This past weekend I had the privilege of driving the new 2011 BMW 535i. It’s a really nice car, but beyond the nice handling and comfort of the car, one thing stood out to me. The technology in this car is just magnificent. One of the features that the car boast in it’s technology package is the ability to search for any item using the built-in Google search functionality on the Navigation unit. To be specific, you can search for a few million points of interest using the Google and BMW database. Here is a video demo of the product. (more…)

Ok, so a while back I wrote an article on how social conversations are impacting search results on the two biggest search engines (Google and Bing). Well, I don’t think I gave that article enough justice. After all, social and search represent two of the three pillars in the digital ecosystem. The combination of them has consequences for anyone wanting to get awareness online (and awareness is what we all strive for as marketers, right?). Let’s break this down.

First, what the combination of social into search means on the surface is that people have more authority than brands. It used to be that brands could buy keywords and conduct spamy type activities to get their way to the top of the search results. While buying keywords is not going away anytime soon, the ability to load your site with useless content to generate higher ranking on the search engines has gone away as evident in the latest Google algorithm adjustment.

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I was just reading an article on HubSpot about the impact Amazon’s Facebook integration will have on eCommerce (link here). It’s a good article, simply because I think there is a lot of personalization and recommendations that Amazon can dig up through someone’s social preferences on Facebook. For example, Amazon can pull my friend’s birthday’s and then list out what music they might like based on what music was listed on their Facebook profile. It’s a pretty powerful way to give product recommendations.

While I think recommendation systems like this can work for the majority of shopping experiences, I think there are challenges with grocery shopping in particular. This is simply because there is a lack of grocery related preferences on Facebook. The current Facebook preferences a user has to enter on their profile are broken down by the following categories:

• Education and Work
• Religion & Political Views
• Favorite Music, Books, Movies, TV Shows and Games
• Favorite Teams and Athletes
• Activities and Interest
• Fan Pages

Notice the glaring omittance of Favorite Foods? As someone who works with grocery retailers to provide their shoppers more value, I’d personally like to see Facebook add a category that allows people to list their favorite foods. This would allow more grocery retailers to make stronger food related recommendations to consumers who are connecting via Facebook on their website. So Facebook, when are you going to allow your users to highlight their food preferences? Sure, there are Facebook fan pages, like Starbucks, Pancakes, Brownies, etc that allow you to do that, but when are users going to enter more preferences?

At GSN we analyze a ton of shopper data to make sense of what’s happening in the shopping world, which is why we call ourselves the experts in digital shopper behavior for the retail channel. We set out to do just that this past holiday season. Some questions that we had where: What are shopping trends in grocery right now? More specifically, was there anything interesting in the data?

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Google and Bing announced this week that links shared on Facebook and Twitter will impact search results. This is big news for marketers who want their website to appear in the top of search results and attain visibility. Marketers will have to jump into social, but it also means they need to be smarter about how consumers are motivated to share content amongst friends.

Prior to the announcement, marketers would focus on optimizing the keywords within their website content in order to get a good listing on the search engines. Even the Google Social Search product that was in place prior to this week’s announcement really didn’t change that. By the way, Google’s Social Search product delivered search results that are influenced by your friends and social graph, based on the links they are sharing. It was an additional search listing seperate from your organic search result. For example, if you and another person are both searching for tailgating, and your friend liked a tailgating article from a website, well then that website would show up in my search result when I search for tailgating.

However, this announcement changes all of that. The two search engines will use what they call social author authority to influence organic search results. Presumably, if you are a highly influential Twitter user who shares a variety of tweets (which are then commented on, re-tweeted, and shared across your large network), you’ll have a good cache of authority and the links you share will enjoy a boost in SEO.

As always, we want to hear your thoughts.

As a retailer, should you be concerned with how much traffic comes to your website and how many people are registering? Yes, you should be. We’ve proven over and again that more traffic to your website and more registered users equates to more in-store sales. It’s a powerful, yet simple, equation. Here are some tips to help get people to your website: (more…)

Retailers in our network are finding that Internet only coupon offers are not only driving increases in web traffic but also sales.

Recently one of our retail partners ran two, one week promotions in their print circular instructing their customers to visit their website for an unbelievably hot “Internet Only” coupon. The coupon offer was for a significantly reduced price on a frozen food product.

Here are the results: (more…)

Find New Ways to Stretch Your Advertising Dollars

Ok, your brand sales are lagging and market share is down. As a marketing manager you’ve done your sales and market share analysis. You’ve figured out the BDI’s and CDI’s for your respective category and brand across all DMA’s nationwide. You know where you need more marketing support to build awareness, trial and continued usage. You’ve even isolated opportunity gaps on a retail account specific basis. But that was the easy part…the hard part is what to do about it.

Almost instantly geo-targeted advertising and promotional options come to mind – local TV or radio, direct mail, regional FSI’s, internet advertising and SEM programs, in-store marketing campaigns and so on.

And then it hits you. No not the solution…but the reality of the problem. You have no budget – at least nowhere near the budget you’ll need to impact all the key DMAs where your brand needs additional support. Most of the programs you’re considering are incremental to your existing plan…and they’re expensive, very expensive. Somehow you need to take your current plan and make it work harder…smarter…more cost efficient. To use an old saying, you need “more juice for the squeeze.”

Fortunately solutions now exist to segment the market in much more detail than DMA’s or even zip codes…and then reach your best potential shoppers in those precisely defined areas.

For example, it’s now possible to segment the US market into 34,000 “digital zip codes,” that’s over 2½ times more defined than any traditional targeting method. And that’s just the beginning. You can also determine which of those digital zip codes are your critical “purchase clusters,” areas made up of your brand’s best current and potential shoppers. It’s done by overlaying digital zip codes with shopper transactional data, combined with demographic & lifestyle analytics, and your own segmentation criteria.

You can then reach shoppers in your selected “purchase clusters” with a specialized form of highly targeted digital advertising. You don’t waste money on advertising across a total DMA, or multiple DMA’s, which often include areas with limited sales potential for your brand. And because it’s a digital advertising solution, it’s far more cost effective than any traditional advertising method. In other words you get… More juice for the squeeze.

It’s even possible to specifically target purchase clusters on a retail account, even store specific basis. This capability enables cost effective shopper marketing programs that build brand equity, awareness and trial while simultaneously supporting your retail partner’s category specific sales objectives. In other words you get… Even more juice for the squeeze.

Purchase Based Targeting Example

Women, Age 25 – 54, Baking Mix Category

Kroger Locations, Cincinnati and Dayton

Today brand marketers have new tools at their disposal that can dramatically improve the cost efficiency and overall performance of their advertising efforts. Budgets can be optimized to build brand awareness while also enabling account specific shopper marketing programs. Purchase Based Digital Advertising is one of the most powerful examples. So what are you waiting for…let’s start squeezing a little harder.

It wasn’t long ago when impulse buying was in – consumers rarely made a grocery list and simply bought on impulse. In these times, CPG manufacture’s marketing efforts focused on the aisle to reach out to consumers. But two major shifts have changed all of that: the economic climate and technology change. Now is the time that CPG manufactures’ need to focus on different reach points to influence the purchase.

Economic Impact:

This is a no brainer, before the economy tanked; consumers rarely planned a grocery trip as much as they do now. Planning breeds saving money. If you stick to the list, then you walk out with only the things you need.

Technology Change:

Regardless of the economic climate, consumers view grocery shopping as a chore (i.e. not fun). That’s exactly why making a list has always been viewed negatively by consumers, and they rarely did it. They would have to look through a print circular and then go to a few recipe sites to plan out their shopping trip. Not to mention shuffling through a ton of coupons from multiple FSI’s. Essentially, a consumer was juggling a print circular, FSI and a computer with four tabs opened to their favorite recipe websites to plan a single trip. No wonder why planning a grocery trip seemed like a chore. That’s also a heck of a lot of touch points that a CPG manufacture needs to hit the consumer over the head with (i.e. costly and a lot to manage on their end).

Grocery Shopping Planning Has Evolved

However, with technology comes change that makes chores seem less laborious (i.e. like the automobile did to travel). Grocery retail websites are no different. These websites provide the perfect blend of tools for the consumer to plan their grocery trip with ease. Just think about it for a second, a consumer has the ability to view the store circular, recipes and coupons and add items to their grocery list all under one website (i.e. easy work). Since it’s so easy to plan a trip with these tools, it makes me wonder if impulse buying will make a return.

In fact, a recent NPD Group report (Click for link to article) found that 94 percent of U.S. households prepare a written shopping list prior to grocery shopping. Another 72 percent of shoppers never or occasionally buy items not on the list. While grocery websites are just part of that planning that’s going on today, it’s an awfully lot of consumers who are preparing a written list prior to grocery shopping. It also raises the question on whether CPG manufactures’ need to rethink their touch points on reaching consumers on the path to purchase.

What are your thoughts? Please comment below.

The Impact of Intent: Insights on the state of mind of the web user

People use their computers and handheld extensions for an increasing number of functions in their everyday life. As you can infer from your own experience, consumers are in different ‘modes’ depending on what they are using their computer or handheld to do.

The impact of your ad during various states of mind.

Mind Modes.
When people are in the personal communications mode (such as social networking sites) their minds are not wrapped around advertising messages. The messages are peripheral noise, sometimes breaking through, sometimes not. It takes many impressions to ensure that a message will reach out through the clutter of the conversation that has the consumer engaged. They are rarely capable of being relevant, and even if there is contextual mapping to the conversation, the ad still sits there wrapped in an ‘ad’ spot where the consumer has it already mentally categorized as ‘noise I can ignore.’ Advertisers fight this with animation, graphics, social conversations and other attention-getting devices, but it is hard work because the ad is fighting the environment and fighting against its intrusive nature.

When they are in more of a ‘special interest’ mode, such as visiting a food site, reading reviews, looking at recipes, the advertising is much more central to their mindset. This is the classic ‘contextual’ mode that has served advertisers well, and is why advertisers are best served when they are surrounded by messages that are relevant to the advertisement, and more important, when the consumer’s mind mode is actively considering information in the area.

The Most Interesting Mode is Intent.
This is when the consumer switches from ‘reading content’ to ‘using an application tool as a means to an end.’ Search is the most obvious example. The heavy ‘intent’ mode of a search user is why searches ‘convert’ into consumer actions so much more, well, intently. This, in turn, is why search, at 6% of online page views, is 50% of online advertising dollars. These are the pages that count.

Grocery Store Websites are search-like tools that consumers use to plan their shopping trips. They are deeply engaged in searching the information:

• What is on special?
• What coupons can I print this week?
• What should I place on my list?
• What are the nutritional values?
• How can I use this product?
• What is new?
• How can I make my store visit easier?

In this environment, your advertisement isn’t clutter in the chatter, and it isn’t interesting information. It becomes vital data to be used in the search to fill the shopping cart wisely.

What are your thoughts? Please comment in the comment section below.