is highly successful. Brands like Coca-Cola and Johnnie Walker are just a few that have executed a glocal strategy successfully.

Nlocal Strategy
What’s more, the authors say that glocal is not strictly for global brands. With so many omniculturals (people who define themselves by their lifestyles and economic and educational attainment more so than by their race or ethnicity) living in the United States, this same approach can work at the national level. This is something we at MaxPoint have been talking about for some time. We have a unique way to identify omniculturals using our Digital Zip® technology, which analyzes billions of data points for neighborhoods across the United States. Once we’ve considered offline point-of-sale data as well as shoppers’ consumption of social media, videos, music, local Web pages, and online magazines (to name just a few), we can run digital ads for our clients targeted to the right omniculturals at the neighborhood level.

Our nlocal (national and local) approach not only allows national brands to target the right neighborhoods with the right message at the right time but also eliminates wasteful spending often associated with local marketing and advertising campaigns. We work with a lot of brands to help them repurpose their assets from a national campaign and apply them to a local market in a meaningful way.

We strongly believe that more retailers and brands have to start thinking glocal and nlocal as they build their branding and advertising campaigns. The technology is in place to make these approaches seamless, successful, and scalable.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint Blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD, “Native ads are paid experiences that are complementary to the platform and content in which they are presented.” For instance, if you are reading a publication like the Huffington Post, you may not realize that one of the articles in the sidebar column (which may or may not relate to the main topic on that page) is a sponsored article. In essence, native advertising is an endorsement or ad disguised as content.

Of course, not everyone is a fan. In an article he penned for Digiday, Ben Kunz of media agency Mediassociates took this aggressive stance on native advertising:

Native advertising is a more insidious encroachment into consumer media content than any prior form of advertising. Billions of banner ad impressions may annoy readers, but they don’t misdirect users by disguising the source of the message — and this is exactly what native does. If publishers and marketers aren’t careful, they are going to poison the well of digital ad communications by breaking consumer trust.

And beyond whether or not native ads are deceitful, this form of digital advertising simply doesn’t solve for the real cause of banner blindness: hundreds and thousands of irrelevant ads appear before consumers on a daily basis. After a while, consumers stop looking at the ads altogether because they just don’t speak to their needs and interests—no matter if they’re buried in content they like or if they take over the whole screen.

The best digital advertising has focus and is effectively targeted. If you know what a consumer needs or is interested in, you can speak her language and grab her attention in much the same way that she responds to the sound of her name, even if it’s on the lips of a mother addressing her child of the same name in the grocery store. That’s the kind of digital advertising that drives store traffic and increases sales.

But to get there, you need rich consumer data sources and advanced technology. Sneakily concealing an ad doesn’t make it more precise. It just makes it harder to identify as an ad and gives consumers one more reason to lose trust in advertisers and publishers.

Banner blindness? It’s a real problem that native ads simply can’t solve.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

The series of stories looked at the big data revolution from all angles. Is big data too Big Brother? Is the amount of data growing too quickly for advertisers to keep up with? Is big data really effective in advertising, or is it just a bunch of relatively random guesses based on previous online purchasing and browsing behaviors? Or, have some companies mastered a big data strategy, and do they hold the keys to the kingdom?

The answer is yes and no to all the above. We’ve extracted some interesting pieces from the stories in Ad Age to paint a picture of where the big data industry appears to be today—at least as it concerns the advertising world.

Data Hoarding
In her story “Data War Dispatch: Turning Data Crude Into Real Revenue,” Kate Kaye wrote that “data commoditization is a concern for the new crop of information merchants. . . . Brands are especially averse to the risk of competitors accessing their information. It’s no wonder large retailers and product brands keep the bulk of their customer data locked in secure servers housed in the Fort Knox-esque facilities of data firms such as Acxiom, like so much gold bullion.”

Although some retailers do opt for a more holistic view of data via data firm APIs, many are still wary of granting too much access. As a result, these retailers run the risk of missing out on more effective and precise ways of reaching customers and prospects. The one-dimensional (although very rich) data they have tells just a part of the story of consumer behavior and preferences. Because this hoarding mentality is hurting many large retailers, it’s critical that they look beyond their fears to incorporate a broader digital data strategy.

The Data Lifecycle
One of the most interesting elements of the big data issue was an infographic that showed the lifecycle of data associated with a single purchase. It was a compelling illustration of how one purchase sets off a chain reaction of data discovery and consumer intelligence inventory.

Standalone Data Management Platforms
It was Jack Neff’s piece, however, that resonated with us the most. He discussed the trends that we are seeing within our own customer base of large brands. In his piece, “Package-Goods Marketers Build Private Trading Desks to Hoard Data,” Neff describes how some large brands, such as Kellogg, Unilever, and Kimberly-Clark, are moving toward a model of creating their own standalone data management platforms and trading desks. This is an effort to reduce expenses associated with large multiclient trading desks and to avoid tying up data and insights in an agency-owned system that the brand may not be able to access in the future.

Yet, Forrester Research believes this approach is still rare. In a 2012 Forrester survey, the company found that although a quarter of marketers say they use agency trading desks, only 7% report using in-house trading desks.

“My sense is that ultimately a lot of marketers aren’t really set up to take execution fully in-house when they have traditionally been so reliant on external support,” said Forrester analyst Joanna O’Connell.

The Endgame
The net/net here is that there is still a lot of shifting going on in the advertising industry when it comes to the most effective and nonintrusive way to use big data. The way brands and retailers attack a big data strategy may differ greatly, but the endgame is to provide a more successful way to reach customers and drive additional revenue.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out Ad Age‘s big data issue, and you are interested in how big data may work for your organization, it’s a worthy read. The issue contains insights from retailers and brands that have found ways to use big data successfully to improve their understanding of customer segments, effective marketing tactics, and the quickest path to success.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

For marketers, big data enables a more holistic view of customers, creating a unified view of all online and offline behaviors: Where do customers shop? What brands do they buy? What level of influence do they have on their friends’ purchasing decisions because they share on social media? Many companies now even have a unique and personalized docket of preferences for each customer—a gold mine for understanding what customers really want.

A recent Wall Street Journal article provided a great example of how Intercontinental Hotels created a highly customized communication targeted at its Priority Club Rewards members. When referring to Intercontinental’s new email marketing programs, the piece said, “Where previous campaigns might have on average seven to 15 customized marketing messages, the new campaign has 1,552. The messages are rolled out in stages to an initial core of 12 customer groups, each of which is defined by 4,000 attributes.” In the end, the new campaign generated a 35% higher conversion rate than previous campaigns.

It may seem obvious that getting smarter about what your customers want is a more effective way to reach them, but thousands of marketing campaigns are executed every day that lack the precision that big data offers.

Now just imagine how much more precise big data can make a marketing campaign when you’re trying to go hyperlocal.

No longer do retailers and brands have to spend the time and money to roll out national campaigns to every neighborhood in the country. Instead, big data helps them understand where likely buyers actually live—all the way down to the neighborhood level—so they can effectively target that group based on preferences, purchase history, and social media tendencies. This is a radically different approach from the way national advertising campaigns used to run. Now, advertisers can run the big ad on a major network for brand exposure but then scale the campaign down to specifically target the neighborhoods in the central part of Michigan or the western part of New York, for example, where shoppers are most likely to respond to the call to action.

As big data strategies and practices continue to evolve, marketing campaigns will only get smarter and more effective. So if you don’t think big data is a big deal yet, just wait until your favorite hotel tells you that they know you are ready to take a vacation, just as you’re thinking it yourself.

Is your company using big data in its advertising? Tell us how below.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

Here are a few tips to consider as you start your creative agency search:

Look for an agency with a portfolio of diverse clients, including some in your industry.
Don’t underestimate the value of working with an agency that understands the broader market landscape and industry terminology. Companies that shy away from agencies that have worked with a competitor fail to see the value in the situation. An agency that has worked with a competitor probably understands the nuances and challenges of the market. It has likely done a fair amount of focus-group testing to understand the messages and themes that resonate with customers and prospects and can share those lessons learned. There is also far less ramp-up time for an agency like this, which means you can stay focused on the creative aspect of design and execution and worry less about the agency “getting it.”

Make sure the agency has experience designing for digital channels.
There are still a number of agencies out there that focus solely on print or traditional channels, or that “dabble” in—or even outsource—digital work. Although that may fit your need for the short term, it’s best to work with an agency that has experience working across various digital platforms. As the world moves further away from print and more toward digital, you will want your ideas to translate in every medium. If the agency does not have the experience, but you really want to work with it, ensure that the agency has a strong partner network of digital experts.

Remember that chemistry is important.
From start to finish, a creative process can take months and even years to complete. In short, you’re going to be with these guys for a while. It is important that you like your team. Sure, there will be creative differences and some bumps in the road, but you have to have a mutual respect and understanding that you are all working toward the greater end. One component of chemistry to consider is location. Many of the world’s most creative minds reside in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. If your company doesn’t mind paying for travel or is comfortable with videoconferencing, it may not matter where your agency of record is headquartered. If your past experiences with vendors have shown you that local contacts equal better relationships with your team, narrow your search to those agencies that are close.

Find an agency that can clearly define the project process for you.
You should feel comfortable knowing how your project will progress. If you have ever been through the process, you know that everyone will have something to say about your creative campaign when all is said and done. Some good, some bad, some complaints, some praise. That is why it is critical that any agency you work with clearly define the project process before you start. If you are far along a path of design and your stakeholder changes his mind, what happens? How far does that set you back? You want to make sure you set a series of check-ins and tests along the way and that everyone (on both sides) remains committed to the process. Setting an anticipated timeline of deliverables up front saves a lot of heartache in the long run.

Have your own tips for selecting a creative agency? Leave a comment below.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

Nielsen examined 18 real TV schedules across key advertiser verticals. Categories included CPG (specifically health and beauty aids, food, and beverages), technology, automotive, retail, finance, and telecom.

The study provided a number of compelling insights that brands should consider as they determine how to divvy up their ad spend. We’ve included a few snippets from the findings that we think are most interesting:

• Planning and running online ads first can boost how well both the online and TV portions of a campaign work.

One of the largest risks associated with TV advertising is cost. Nailing a spot during primetime or a big event like the Super Bowl can cost advertisers quite a chunk of change, and there is often little insight into what impact the ad will have. Many national spots are minimally effective because there’s no opportunity to target likely purchasers with localized, relevant messaging. For instance, a luxury car brand is more likely to have success if it targets a neighborhood of wealthy consumers with disposable income, rather than targeting a lower-income neighborhood or one that relies heavily on public transportation.

The study notes these limitations of TV advertising, finding that message recall from an online ad is 40%, double that of what TV (broadcast and cable) nets (20%). General recall from online ads is 64%, and brand recall is 50%; TV advertising teeters at 46% and 27%, respectively.

Planning and running video ads online prior to running the same ads on TV, however, boosted brand recall by 33%. Similarly, viewers of an online display ad were 25% more likely to remember the brand if they had seen the ad online before viewing the ad on TV.

Combined, digital and TV advertising can be a powerful mix, more powerful than either channel is alone.

• Online viewers watch more online video content for longer.

The study found that traditional TV viewing numbers are somewhat flat while total monthly online streaming numbers continue to rise. The average viewer now watches about six hours of streamed content per month. The demographic most affected by the switch from traditional TV to online streaming is 18- to 34-year-olds. Women tend to stream more content than men, while men tend to spend more time viewing the content (with the exception of long-form content).

These insights are a goldmine for brands. Brands not only know where to target their key audience, but also how long is too long before they lose an audience. For instance, if men are more likely to view for longer periods, then brand advertisers can wait a bit longer for the call to action to appear in their videos. On the other hand, ads targeted primarily at women must cut to the chase sooner.

• Reallocating dollars to online channels builds higher quality, more effective reach at a lower cost.

Both CPG and non-CPG brands can greatly enhance their effectiveness by allocating some of their overall ad spend to digital. The report indicates that by shifting to digital, advertisers see a 4% increase in overall reach. The most effective approach is a blend of TV and online advertising. CPG advertisers can reach 17% of their audience on both platforms by shifting 15% of spend to digital.

Overall, the importance of digital in the advertising ecosystem continues to gain traction. Within our own customer base, we’ve found that the national brands that focus on a hybrid of national TV and local online campaigns have had the most success. However, we also continue to see a great deal of traction for small and midsize companies that commit a majority of their budgets to online channels.

It will be interesting to continue to watch this shift, especially as the 18–34 demographic continues to mature and rely on digital as its primary channel for information and entertainment.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.

No—and here’s why.

Hyperlocal has been an overused, poorly defined term for years, especially in the context of advertising. Some view direct mail as hyperlocal. Others see placing an ad on a local newspaper’s site as hyperlocal. Yet, both of these models (much like EveryBlock) have failed to capture the essence and long-term value of customer acquisition and retention.

Why?

Because they take a one-size-fits-all approach. For the most part, they consider everyone within a certain radius to be interested in the same thing. Does the 20-year-old student care about the same products, services, and content as her 80-year-old grandfather who lives in the same town? It’s highly unlikely. There is no precision or science to this approach. It is not customized to a very specific audience. It is also a waste of valuable resources and dollars, which many small local businesses don’t have to spend.

Hyperlocal should be about understanding and catering to an individual’s (or close group of individuals’) interests, preferences, and propensities. Herein lies the advantage of hyperlocal when it comes to advertising. Imagine a world in which the new martini bar in town can tailor and execute a digital advertising campaign to its key demographic: women ages 25–50, making $100,000 or more a year and living within a five-mile radius of the bar. Had that bar advertised in a local paper or even on a local news site, it’s very unlikely it would have hit even a fraction of its intended audience. With a truly hyperlocal ad campaign, a restaurant (or retailer or brand) has the power to reach only the audience it believes is most likely to come into its establishment and drive sales.

So, although the intentions have been good, we believe that the term hyperlocal has been given a bad name in the industry. An advertiser needs much more than a zip code or DMA (designated market area) to truly get hyperlocal. Seventy-five percent of all US consumer spending occurs at retail locations within 15 miles of consumers’ homes—an area smaller than most DMAs.¹ By targeting the most relevant consumers at the neighborhood level instead of the entire DMA, businesses can serve digital ads to only the most qualified prospects, thereby reducing wasteful ad spend.

Let’s take a look at regional businesses, such as restaurant chains and franchises. These businesses now have the ability to leverage technology that analyzes and combines offline and online data, enabling them to learn more about their target guests. Using these data, business owners can get hyperlocal by pinpointing the neighborhoods where their ideal customers most likely live. To give a real-world example, a national restaurant chain franchisee who owns more than 100 East Coast locations evaluated what is ordered throughout the day, every day, at each location. By analyzing guest traffic patterns, typical orders, etc., the franchisee was able to identify trends and serve up relevant, online advertising campaigns based on that data and specific to each location.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Although those who fail to capitalize on what hyperlocal has to offer will continue to fall by the wayside (EveryBlock, for example), there is still tremendous opportunity in the market for those companies that take full advantage of the technology and data available to get it right.

Thank you for visiting the OnPoint blog! If you have any questions, comments, or inquiries, please contact onpoint@maxpoint.com.