Show Up Before the Right Eyes & Minds

Woody Allen wrote, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” A report released this week by digital business analysts comScore says that online advertising could be more successful if it ends up showing up before the right eyes and minds. Overall, nearly one-third of the ads in the study never had an opportunity to be seen at all by the desired audience of consumers.
     The findings offer tips for online advertisers:

• Choose your site carefully. Although the study showed that about 31% of the online ads never had an opportunity to be seen, the rates ranged between 0% and 93%. So with some sites, every single online ad analyzed did show up before the eyes and minds of the desired audience members.
• Select a site that appeals to your intended audience, then design the ad to fit that site. The more detailed your audience description, the lower will be the hit rate, in general. In the comScore study, when the retailer set consumer age range as the only descriptor, about 70% of impressions went to people in that age range. If gender and income were added as criteria, the rate dipped significantly. At the same time, though, message recipients would be more likely to buy, assuming the demographic criteria were specified properly.
• Attend to mind set as well as mind. Almost three-quarters of the advertisers experienced instances of an online campaign being presented adjacent to content members of the desired consumer audience were likely to find to be objectionable. Monitor your ad environment. Also related to this tip, the comScore report says that fraud is a growing problem in digital advertising. It takes the form of ad presentations to non-human agents being tabulated by the site as genuine impressions.

     There are parallels for all this when it comes to sales staff showing up before the right eyes and minds in-store. Look at your interception rate—the percentage of shoppers entering your shop who are spoken to by a salesperson. But compensate for the weakness in the concept of interception rate:

• The name itself has implications of blocking the shopper’s path. Don’t ask your sales staff or yourself to do that! Be available to guide the consumer without becoming a nuisance.
• Recognize that not every person who enters your store is a high-likelihood shopper. Greet everyone, but attend to showing up before the most promising eyes, minds, and mind sets.

Click below for more:
Clearly Define Your Different Target Customers