Take advantage of me!

By Andy Wright

Ok, not me. This is what I imagine the Internet to be crying out to brands that still refuse to take full advantage of its capabilities.

This post was triggered by an experience that I had recently. Whilst browsing the internet, an incredibly relevant ad appeared just as I was thinking about a trip to the west coast of the US. I hoped that in some way I’d been behaviorally targeted based on recent searches or another site that I’d just visited. (I know this isn’t what all people hope for, but hey these things excite me).

“Air Timbuctoo (name is fictional) – Melbourne to Los Angeles $899.” “Great.” This was just what I was looking for. Of course I clicked and increased the effectiveness of that banner in Air Timbuctoo’s daily reports. Unfortunately, I was as instantly disappointed as I had been excited just moments earlier.

My click took me to the Air Timbuctoo homepage. There was no mention of the offer or in fact any flights to the US. I didn’t bother searching.

If Air Timbuctoo had wanted to live up to my expectations they would have:

• Guided me to a landing page specific to their offer.
• Displayed flights to Los Angeles, even just some examples that I could book instantly.
• Allowed me to search for flights to other cities.
• Told me about the best time of year to take advantage of cut-price fares.
• Encouraged me to sign up for an email alert that would tell me when the flight I was looking for became available.

I would have been converted into a customer.

Given the opportunity that surrounds the travel industry via the web, I was surprised to have not seen any of the above. I’m glad that Air Timbuctoo are investing in the medium. I’m also concerned that they’re not taking advantage of the personalisation, tailored communication and optimisation that online marketing offer. This in turn means that their ROI marketing effectiveness scores could remain static, if not decline.

There’s plenty of advice out there for brands. In this case I would have expected Air Timbuctoo’s agency to have helped them out. Until they do, here are some Brandhabits I believe are worth developing:

1. Test and re-test – You don’t need to pay too much more to run multiple executions. Test offers, test different creative, test different landing pages. If you’re advertising continuously, you’ll soon figure out what works and what doesn’t. Challenge yourself to beat your top performing offer, creative or landing page with your next burst – and then beat it again.
2. Acquisition not click through – Click Through Rates can only tell you how attractive your offer or creative was. Number of clicks doesn’t equal number of customers. Focus on your Acquisition Rate to truly understand how a media placement, piece of creative, offer or landing page is performing. Determine the value of a customer from each channel, creative and offer.
3. Take the journey – Be sure to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What expectations do your ads generate? Where do you expect to land following a click? How quickly are you converted into a sale? Don’t judge a banner by it’s look.