Why marketers struggle to define artificial intelligence

A survey of over 300 North American B2B marketers found that less than one-fifth of them clearly understand the differences between AI, machine learning, and predictive modeling, despite these terms having become ubiquitous in industry press.

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Most US and EU companies will comply with GDPR by year’s end

In order to meet customer expectations and deliver a positive user experience, nearly 75% of US and European companies say they’ll be compliant by the end of 2018.

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Instagram leads as a global platform for influencer marketing

Although Instagram isn’t the only platform for influencer campaigns, it’s leading the pack as a go-to for global brands. In some regions, YouTube and Instagram are neck and neck.

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Amazon now has nearly 50% of US eCommerce market

Amazon continues to corner the eCommerce market. And, led by computer and consumer electronics, eMarketer projects that the leading retail site will jump by close to 30% this year.

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Last-minute digital video ads drive live sports viewership

comScore reports that viewers are more likely to see “last-minute” video ads during live sporting events, making these ads even more powerful for digital marketers.

Read the article

The post What We’re Reading This Week: Top 5 Industry Articles appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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We share these insights and more in our Q2 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. Our interactive web page reveals the latest cross-channel advertising trends by region, industry, and publisher.

Each quarter, we aggregate advertising performance across our customer base, and share our results with digital marketing professionals to compare against their own initiatives. In addition to global industry trends, we explore the most compelling areas of digital marketing.

Other highlights for Q2 2018 include:

• Search Driven by Clicks and CPCs. Thirteen percent year-over-year growth in search spend was driven almost equally by increase in click volume and increase in CPCs, with the average global CPC increasing from $0.80 in Q2 2017 to $0.85 in Q2 2018.
• Mobile Accounts for Nearly Half of Search Ads. Mobile share of search ads remained at 40 percent in Q2. Mobile share is highest in eurozone countries at 46.4 percent and lowest in U.S. at 38.4 percent.
• Social CPCs Up, CTRs Down. While social CPCs increased by three percent since last quarter, averaging $0.184, CPMs ($3.07) and CTRs (1.67%) dropped slightly from Q1 2018. This difference may be a result of increased awareness due to highly publicized breaches and privacy regulations, making consumers less likely to engage with ads.

Download the report for other actionable insights for your digital ad campaigns.

The post Amazon on the Rise: Our Q2 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

       

Who came out on top in 2017? Small businesses and entrepreneurs experienced significant growth in their sales from the previous year. Overall, Amazon Prime Day is a huge growth opportunity not to be missed for any retail company. Now is the time for you to reach a large number of shoppers by capitalizing on Prime Day—
July 16th-17th—and drive incremental revenue.

A Prime Day for Advertisers

Alongside the benefits for retailers, Amazon Prime Day also offers unlimited marketing capabilities for advertisers. Presently Amazon has various ad formats including Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), Sponsored Ads, and Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), all of which provide advertisers with new revenue streams.

Selling on Amazon isn’t a choice; it’s a necessity to stay ahead of your competitors. Yes it seems daunting, but it’s not a matter of being intimidated or worrying about matters out of your control. With the Amazon Services flexible model, you control what you pay for with no subscription fees or contracts, and you pay only for order fulfilment and storage space used so it’s easy to keep a close eye on financials.

5 Reasons to Sell on Amazon

1. A trusted brand

The eCommerce giant is by far one of the most trusted and popular online retailers around the globe, with The Value Institute ranking them 2017’s most trustworthy brand. There’s no need to build brand awareness here—all you need to do is piggyback off their success by creating a Seller Account, and the potential for massive traffic for your product listings is huge! Alongside Amazon’s trustworthiness, if you approached anyone in the street and asked them to name five big online retailers almost certainly Amazon will be among them.

2. Customers’ extremely high intent to buy

According to Statista, as of December 2017, 197 million users visited Amazon websites per month, in the US alone, which is an average of 81 per second! It could be argued that Amazon’s place within the customer journey is much further down the funnel than Google or Facebook, with searches being made with an extremely high intent to buy. This may be the reason why 60% of advertisers view Amazon and its digital advertising options as a growth opportunity or a “necessary evil,” while 17% view Amazon and its digital advertising options as a competitor.

Because of its rising popularity and trustworthiness, Amazon has also invested heavily in its advertising offerings, with Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) being one of its most commonly used formats. AMS offers a range of different ad types to fit your retail objectives, including Headline Search Ads, Sponsored Product Ads, and Product Display Ads.

While Amazon’s ad revenue of $2 billion in 2017 is still modest compared to Google ($40 billion) and Facebook ($21 billion), Marin’s State of Digital Advertising report found Amazon is capable of growing into as much an ad platform as it is a commerce platform, with 85% of respondents revealing the eCommerce giant would impact their business in 2018.

3. It’s easy

You can be up and running in no time. Selling on Amazon is a simple and effective way to reach millions of potential buyers. Whether you’re selling in small or large quantities, Amazon provides you with the tools to sell online prosperously. There are five simple steps to the process:

1. Register your seller account
2. Upload your listings
3. Consumers see and buy your products
4. Deliver your products to the customer
5. Receive your payment

There are two ways to sell on Amazon, Basic (sell a little) and Pro (sell a lot) with each plan being designed to meet your needs. From as little as £25/$40 per month for a Pro plan this presents a cost effective opportunity to sell on Amazon.

4. Advertising solutions

Advertising on Amazon is an easy way to promote your listings on the platform and get your products noticed when consumers are shopping for similar items. Like Google Ads and Bing Ads, you only pay when someone clicks your ad. There are two advertising solutions: Sponsored Products for promoting individual listings, and Headline Search Ads for registered brand owners to promote their brand and product portfolio.

These solutions can help to give your products a visibility boost and maximize your sales by bringing those products to a new audience, all of which can be optimized fully when formed with an advertising technology partner who can help drive product sales and raise brand awareness on Amazon. This is done through amplifying the performance of your AMS advertising with flexible reporting and automated optimization.

5. Hands-off fulfilment and shipping

Opting for Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) lets you send your goods to Amazon’s fulfilment centers, where they’ll deliver your products to the consumer, manage customer service, and handle returns on your behalf. Amazon has the infrastructure to handle everything for you. According to Forbes, Amazon shipped over 5 billion items worldwide in 2017 alone and sellers using FBA can take advantage of Amazon’s free 2-day delivery to reach approximately 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers worldwide.

A Rapidly Growing Opportunity

Although Facebook and Google still control the digital advertising industry, Amazon’s ad revenue is growing faster than both companies, with eMarketer also predicting that by 2020, Amazon will have overtaken Oath and Microsoft to claim the #3 spot in the share rankings. With its rising market share and wide variety of ad options, digital advertisers and global brands are starting to flock to Amazon.

The post Amazon Prime Day: How Advertisers and Retailers Can Prevail appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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Voice commerce with smart home devices is growing fast

Trade publication Voicebot.ai reports that 26% of smart speaker owners have made a purchase by voice. And, 11.5% of those people fall into the habitual voice shopper category by making monthly purchases.

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Influencer marketing fraud – how big a problem is it?

At Cannes this year, Unilever highlighted the problem of fraud in influencer marketing, leading other advertisers to reveal they’ve been quietly working on their own solutions. Just how big a problem is influencer marketing fraud and what can advertisers do about it?

Read the article

Telemundo viewers go mobile to enjoy the FIFA
World Cup

While the connected TV remains the most popular screen for streaming live video, between 48 and 51 percent of Telemundo’s live digital viewers consistently watch the games on their smartphones.

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Mobile commands up to 70% of retailers’ digital ad spend

The retail sector’s investment in mobile ads is expected to account for nearly 70% of retailers’ digital ad spending in 2018, according to a new report from eMarketer. It’s expected that retailers will spend $23.5 billion on digital ads, a jump of 18.7% from last year.

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AT&T takes on Facebook and Netflix

AT&T has unveiled a bunch of new services following its acquisition of Time Warner. The company appears to be intent on leveraging its new content assets from Time Warner to fight off competition from other streaming services and carriers.

Read the article

The post What We’re Reading This Week: Top 5 Industry Articles appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

       

Safety First

Given the current hot topics of data privacy and brand safety, it wasn’t surprising for Google to focus on the value of advertising, transparency, and trustworthiness. Keynote speaker Sridar Ramaswamy pointed out that you can opt out of personalized advertising across all Google services, proactively reminding the audience that Google is committed to a safe, secure user experience.

How Can We Help You?

Ramaswamy also focused on Google’s shift from providing answers to offering assistance. This involves understanding what people need in the moment and helping them get things done. In his words, “Google is where the world turns to for assistance.”

Key Goals

Across Google’s set of advertising solutions, the company is driving for better results, simpler experiences, and stronger collaboration. From more and better advertising automation to capturing more attention during shopping “moments,” online advertisers will have new opportunities to optimize ad delivery and improve results.

Rebranding

As they announced a couple of weeks ago, Google’s advertising suite is getting a slight makeover—or, at least a new name.
Google Ads now includes Search, YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Play. This is a good reminder that there are probably places and ways to reach your customers that you might not be taking full advantage of today.

As for the Google Marketing Platform, it’s still being managed by Google, and brings advertising and measurement into one place. This begs the question, however—do advertisers want Google making decisions around their budget and spending choices?

Talking Shop

The 2,500 attendees (up a whopping 2400% from the 100 who dropped in just five years ago) were treated to the highlight of the day—a rundown of Google’s new advertising products and features, including:

YouTube product formats

Maximize lift will help advertisers reach people most likely to consider their brand after seeing a video ad. Along with TrueView for Actions, this will make it easy to use YouTube at every stage of the funnel.

Responsive Search Ads

You heard it here first—Google is going to own ad creation. Responsive Search Ads will make life easier for marketers by automatically delivering relevant ads based on people’s stated wants and preferences. However, we think this will come at the expense of control. By handing the keys to Google, advertisers may find themselves locked out of the car.

As beta partners, we’ve seen increased performance with this ad format. But, it’s unclear if this simply translates to taking up more SERP real estate at the expense of organic results. Ads are getting cluttered, though, so it’s ultimately a good thing that machine learning is doing the heavy lifting.

Smart Campaigns

Smart Campaigns are now focused on SMBs, replacing AdWords Express. If you’re not familiar with AdWords Express, that’s probably okay. However, Google did mention cool tools to automatically build a website for the half of small businesses that don’t currently have one set up.

Advertising for All

When all was said and done, there was one main takeaway from Google Marketing Live—advertising should work for everyone. As Google seeks to democratize—and monetize—more automated, secure offerings, the search advertising future is looking bright, transparent, personalized, and helpful.

The post Google Marketing Live: New Features, New Focus appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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• Apple announced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) phase 2.  
• Google will roll out Parallel Tracking this fall.  
• Google deprecated the user ID field from DoubleClick Campaign Manager premium reports, complicating efforts to link a conversion to its ads. Google may even reduce the extra charge for these reports, since they will no longer have a primary key.
• Facebook revoked floodlight tags from their ads.
• AppNexus, The Trade Desk, and AdForm created the Advertising ID Consortium, defined as “people-based interoperability for the advertising ecosystem.” This effort is aimed at creating a standardized ID large enough to offer marketers similar targeting capabilities that the dominant publishers like Google and Facebook provide behind their walled gardens. Bonne chance!

Wow! Using a redirect as a “party loophole” (first from third) will further fall away under Safari. Parallel Tracking will cause redirects to be treated as just another object on the page (and subject to the same first/third party rules). Unlike Facebook and Google, no RTB companies enjoy significant visitor traffic directly to their domains. (When was the last time you visited “adnxs.com”?)

What are the implications of these changes? What options do marketers have to implement an accurate, multi-touch attribution model to measure effectiveness across large publishers?

Goodnight, Floodlight!

According to Google, “Floodlight iframe and image tags are not able to observe all of your conversions.” Instead, Google will estimate Safari conversions by extrapolating results from other browsers—not exactly desirable, as iPhone users are generally more affluent and younger, and represent half of all mobile traffic.

Advertisers can opt to replace floodlights with global site tags. Big spenders can look at the new and complicated Ads Data Hub (ADH) for custom analysis and measurement. ADH data can only be queried in aggregated form, so it can’t be exported for detailed analysis.

And, since large publishers such as Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter don’t contribute, Google will deliver a Google-centric view. Impressions from Facebook, for example, won’t be present. This setup makes it impossible to achieve a transparent and complete multi-touch solution.

The Enterprise Approach

Enterprise multi-touch attribution solutions such as Visual IQ, Ipsos, or Convertro were never easy. Deployments often took a year to roll out and gain predictability. It’s not getting easier—these consumed the DCM log file and/or a pixel-based ID, both of which are increasingly problematic.

Marin’s Stack-Independent Answer to Multi-Touch Attribution Challenges

Marin Software is in the optimization business so our first priority is getting the right data, whatever the source. We integrate with all the Google tracking products, including GA, DCM, 360, and ADH, and have many customers on each. We integrate with enterprise attribution vendors such as Convertro, VIQ, and others, with multiple customers deployed. We integrate with Adobe measurement as well. A number of our larger customers have multiple integration techniques so that they can compare the numbers between different approaches.

Over the years Marin developed our own first-party tracking solution to support customers that had not deployed another system. However, it has evolved into a useful supplemental measurement technology, allowing us to compare numbers across vendors, audit order IDs, analyze converting paths, and better integrate with ad servers such as DCM, Sizmek, and AdForm (to include search and social clicks in those solutions’ reports).

Because Marin Tracker doesn’t do retargeting, it can be first-party. Marin Tracker can re-inflate DCM Data Transfer path to conversion reports back to their original glory, with a user ID present.

Data-Driven Attribution

Marin Tracker interleaves with Facebook-provided converting path data to deliver view-through and cross-device insights, a product offering called Marin TruePath. Because TruePath operates primarily on converting traffic, it’s not suitable for creating attribution models automatically.

However, advertisers can run their existing models against TruePath, or work with Marin to construct models using incrementality testing, also known as data-driven attribution. In our experience, an explicit test-based approach is transparent and more easily explained to senior leadership.

Marin TruePath is lightweight can be implemented quickly. To see our solution in action, be sure to request a demo and we’ll schedule some time for a test drive.

The post Efficient Advertising with Privacy Protection appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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There’s an answer—our next-generation advertising solution, MarinOne, unifies your search, social, and eCommerce advertising. Within a single platform, you can:

• Get a unified view of your true customer journey
• Amplify your search, social, and eCommerce campaigns
• Gain campaign insight with a single, customizable dashboard

We’d love for you to see it in action. Sign up for our webinar on Tuesday, July 10th at 10am PT / 1pm ET for a preview and to learn how our customers are using MarinOne to save time and increase conversions.

Speaker Bios

Wes MacLaggan has over a decade’s experience developing and delivering analytical enterprise SaaS applications, including four years with Applied Predictive Technologies working on the company’s platform to help retailers maximize the return on their promotional spending. He is currently SVP of Marketing at Marin Software, and has been with the company since 2008.

Rob Emery has been part of the product team at Marin Software since 2015, where he has honed and delivered features serving Search, Social, and Optimization. He’s currently Director of Product Management and taking a lead role in the development and release of MarinOne. Prior to joining Marin, Rob worked in digital marketing for brands including Hilton Worldwide and Bonnier Corporation.

The post Unifying Your Advertising Across Google, Facebook, and Amazon appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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How to Map and Make Sense of Engagement Metrics that Matter

Building an effective customer engagement plan can be daunting. eMarketer’s Lauren Fisher spoke with Jennifer Zeszut, co-founder and chief customer officer of Beckon, on how to set up an effective customer engagement framework.

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Microsoft matches Google Lens with AI-powered visual search for Bing

You can ‘Bing’ a picture now. See how Google’s main competitor is entering the world of visual search.

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Facebook starts showing all ads a Page is running

In its continuing efforts towards greater transparency, Facebook has introduced an “Info & Ads” section on Pages. It lists all ads the page has run across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and partner networks.

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Google streamlines ad products, winding down AdWords, DoubleClick branding

Google has rebranded its advertising products and consolidated them into Google Ads. Marketing Dive digs into the rationale behind the changes.

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We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in
the Air.

“Tech has now captured pretty much all visual capacity,” writes New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo. In this new phase of what he calls “Peak Screen,” what comes next?

Read the article

The post What We’re Reading This Week: Top 5 Industry Articles appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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This is especially true for sellers utilizing Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), a well-oiled process that both minimizes storage costs and maximizes customer satisfaction with healthy stock rates. While walking this tightrope, FBA policies and terms change frequently. These updates can affect seller fees and therefore bottom lines.

Let’s get right to the timely bit. July 1st, 2018 is a mini-Judgment Day for third-party sellers on Amazon. This will mark the end of the per-unit storage limit in favor of a weight-based system. More critically, a new policy goes in effect that utilizes Amazon’s Inventory Performance Index (IPI)—a measure that Amazon calculates for each seller—to determine product storage limits and overall inventory health.

What’s an IPI?

IPI stands for Inventory Performance Index and is comparable to a FICO credit score. Sellers are provided the general inputs that factor into the equation but not the specific formula that outputs the score given the inputs (in other words, a black box). Just as FICO protects their formula from abuse, Amazon retains the IPI calculation with proprietary status.

There are four factors used to determine the score:

• Sell-through rate (we’ve seen this be the most important factor)
• In-stock rate
• Excess inventory percentage
• Stranded inventory percentage

If any of these are unfamiliar, Amazon Seller Central breaks it down in detail and provides transparency into each factor for seller accounts in the Inventory Dashboard.

The Policy Change in a Nutshell

A final score check will be performed on the last day of each quarter starting June 30^th, 2018.

Seller accounts who fulfill with Amazon with a score lower than 350 will have a storage limit imposed that will persist through the following quarter, regardless of score improvements in that quarter. Additional overage fees will be charged at a rate of $10 per cubic foot per month. Ouch!

Seller accounts with a score at or above 350 will have no limit on storage (normal FBA storage fees and long-term inventory fees still apply).

How This Affects Sellers

For obvious reasons, there are major benefits to having an IPI score above 350. Sellers can avert headaches and growth can continue uninhibited. For those seller accounts above 350, rest easy, though there are still strategies to consider that help maintain good standing and improve IPI score. For sellers who find themselves under, never fear.

For sellers on both sides of the IPI score threshold, understand that there is a lag between when actions are made and re-calculations to update the score. Sellers have reported that inventory takedowns and re-stocks usually update on the same day, while updates to sell-through rate typically only happen once a week. Especially if you’re near the IPI threshold, plan and adjust restocking and adding new products with care. Remember: the IPI score on the date of the final check is the most critical and will have implications for a full quarter with regards to storage space.

New Policy, New Playbook

For sellers who are on the wrong end of the score, let’s go through how to not just survive but thrive with storage limits.

1. Determine new storage limits. Amazon assigns separate space for apparel, standard size, and oversize units. If the catalog spans multiple categories, this will relieve at least some of the squeeze.
2. Be confident the storage limit will be no less than 25 cubic feet per item type, according to Amazon. Especially if there is decent selling history on the account, the platform should provide space above that minimum. Though it’s unclear how exactly limits are determined (we do know limits are based on Amazon’s available space as well as seller account performance), the limits are designed to provide an efficient amount of storage that makes sense for both Amazon and the seller. Amazon ideally wants to be able to reap sales commission with the seller being able to stay ahead of demand for customer satisfaction.
3. Prioritize minimizing inventory. If seller accounts are exceeding the limit, there is still time until the end of the month to draw down before overages apply. The two options to draw down are to increase sell-through rates or remove products from FBA warehouses. Utilizing one of Amazon’s marketing services like Sponsored Ads or Lightning Deals may help boost orders and lighten inventory enough to minimize overage fees. Additionally, removal orders will help pull back excess inventory and also improve sell-through rate. Creating a removal order is a relatively painless (and cost-effective) process. Amazon allows sellers to select products to be disposed of or preferably, shipped back to sellers at nominal cost (currently, no shipping is charged on returns).
4. Maintain a clean catalog. For all sellers on Amazon, this new policy is designed to shine light on products that are underperforming or inefficient and help improve the seller experience (at least in Amazon’s eyes). Sellers can leverage the new tools that support the new policy to clean up catalogs that may be overdue for attention. Beyond storage limits, the Inventory Performance Index gives sellers a current scorecard with specific components of inventory management that can use the extra focus.

Updates to Amazon’s seller policy can throw a wrench into what was once conventional practice. The Inventory Performance Index and storage limit changes for third-party sellers are no exception. The only thing to be certain of is that this won’t be the last update of its kind. Don’t let policy be the one thing that hampers progress. Happy selling!

The post What You Need to Know About Amazon’s Inventory Performance Index appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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Spring through summer is well known as wedding season in the US, and for digital advertisers, the industry can be a lucrative one. But how about for those of us who aren’t peddling save the dates or bridesmaid dresses?

The average wedding has about 100 guests, each tasked with getting a gift to celebrate the new couple. If the average person spends $116 on a wedding gift, that’s a lot of revenue to be had! The question then becomes: How do we tap into those fringe markets—like gifts—during the peak of nuptial season?

Here are seven things to keep in mind to get the most out of your marketing this wedding season.

1. Be on the right channels

If you want to capitalize on the summer wedding eCommerce runoff, being on the right channels is key. It’s no lie that weddings are all about aesthetic. As such, having a presence on visual wedding-oriented channels like Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram is extremely important. Seventy-two percent of people getting married start on Pinterest, and 33% connect with brands through Instagram. Those numbers grow each year.

As a new wedding-goer myself I know I’ve turned to Pinterest for gift-giving etiquette. Have fun with it! Create a “gift guide” pin featuring your top giftable products, and use keyword targeting to hit people like me, perusing Pinterest for wedding gift cost guidance or trending items. Or, target users with marriage-aged friends on Instagram with romantic product shots of this season’s latest gifts—bonus if they’re shoppable!

2. Hit the right demographic

Considering who will be buying wedding gifts is important. You’ll want to apply age targeting segments wherever possible. The average newlywed couple is 25-34, which means their friends are, too, so be sure to target that segment the most aggressively.

Also target ages 45-64 to hit parents and family members of the new couple. The older the demographic the more money they tend to have—making the higher age ranges ideal targeting for bigger ticket items.

Lastly, while it may be archaic, most people actually buying wedding gifts are women. So consider gender-specific targeting to better get at this key group of buyers. Similarly, if you’re selling a bigger ticket item—like appliances or furniture—think about applying some household income targeting to exclude the users who can’t afford your products.

3. Get creative with customer segments

In SEM there are a lot of targeting options that lend themselves perfectly to gifting. You can play around with the best combinations of In-Market or Affinity audiences to expand your reach. Some are even specific to weddings, such as In Market for Gift Baskets or Personalized Gifts, or even an affinity for Luxury Shoppers or Home Decor Enthusiasts.

You could even craft your own custom affinity audience and target people interested in specific topics or domains, like theknot.com, Zola, or just straight up “wedding gifts.” They sky’s the limit.

Beyond this, you could also try your hand at some customer list targeting. Create a list based off of users who purchased your gifts around the holidays, and remind them of their pleasant past purchasing experience this time around!

4. Whittle down your keyword targeting

I would also recommend implementing an RLSA keyword strategy. Keywords like “wedding gifts” or “gifts for couples” might get you where you want to be, but they’ll be incredibly competitive and likely carry some pretty high CPCs.

To get around this, create a campaign of those top of funnel keywords you wish you could afford, and slap some audience lists on top of them to narrow their reach to your existing customers! This is another place creative customer lists can come in handy. If someone who purchased with you last year is now looking for a wedding gift, they’ll likely recall your brand, and may even be willing to purchase from you again. The stronger the intent of your customer lists, the higher you should bid up.

5. Use the right creative

Like I said earlier, weddings are all about aesthetic. In order to inspire the right people you need to have proper creative. For events like weddings people respond well to notions of sentimentality. Include language around getting your loved one the “perfect gift.”

When using image creative, it’s important to stay on trend, and tell a story as much as possible. Weddings are about friends and families coming together to celebrate—if you can capture that in your imagery, you’ll have a winning ad, like this great Zola example!

6. Update your site to match

If it’s within your means, update your website during wedding season to encourage new users to purchase. I would suggest an on-site “countdown” to wedding season, or even better a dedicated “gift guide” to steer users to your top selling or biggest ticket items. At the very least there should be a clear path from your homepage to the items you consider gifts.

7. Consider lesser-known wedding expenses

Lastly, if you’re not a home goods or traditional gift retailer, fret not—there is still plenty of the wedding cash cow to go around. If you’re marketing formalwear, hotels, transportation, beauty, or entertainment services, you can still capitalize on all those bells and whistles that come with a wedding.

The post 7 Marketing Tips to Attract Wedding Gift Purchasers appeared first on Marketing Insights - Official Blog of Marin Software.

      

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