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SUMMARY: Of
all the potential customers in the world, which are my ideal customers? How
can I reach them with my brand’s advertising? And
serve their needs when they want more info? Today
we bring you three companies that answered key questions like these in our
latest article. Read on for examples from Autobahn Indoor Speedway, a home improvement
website, and an online wine store. |
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April 19, 2021 by Daniel Burstein, Senior
Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute
This article was originally published in
the MarketingSherpa
email newsletter.
Where
in the customer journey should you introduce your price? At the customer’s
maximum moment of motivation, according to Flint McGlaughlin in Pricing Strategy: Leveraging customer psychology to maximize
average customer value (McGlaughlin is CEO and Managing
Director of MECLABS Institute, parent organization of MarketingSherpa).
Just
one example of the importance of understanding the nature and geography (in the
customer journey) of customer motivation and tapping into that motivation at
the right moment(s) in your buy process.
To
help you improve your customer understanding, we bring you
three stories from your peers in this MarketingSherpa article. First up, a home
improvement website that identified its ideal customer segments. Then, an
online wine purveyor that mapped advertising campaigns to purchase intent. And
lastly, a family entertainment business that replaced phone calls with
AI-driven automation to better manage pre-purchase customer conversations.
Quick Case Study #1: Home improvement website
discovers best customer segments, increases opt-in conversions by 50%
“Prior
to using analytics software, we used to run Facebook and Google ads targeting
demographics we believed would use our home maintenance plans. We thought all
homeowners would be interested in our offering,” said Robin Mathew, Co-founder, SkilledHub.
After running some ads, the team quickly realized they were not getting the
conversions they were hoping for.
“We
decided to integrate the HotJar plugin to visualize user interaction with the
website. Google Analytics was used to monitor traffic and identify our
best-performing channels,” Mathew said. This helped the team gauge customer
engagement and improve its offering. They learned that seniors above the age of
65 and first-time home buyers (below the age of 30) were spending more time on
the website.
“We
then conducted surveys using SurveyMonkey to get some early feedback on the
website. Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to further conduct focus groups and
gather data in order to figure out customer pain points,” Mathew said. This
gave the team some insight into why these two target demographics were more
interested in the home improvement plans.
They
developed conversion funnels targeting seniors and first-time homebuyers,
tailoring the messaging with a care package for seniors and a yearly home
maintenance checklist for first-time homebuyers.
The
team improved the click-through rate from an ad a landing page where they
offered a lead magnet from 3% to 11%. Opt-in email conversions for the lead
magnet increased by 50%, ultimately resulting in more sales.
Quick Case Study #2: By focusing on purchase
intent, wine store increases ROAS 24% above its goal
Advertising
wine online is awash with complexity. That’s partly because alcohol is a highly
regulated industry. But it’s also due to the vast range of purchase intent
consumers have when discovering and searching for wine online.
Some
consumers know exactly the bottle they want, down to the producer, region,
vintage, and varietal. Others stumble upon options, browse them, and narrow
down searches to find a bottle to buy. All that is to say: it’s critical for
wine retailers to align intent to products to ad spend, so they can drive
return on investment (ROI) from search and social.
Gary’s
Wine & Marketplace understands this imperative firsthand.
The family-owned business offers some 3,000 wines and wine accessories. About a
year ago, the retailer’s small marketing team had enough bandwidth to support a
few simple Google and Bing Shopping campaigns. Remaining resources went to
other priority channels, including email, direct, comparison shopping engines,
and social.
Traffic
to the shopping ads varied greatly in terms of value. Expensive, generic
queries generated clicks, but few conversions. Branded and longer-tail terms
were more lucrative. But the retailer didn’t have a way to actively capture and
focus on them.
Issues
also arose around bottle size and price. Ads for the retailer’s 1.5-liter
bottles were appearing alongside competitors’ 750-milliliter bottles of the
same wine. The 750-milliliter bottles are not only cheaper, they’re usually
what most wine shoppers want. Gary’s Wine was losing conversions because it
struggled to ensure the accuracy of its product feed and drive price
competitiveness in Google and Bing Shopping.
“We
didn’t have the resources to sort through thousands of wines, determine how to
better structure Shopping campaigns, and strategically bid products,” said Mike
Fisch, Director of Innovation, Gary’s Wine & Marketplace. “We also weren’t
in a position to add onto other efforts that would expand our digital presence,
like search campaigns and paid social.”
What’s
more, Gary’s Wine recognized that any channel is never a set-it-and-forget-it proposition.
“Shopping preferences change with the seasons,” said Fisch. “Rosè picks up in
the summer, while premium wines and champagnes pick up over the holidays. We
also run two annual sales where we heavily promote existing inventory to
prepare for the upcoming season. But we didn’t have time to adjust campaigns
and bids with these fluctuations in our business.”
The
retailer decided to work with Sidecar to manage
Google Ads, Bing Shopping, and Facebook ads.
“We
were getting overwhelmed by the number of marketing channels out there, and the
complexities involved in managing them,” said Fisch.
The
retailer’s search strategy now centers on mapping campaigns to purchase intent.
This approach ensures the retailer is spending aggressively on high-intent
shoppers and conservatively on low-intent shoppers, with the ultimate goal of
meeting an efficient return on ad spend (ROAS) target.
For
instance, ads appearing in ZIP codes near the retailer’s store locations have
custom copy that promotes free same-day delivery and one-hour pickup. Using
paid search to drive local search efforts has been the easier and successful
alternative to local inventory ads for Gary’s Wine.
Creative Sample #1: Gary’s Wine national ad
Creative Sample #2: Gary’s Wine local ad
Additionally,
the retailer wanted to maximize retargeting opportunities with Facebook
Advertising. Google and Microsoft do not allow alcohol retailers to run
retargeting campaigns on their platforms, which made Facebook Advertising a
critical part of Gary’s Wine’s strategy.
If a
shopper added a product to her cart in the last 10 days and visits Facebook,
she gets served the appropriate product ad. An ad for a past customer, on the
other hand, will trigger much later.
Because
paid search was a new channel for Gary’s Wine, the team spent conservatively in
the first month and grew the spend methodically over the next couple months to
reach the retailer’s ROAS goal. The strategy of focusing on user intent gained
so much momentum, however, that nine months into paid search, the retailer’s
ROAS averaged 24% higher than its goal.
Gary’s
Wine continues to meet and exceed its return goals across all managed channels.
Now, 12 months in, Google Shopping ROAS remains on average 24% above the
retailer’s goal. Bing Shopping ROAS on average exceeded the retailer’s goal by
44%. Additionally, year-over-year growth in Google Shopping for the 12-month
period includes: revenue (+54%), orders (+39%), and impressions (+58%).
Gary’s
Wine has also achieved a competitive impression share in search, ranking among
the top three wine advertisers every month. This performance is a result of the
retailer making the most of high-intent (branded) search terms. The retailer’s
top 10 search queries, by conversions and by volume, are branded terms. As the
strategy emphasized these terms, while downplaying generic ones, the budget was
spent efficiently.
The
retailer’s Facebook revenue has reached all-time highs. In the first nine
months since launch, the team was able to increase revenue eight times due to
the expanded reach and improved efficiency of the retailer’s retargeting
campaigns.
Quick Case Study #3: Autobahn Indoor Speedway
uses customer service automation tool to better serve customers, gains 10x more
leads
Autobahn Indoor
Speedway is an indoor electronic go-kart racing track, hosting
thousands of racers each year while also providing a spot for community
activities including business events, meetings, and parties. Autobahn offers a
number of different experiences including axe throwing, arcade games, summer
camps and field trips.
The
family entertainment business has gained 10x more leads by leveraging an
AI-powered (artificial intelligence) chatbot.
In
2018, the organization had an increasing number of phone calls that were
difficult to handle, which raised a critical question – why does a customer
want to call a location rather than send an email or use the contact form on
its website?
The
team also encountered a problem with mishandled, obsolete, and incorrect
documents being delivered to clients.
They
decided to test chatbot automation by using Botsify on AutoBahn’s
website as well as its 11 Facebook pages (the entertainment business has 11
separate venues, each with its own collection of features and information).
Creative Sample #3: Automated chatbot on Autobahn Indoor Speedway
website
After
a year, the chatbot has automatically engaged more than 200,000 users and
gathered nearly 10,000 warm leads via conversational forms, all of which have
been seamlessly synced in Autobahn’s PipeDrive CRM.
The
automated chatbot can:
·
Respond to customer
queries
·
Redirect them to a
specific landing page based on their needs
·
Book appointments
·
Gather user information
·
Provide location
information of the nearest Autobahn venue
·
Share the availability
of private tracks
·
Provide information
regarding promotional offers and discounts
·
Or connect them with a
customer representative (if necessary).
Creative Sample #4: Example of automated chatbot flow for Autobahn
Indoor Speedway
So
far Autobahn has had 224,729 customers use its automated chatbot which
responded to 671,541 messages.
The
bot’s dashboard thus claims it saved customers 335,772 hours (I will note this
is based on the assumption of saving customers 30 minutes per interaction. In
this reporter’s humble opinion, that is an overestimation of time savings. But
I provide all the data here to you to allow you to make your own opinion. And,
in fairness, it was probably still a significant time savings for customers who
would prefer an automated chat conversation versus a phone call).
The
average chat lasted for 1.27 minutes. The chatbot has helped the team lower the
cost per lead to four dollars.
“I
immediately noticed a higher level of customer loyalty because we weren't
leaving them on hold and the information given was still 100 percent correct.
In addition, after using the chatbot, I see a 5x return on investment,” said
David Larson, Managing Partner, Autobahn.
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