Thursday, November 18th, 2010
During a recent trip to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport I noticed an unusual kiosk. Since November 2, 2010, and slated to be there through the “first part of 2011,” web-hosting service Go Daddy has set up shop in terminal 4 a.k.a. the “Go Daddy Sky Harbor Kiosk” to provide in-person service for a previously virtual-only offering.
From a marketing perspective, this is either the craziest or the smartest tactic I’ve seen in a long time. Go Daddy isn’t known for taking the safe approach (think Super Bowl Ads) so its recent initiative shouldn’t surprise me. Still, I find their risk taking extraordinary. During a time when businesses are looking for ways to scale back or otherwise avert risks – Go Daddy takes their virtual model to “brick and mortar.” I guess if patrons will line up at Charlotte Douglas International Airport for manicures and pedicures then small business travelers will feasibly benefit from this new Go Daddy kiosk. Think about it: during the social media frenzy a web-based service focuses on face-to-face targeting and interaction.
Finding myself intrigued by this recent endeavor, I reached to Go Daddy and, via its public relations department, received insights from Miguel Lopez, vice president- customer care at Go Daddy. I ask, “Why the airport?” Lopez explained that: “Go Daddy helps individuals and small businesses build an online presence quickly and affordably. Why not show them how easy it is? Sky Harbor International is one of the busiest airports in the United States and our location intersects a tremendous amount of traffic. It’s a great location to meet locals and visitors alike, and give them an opportunity to learn about all the things they can do online with Go Daddy.”
When asked about successes or failures of the experiment, thus far, Lopez added: “We’ve found that many of our customers are interested in a guided tour of our website, GoDaddy.com. Others are curious about what it’s like to work for a company like Go Daddy and it’s fun to watch their facial reactions when they hear about how employees are treated like VIPs, attending lavish holiday parties and getting to go on monthly ‘Employee Appreciation’ outings.”
While this latest effort is solely driven by walk-up traffic and Go Daddy hopes to service small business travelers and to possibly recruit new employees (Go Daddy currently has more than 100 job openings), it will be an interesting to watch this endeavor unfold. Personally, I plan to keep an eye out on the kiosk traffic when I visit the airport (which is fairly often these days) in hopes of resolving my unanswered question: “Does Go Daddy have this much confidence in how efficient their process and service are that a business person could register their desired domain in mere minutes – and still catch a flight – or is it simply targeting the low-hanging fruit of stranded travelers who desperately want to be productive while in transit?”
Are there any services you would like to see available at the airport, train station or bus depot that would make you a more productive professional in transit? As I travel for BurrellesLuce, the one service I would like to see is a kiosk selling Dell chargers (unless Dell decides to finally go universal) or at least a Dell-charging station for the times when my charger doesn’t make my trip with me.
Tags: ads, airport, BurrellesLuce, business, Charolotte Douglas, customer service, customers, Dell, domain names, Fresh Ideas, Go Daddy, initiatives, interaction, kiosk, marketing, Miguel Lopez, online presence, Phoenix, productive, Public Relations, risk taking, service, Sky Harbor, Social Media, Super Bowl, tactic, targeting, traffic, transit, travelers, web-hosting
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Public Relations, Technology | 3 Comments »
Monday, August 9th, 2010
by Crystal deGoede*
Retargeting – when online targeted advertising is delivered to consumers based on previous Internet actions that did not result in a past conversion – has become more importunate (persistent) as we continue to increasingly use the Internet to shop, order food, book travel, monitor the news or for pretty much anything you want to do without leaving the house.
It is also becoming more widely used within the advertising arena. With so many similar 
brands in the market it is hard to differentiation yourself from the other guy, and this form of remarketing can help to successfully convert those lost opportunities.
This past week Michael Learmonth, digital lead at Advertising Age expressed his creepy experience with Zappos, and “The Pants That Stalked [Him] on the Web.”
Oddly enough, after reading Learmonth’s post I was having dinner with my friend Nancy who was “weirded out” by a similiar experience. Ever since she booked a room at Loews Hotel ads for the hotel began appearing on every website that she visited. She is a sales trader so PPC (pay-per-click), Twitter, retargeting, and cookies are not really in her vocabulary. So I thought it would be interesting to research if retargeting is as effective as marketing and advertising professionals believe and how it actually works.
According to Criteo, a company that specializes in scalable personalized retargeting, more than 90 percent of website visitors leave before converting (i.e., making a purchase, downloading a white paper, etc.) Other research has shown that it can take at least seven follow-up emails or phone calls with prospects to actual convert them to a sale. If we are only tracking those visitors that convert on our physical websites, we are simply losing out on a possible sale down the road. Websites these days are optimized for search and have the technology to place cookies on each visitor’s computers to measure the site’s true audience size, but that is only capturing IP addresses most of the time. Then they have us, until we remove all our cookies and empty our cache.
So how do these retargeting customized ads work? When a prospect/client browses your website they become tagged with a snippet of code, which tracks which products they have shown interest in. When they leave the website and begin visiting other pages that’s when the retargeting begins. Banner ads customized to their search on your site start appearing on sites all over the web, from news, social networks, blogs, etc.
Companies that are using retargeting firms, such as Fetchback, in their marketing strategy have seen a 592 percent increase in ROI and conversions up by 94 percent. There are many other benefits to this form of behavioral marketing. It helps streamline all of your campaigns and the frequency of the ads helps keep your brand on the top of prospects minds. (Most services have an integrated feature that allows you to place a limit on the frequency at which the ads appear, so you don’t bomb your potential clients and “creep” them out because everywhere they go they see you.)
Plus, your ads are not static on a particular site related to your industry, which usually does not yield a lot of traffic because that market is already saturated and are either already your clients or know who you are. With retargeting your ads you are only reengaging with new prospects that have already shown interest in your brand; you can focus on what their needs are and manage your ROI.
In short, retargeting helps build your brand and online presence, while increasing the chances of reengaging your audience. It is not going to convert all on its own and has to be used with traditional marketing tactics to be effective. So don’t eliminate your current strategies. It is also important to measure the effectiveness of your retargeting campaigns, ensuring it is worth the investment and that your conversion rates are higher.
This article from Inc. Magazine highlights a retargeting success story involving Scottevest and its partnership with firm AdRoll.
There is one downside to the growing popularity for converting leads more efficiently via retargeting and that is the possibility that people may have the choice to opt-out (a do not call list for the Internet) of all behavioral targeting ads. What does that do for brands that are following the rules and not hunting down prospects on the web? We lose the opportunity to generate qualified leads for our sales team and revenue for the company. If you do use retargeting make sure you limit your reach frequency because when people begin to feel harassed and stalked by brands they will opt-out; I would.
Is your organization taking on the strategy of retargeting advertising? If so, how successful have you been with campaigns and reengaging lost prospects? Do you think we should have the right to opt-out of all behavioral targeting ad campaigns or just the irritating ones? Please share your thoughts and ideas with me and the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers.
Tags: action, AdRoll, ads, advertising, Advertising Age, audience, banner ads, behavioral, Blogs, brands, BurrellesLuce, cache, campaigns, client, compensate, consumers, conversion, converting, cookies, creepy, Criteo, Crystal DeGoede, customized, digital, download, effective, emails, Fetchback, Fresh Ideas, Inc. Magazine, industry, information, integrated, Internet, investment, IP addresses, lead, log-in, Lowes Hotel, marketing, measure, Michael Learmonth, monitor, news, online, opportunities, opt-out, pay-per-click, personalized, phone calls, presence, professionals, prospects, purchase, qualified, rates, re-marketing, re-targeting, reengaging, research, result, retargeting, ROI, rules, sale, sales trader, scalable, Scottvest, search, services, size, Social Networks, static, strategy, streamline, success, success story, tagged, Technology, The Pants that Stalked Me on the Web, tracking, traditional, traffic, Twitter, visitors, website, white paper, Zappos
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Public Relations, Technology | 3 Comments »
