Going beyond customer acquisition
From Wiki
What kind of customers does your publisher programme produce? Do you know if you are getting new customers, returning ones, or are you worried you could be paying repeatedly for customers you have already acquired? This article looks at how publisher s can respond to specific campaign objectives, especially at competitive times of year, in the face of increasingly fickle online shoppers.
Valentine’s Day has just passed and Mothers Day is fast-approaching. Unlike Christmas before it, these two seasonal events traditionally involve the sale of a limited number of products sold by a limited number of retailers (flowers chocolates and fragrances spring immediately to mind) and are almost completely unaffected by new products coming to market.
Valentine’s and Mothers Day bring into relief two particular challenges faced by all advertisers, whether or not they do high-volumes of trade at these times. Firstly, how can they use these kinds of opportunities to grab new customers? Secondly, how do they keep them and turn them into returning customers? More widely, how can advertisers of all kinds succeed in selling the same small selection of products to the same customers?
A common misconception amongst some advertisers is that publisher s cause them to pay twice for the same customer. This, they believe, could happen in one of two ways. Either they pay publisher s for returning customers that have been acquired initially through other marketing channels; or they pay publisher s repeatedly for the same customer that has come back through the publisher channel.
But does this perception not assume an overly simplistic model of consumer behaviour, out-of-step with how shoppers actually make purchasing decisions, especially evident around competitive trading periods? What needs to be challenged is the presumption that a new customer is going to be a returning customer, and that an existing customer is going to automatically develop a loyalty.
Valentine’s Day and Mothers Day illustrate the character of the modern online shopper more widely. They are likely to look in a number of different places before they make their mind up about where and what to buy. As such, their pre-sale activity touches on a broad range of marketing channels and activities. This is obvious at Valentine’s Day and Mothers Day because customer’s broadly-speaking know what kind of product they want and so look for the best deal.
And it is here that publisher s exhibit notable strengths. Because publisher s utilise all sorts of promotional methods, your publisher programme offers you numerous opportunities to capture new customers or retain the ones you have. Combined with the fact that they will only get paid when a sale is made, they have a vested interest in doing all they can to convert the user to sale.
How ca publisher s respond to these conditions to help you win, or win back, customers where competition is fierce? Let’s look at three examples.
Using publisher s to obtain new customers
A well-known high street department store ran a seasonal promotion that they arranged to be advertised in the newsletter of one of their publisher s, a true content site with a highly-engaged and deal-conscious community of users. The retailer was pleased to find that, not only did this result in a large number of overwhelmingly new customers as opposed to existing ones, but that these new customers were overwhelmingly men despite the fact that traditionally their brand had appealed most to women.
Using publisher s to ensure existing customers are returning customers
Cashback publisher s offer an attractive incentive for new customers. This can work to an advertiser’s advantage when customers are first captured, but against them the opportunity to re-purchase arises. To counter a competitor’s offer of increased cashback to acquire their customers at the point of renewal, one insurance provider introduced a bonus cashback rate for members taking out joint or multiple policies. If the customer was happy with one product, so the rationale went, they were likely to remain with the brand for all three. Whilst attracting new customers, this tactic helped shift the focus away from cost and on to service for customers looking to renew.
Using publisher s to establish brand loyalty
The publisher channel is also a great way to access true content sites that exude authority on a subject matter they are passionate about. This is why one fashion advertiser concentrates its publisher recruitment efforts on fashion bloggers. The best fashion blogs have a trust amongst their readers that cannot so easily be engineered by a brand itself. This is what makes such sites and the customers they refer so valuable. They are able to cement a bond between the customer and the brand that lasts long after the first sale is made, even if the publisher is not rewarded for successive sales.
In conclusion, because all online actors can work through the publisher channel there is no single type of customer that publisher s can be said to produce. The three examples above show that success depends crucially on knowing what kind of consumers the publisher is good at targeting, and working to their strengths, whilst harnessing the diversity and reach of your publisher base for different campaign priorities.