The Posh Hotels and Re-marketing Pixels

Posh Hotels and Remarketing Pixels
The posh hotel where no one speaks?

How are posh hotels and remarketing pixels connected?

Imagine you walk into a posh hotel; the decoration is gorgeous, really sumptuous. The reception is empty so you walk by and head to the bar area. There are fabulous sofas and coffee tables with magazines and attractive settings. You cannot see any staff, and that’s ok because you are not a customer. You are not talking to them and hopefully, they are not talking to you. You explored a bit further and decided to leave.

Could that happen?

Would a posh hotel allow you to wonder around and the staff not take any action to encourage you to become a customer? I doubt that would happen and yet online it happens all the time.

The Remarketing Pixel

There are thousands of some beautiful websites out there in web land and like our pretend hotel they make no attempt to connect with prospects. There are many options to connect, from email systems, quizzes, and surveys.  However, there one option that requires minimal effort and is so underused. It is the google and facebook remarketing pixels. These littles bit of code collect details of your website visitors storing that information in a list that you can access through advertising.  It is a powerful marketing advantage and costs nothing to set up.

In my work I see a lot of websites, in fact, this post was prompted by a local company that has just had a site makeover. It is good looking site and just as in my hotel example does none of the above.

The Facebook and Google tags matter 

Why does it matter? Have a little journey with me, how often do you look at a website and buy something on a first visit? We all troll Amazon for interesting things to put on the wish list. I visit other sites all the time and very seldom do I buy on the first visit. I am sure you do the same.

What does that tell you?

Your customers do the same thing.
That is why it’s critical for us when marketing any business to have these things in place. These simple scripts put on your site allow both Google and Facebook to build lists of people that are interested in your products
Using the advertising platforms of Facebook or Google, adverts for your service can appear on the Facebook newsfeed or various websites throughout the internet.

What is £5 per click or 40p?

Obviously, you’ve got to pay money for the advertising. However, these clicks cost so much less then if you were directly trying to attract those customers. As an example, one of my professional service clients could be paying over £5 a click if they were looking to advertise their services directly. Using a remarketing, they’re paying less than 40p to 45p per click. That is the value of building a remarketing list.

Why Wait? Do it Now.

The reason it is so important to do this now is that if you want to use this list at some point, they have to be built you can’t just turn it on. Because it will take a few months or maybe even a year to make a list. What you’re doing today is preparing the ground for that potential future advertising.

Now if you are in a rush and want to build lists quickly, there are options,  but that’s a different conversation and a subject for a later article.

The Future of Marketing in 2016 & Beyond

let’s talk about the future of marketing. At this time of year, this is a big conversation. Everyone wants to know what’s going to happen and where is it all going to go.

The Future of Marketing
Digital projection for US digital ad spend ( Hubspot.com)

The writing is very much on the wall, the future of marketing is clearly digital. We continue to see exponential growth, (see the US figure opposite from Hubspot) in the UK early figures for 2015 showed digital media projected spend to be over half of the total spent on all advertising.  A figure of about 8.2 billion pounds, ( $12 billion) that is a massive amount of money directed towards digital advertising and systems.

Why are they spending so much on digital media?

Because it works is the short answer. The one advantage it has over everything else is the ability to target. You have the possibility to identify your ideal candidate and show them advertising. The success of digital marketing is being driven by the growth of technology and the availability of information about buyer behavior.

The technology is all about smart phones and tablets, but it is the collation of user data that is making the difference. We’re now looking at dashboard systems available to any business, a system that can take feeds from social media, analytics and any number of different places. You can see what’s happening on the paper click advertising account. You can integrate the email systems; everything now is getting to the point where we can identify where the click is coming from and where it is going to.

These low cost services draw all of this information into one place so that that anyone from the sales or marketing manager to the business owner will know the return on investment numbers for the month. All that information literally at the fingertips and it is almost in real time. When the supermarkets first installed scanning till systems it used to be a joke that head office could count the Baked Bean sales as they happened. That facility he here now for any business.

So the future of marketing is about information gathering.

We are at the dawn of intelligent household appliances. It will not be long before your fridge, or even your cupboard will have a facility to understand what food you have and how much you have consumed.

There will be a facility for your fridge and your cupboard to work together to place the Tesco’s order. This kind of future is not marketing it is more about inventory control.  However, it could lock you into a particular supermarket.

There are other levels to this; you may be OK with household appliances knowing and taking care of your needs. If you like a certain Italian pizza, it makes sense that those bits of equipment report that. This opens the opportunity for Google or Facebook to show you adverts for a competitors version of pizza, the same might be happening for your other shopping habits.

Can you see where this is going?

Many people now have a smart TV. In the setup process, there are terms and conditions and a privacy policy that has to be agreed to. You know this TV will record your viewing habits. Most of the current games consoles are track- able within the Google analytic system. It is not a long stretch to assume that anything that you read, touch, view, watch or listen to could be tracked and used to direct relevant advertising.

So you can see the future of marketing is very much up the digital tree. It’s about monitoring customer usage and then using that information to sell them extensions or new versions of the same thing. Now all of this sounds wonderful and very exciting for the commercial marketer that can see this as a banking process, a place of unlimited sales opportunity.

The question is, are we as a society going to allow this?

Part of me thinks that we are complacent, we have already allowed our privacy to be eroded and willingly accept it. But there will come a point when the worm turns so to speak. In some respect, this is already happening. Apple opened the door this year by allowing an Ad Blocker into their iPhone system.

Ad blocking has been around for a while, it is a  program that sits in your browser or the Apple iPhone, and it locks the advertising out. So that when someone visit’s a website those links that would normally open to adverts do not get activated. Ad blocking can improve the user experience. A lot of sites have so much advertising that it make the site crawlingly slow.  With ad blockers, the adverts do not get opened, and websites function better.

So there is a kind of practical for using ad blocking because when surfing around it speeds up your internet searches. But hold on that, is how most of the web is making money by showing adverts. If ad blocking starts to become more prevalent It will destroy the free internet business model.

I suspect the future of marketing is going to be permission base advertising.

We already have a permission system with email, most companies operate a double opt-in process. This is where you click a web link and then receive an email to click another link to confirm the process.

Because the world wide web does not belong to anybody advertising can be a bit a wild west opportunity. However, I guess if I were going to put any money on anything, this is google’s problem. Google has to find a solution; they’re the ones that created the ad platforms in the first place. I guess they will tighten up what they think is suitable advertising or speed of service.

I can see a possibility where Google may have to offer an ad blocking service to their customers. The big G might be forced into this if they want to retain any control and maintain their pay per click revenues.

Currently, you agree to a privacy policy, this may change and evolve to an ad blocking policy.  So it will ask your permission, and you will have to agree to see particular advertising.

What is the future of marketing?

It is digital, there may be a battle for control of user attention. As a business owner, one thing is clear digital cannot be ignored.

Paul HarveyDo You Need Support

Are you looking to apply digital techniques to your business, book a free discovery call and find out what is possible for you and your business.     free discover call 

To your success

Paul Harvey

 

The Google Rules & Wash Instructions

As entrepreneurs, we all have one thing in common and that is we like to play the game by our rules, and most of the time that is one of those traits that makes us successful. However, there are times when the rules just have to be followed. Are you playing by the Google rules?

DSCF9218In our lounge, we had a nice Laura Ashley throw on the sofa. It is a sumptuous fabric and was a luxury buy when the room was last decorated. Following an accident with some chocolate and a realisation that it was looking a bit grubby, it was taken off the sofa and plonked in the laundry basket.

When it came to washing time, we discovered it to be made of cotton and a mix of man made fibres with the words “DRY CLEAN ONLY”.  The dry cleaners is just up the hill from our house but not something that we use that often. The throw sat at the bottom of the laundry basket for several months.  Then, last weekend, in an act of determination to empty the basket I decide to just wash it. It was never going to get to the dry cleaners and I am often disappointed at dry cleaning results. Also ‘Dry Clean Only’ is a often a catch-all phrase for cloth manufacturers, used on cloth they are not sure about. Well that was my logic. The first thought was hand wash but in the end I opted for a low temperature and slow spin cycle in the machine. I broke the rules and this did not end well.

DSCF9219This fabric was a curious mix of fibres that did not take to the water and it sort of dissolved in the washing machine. Unaware of this I pulled the now clean throw out of the machine, flicking it out in the kitchen to be treated to a snow storm of bits. There were fibres everywhere, a stray pair of dark underwear that got left in the machine covered in white fibres. These fibres had to be picked out of the holes in the drum, the filter cleaned and the kitchen hovered all because I did not follow the rules.

So how does this relate to digital marketing?

Once it was possible to flout the rules on your website, there were all manner of tips and tricks that would get you an advantage in the search listing.  But those days are over and if you do not follow the rules that are laid down by the big name of the Internet “Google” they will punish you with low impressions, loss of rank and all manner of punitive measures that will affect your business.

lost traffic
Lost Traffic

Whatever you do on line, if it is search engine position or paid advertising, your website must make the grade. Simple things like meta descriptions, a site map, contact details, privacy and cookie policies and on and on, must be in place, but there is more.

Are you playing by the rules?

Book a website safety check TODAY and you will get a full report. It will test your site for 38-42 different areas including common SEO faults, speed checks and optimisation, server issues, security, mobile usability and social networking and media. It is the start point for a digital marketing plan and tell you what needs to change and how to fix it.

Check your site today, click the buy link below.

It will cost you just £25 and presently delivery is 3 to 5 day