While it may seem like the majority of people complete online purchases while on their desktop, the fact of the matter is that many people are keeping their activity confined to mobile phones and laptops. Below, we discuss the biggest reasons why employing a cross-device campaign strategy can help push your brand ahead of your biggest competitors.
In a world where people are constantly hungry for new information, it’s become the norm for consumers to move between devices more frequently as they shop for products online. A quick scroll of our smartphones at 7 am could be followed by a desktop search at lunch and a little bit of online shopping through our tablets in the evening. Needless to say, our online shopping habits have moved beyond the desktop to a wide array of devices, which is why cross-device campaigns are a necessity for today's brands.
So what does this mean for e-commerce marketers? Firstly, they need to understand how their audiences are using these different devices: while smartphones are often relied upon for on-the-go research — an initial scoping out of a particular product or service — laptops are more commonly used to make a purchase.
In fact, according to Google, 6 in 10 internet users start shopping on one device but continue or finish on a different one; for e-commerce businesses of any size, reacting to this shift in consumer behavior and ensuring presence across all devices through multi-touch marketing is crucial.
Plus, if you’re not investing in mobile, you could be missing out big time. Experts say that by 2019 mobile advertising will represent 72% of all US digital ad spend. This greatly influences every marketer's bottom line because the higher the number of inventory sources you’re using (mobile, social, and apps), the greater the number of impressions you’ll be generating.
And this is important for one much-talked-about reason: the Marketing Rule of Seven. It states that a prospect needs to hear the advertiser’s message at least seven times before taking action to buy. While this isn’t a hard and fast rule, it does reflect the need for brands to continually stay top of mind for their highest-value prospects.
We all know how frustrating it is when a site isn’t mobile-optimized or is super-slow to load. “Get me out of here!” we cry, furiously clicking away. "This just is not good enough!" Today's impatient buyers want information and they want it now. As a result, site responsiveness can directly impact your brand affinity. When Firefox's site loaded one second slower than normal, conversions dropped by nearly 3%. Likewise, Amazon found that a 100-millisecond increase in speed led to a 1% increase in revenue. These small changes in speed can have big monetary consequences.
There's also a strong correlation between loading time and bounce rate, with research showing that the average bounce rate for pages loading within 2 seconds is 9%. On the other hand, the bounce rate soars to a stomach-churning 38% when load times hit 5 seconds.
Plus, Google web pages penalizes for slow-loading times. This means all the SEO juice in the world won’t help you if you’re dealing with a sticky website. Easy ways to improve load time include reducing file sizes, changing your web hosting provider, or optimizing images for your site.
Every marketer knows that a consistent brand identity can lead to great things. This is primarily because consistent visuals and messaging give your prospects and customers a strong sense of what your brand is all about. Beyond this, consistency is important because it will keep shoppers engaged. Two-thirds find it frustrating when content doesn't synchronize across their devices — leading to dropped sales and lower revenue.
If the customer experience varies between channels — if a site isn’t optimized for mobile, for example, or social channels aren’t aligned in terms of messaging — consumers will simply go elsewhere. So if you’re running ads on mobile, pay attention to the look and feel of the landing page you're driving them to. The more a landing page resonates with your creative, the more likely you are to win over the customer. Every message and visual across every touchpoint needs to be in tune: the most influential brands will master multi-touch marketing and make a name for themselves through a consistent cross-device campaign strategy.
Interested in setting up your own cross-device marketing campaign strategy? Sign up for a free account here and unlock the ability to reach your audiences across all platforms and devices.
Last updated on September 20th, 2023.