Have you ever pondered the strategic placement of advertisements for fatigue tonics and medications at travel-centric destinations like train stations and bustling commuter hubs? Research shared by The Sleep Doctor suggests that travel is identified as a significant factor contributing to fatigue. Their research indicates that 26.8% of adults in the United States who have traveled within the past year have reported experiencing travel fatigue.
By targeting these specific locations, pharmaceutical companies are effectively maximising their visibility among weary travellers who are more likely to be seeking relief for their exhaustion.
Addressing the third question in this Using 6Ws Framework for Cracking Personalisation series, the concept of Where assists marketers in determining the specific locations where a personalised experience becomes highly pertinent and impactful for their intended target audience.
Failing to define relevant target locations for personalisation campaigns can have detrimental effects on engagement and ultimately result in lower conversion rates. This can lead to frustration among marketers and negatively impact their confidence in personalisation initiatives. Consequently, it becomes crucial to address the question of identifying the specific places where interactions relevant to your campaign are occurring as a crucial aspect of the campaign planning process.
I break answering Where into 2 parts:
- Touchpoint- the channel (web-sites, mobile-apps, IoT devices, Email and so on) where you are planning to present personalised experiences
- Traffic Adequacy —whether the selected pages or screens are the ones that are most frequently visited by the target audiences
1. Touchpoint:
Start answering Where with identifying the right channel for your personalisation campaign.
Utilise analytics data to identify the touch-points where your audience engages the most. For example, if you are promoting the latest broadband deals, targeting people visiting property and rental websites can capture their attention. On the other hand, for deals exclusively available to your existing customers, it may be necessary for them to authenticate their identity first. In such cases, leveraging your own digital platforms becomes a more effective approach to promote these offers.
When it comes to paid media, addressing the question of Where can significantly impact media efficiency. By targeting the right audiences at relevant locations, one can prevent the wastage of expensive impressions. This approach helps move away from the ineffective “spray-and-pray” model, allowing for more targeted and efficient advertising strategies.
Determining the appropriate channel plays a crucial role in selecting the technology for personalisation. For instance, if you plan to promote a new line of sneakers on fitness websites, you may need a Customer Data Platform (CDP) or will need to provide specific instructions to your media agency, as this becomes an integral part of campaign planning. On the other hand, when it comes to owned media, you must ensure that the targeted locations possess the necessary tools like Optimizely or Adobe Target before commencing work on the campaign. While it may seem obvious, it is important to avoid the scenario where all the effort put into campaign planning is wasted due to the absence of required personalisation tools on the target pages.
2. Traffic Adequacy:
Once you have determined the touchpoint-channel, the next step is to identify the specific locations within that channel that are frequented by your target audience. However, it is important to note that a location visited most frequently in general may not necessarily be the most relevant for all types of audiences. For example, many marketers often default to targeting the homepage as the primary (and sometimes only) location for personalised content. However, there have been numerous instances where the homepage was not the ideal or initial choice in terms of “Where” to target audiences. Take, for instance, a service-oriented brand where existing customers frequently visit the login page to check their monthly bills, making it a more relevant and appropriate location to implement personalisation efforts rather than the homepage.
Analytics data plays a vital role in identifying the locations that are most frequently visited by the specific segment represented by your target audience. This valuable information helps address the potential issue of audience scaling, where a lack of sufficient traffic can hinder the success of personalisation campaigns and fail to justify the associated execution costs. By leveraging analytics data, you can make informed decisions that prevent the dampening impact on the overall effectiveness of your personalisation programme.
Takeaway:
- Ensure that the touchpoint selected for your campaign aligns with the personalisation campaign objective.
- Leverage analytics data to identify the relevant locations that are most frequently visited by your target audience.
- Avoid wasting marketing money on locations that don’t send qualified traffic.
In next post, I’ll share how data can be used to identify when personalised experiences should be shown — answering WHEN?
Previous posts in this series: