Restocking the Marketer's Toolbox in the Digital Consumer Age

Jesse Hopps

Channel integration is essential for a truly effective enterprise marketing plan. Too often, retailers ignore the connectivity between customer channel preferences and buying behavior. Channel preferences no longer pertain to only transaction-based interactions; customers are interacting with brands in entirely new ways. The emergence of new marketing channels, such as social media and mobile, require a retailer to provide consistent branding across all retail channels, and to engage the customer with marketing messages through their channel of choice. As consumers turn to multiple channels for their media consumption and shopping needs, retailers must ensure disparate channels are working in harmony. Between February and May 2010, Aberdeen surveyed 145 retail enterprises to determine the current state of multi-channel marketing initiatives.

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Aberdeen analyzed the current marketing spend across traditional (direct, television, and print) and non-traditional (online, and mobile) marketing channels. The data in Figure 3 shows that Best-in-Class retailers have a much more balanced marketing mix than Industry Average or Laggard retailers. This shows that those companies that are placing too high an emphasis on non-traditional channels and ignoring channels that have years of proven success are faltering across a number of key metrics, most noticeably in their ROMI (74% for Best-in-Class versus 38% for Average and 22% for Laggard Organizations).

From a non-traditional marketing channel standpoint, all three maturity classes are treading lightly in their expenditure on mobile marketing. This is most likely due to a lack of channel maturity, and the desire to see value justification before investing heavily in new programs. However, it should be noted that Best-in-Class retailers such as New York & Company and Nike have been early adopters of mobile marketing, and have begun to see their efforts pay off. In order for retailers to see an increase in their marketing ROI, as well as increases in customer retention, conversion, and frequency rates, they must ensure that they have a balanced portfolio in terms of their marketing mix.

How Demand Metric Can Help

If you need some fresh ideas on how you can update your marketing mix, check out the following templates:

Marketing Plan Template

Marketing Channel Priority Template

Marketing Communications Objectives Template

Marketing Communications Budget Template

Key Marketing Metrics Dashboard

Marketing Communications Calendar Template 2011

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