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Sep
19
Bill Gerba over at Digital Signage News already covered portions of Nigel Hollis’ piece on the “Big Opportunity for Video In-store (and online), but I wanted to call attention to a few pieces of what he was saying and expand upon it by calling attention to another piece by David Baker, The Purchasing Tumpbler, a study by Yahoo and OMD, on “Purchasing Paths” that are taken online and refer back to an older post on “Adlets” that I wrote on advertising spot lengths.
Understanding HOW consumers are influenced by various media on their path to a purchase is paramount. It’s a cornerstone of designing and influencing the media mix/plan of a particular Brand or category in choosing how much of each medium to buy and use (and how to use it) to reinforce and alter the behaviours of consumers to an outcome you desire. I’ve called this “Behavioural Grooming” for some years now.
Nigel’s Article outlines 5 distinct elements of In-Store Digital Signage Advertising in his article:
- Traditional Media effectiveness (Return on Advertising Investment) decreases are forcing Brands and Media Agencies to evaluate new options and alter their purchasing decisions.
- The media opportunity in large scale in-store networks trumps or will trump the audience potentials, reach and frequency of major TV networks.
- In-Store Media Research reports high numbers of viewership (even if you do only take 50% of the numbers as believable)
- Advertising impact is best suited to short “spurts” of reminder messages
- Digital Signage is best suited to immediacy.
It’s nice to see a somewhat objective/outside view of the potentials for our medium but I have some comments/disagreements with some of what was said by Nigel. Before you slot Digital Signage into a “bucket” only good for one thing, you need to understand:
- What a Brand’s objectives are with an ad campaign
- How consumers are influenced by media to make a decision (i.e. what PATH they take to get to a buying decision)
As I mentioned, OMD and Yahoo did a great little study across multiple categories that isolated 4 distinct paths:
- Quick Paths: typically routine or impulse purchase tied to decisive, opportunistic competent personality traits and those seeking instant gratification (examples of products: barbecue sauce, toothpaste, cereal). This is the the segment/path that Nigel and Bill really focused on but it does not stand alone
- Winding Paths: involve movement between channels and sources of information, with consumers typically comparing pricing, options, coupons, and often seeking their friends’ advice. Most involved in this path are risk-tolerant, adventurous and open to new ideas. Retail goods like waffle irons and body weights often take a winding route, involving a modicum of comparison.
- Long Paths: as it sounds, this involves a long-consideration cycle. Technology products are great examples, where consumers wait for pricing to drop on flat-screen TVs and typically research through few channels. What’s important to note is that people typically only shop through one channel.
- Long and Winding Paths: As you can imagine, on this path consumers can take months to make a purchase decision on items like automobiles, annuities, and home mortgage products. There is a lot of research, comparison and use of multiple channels to support this kind of purchase.
As David says:
As you design acquisition programs, lead cultivation programs, loyalty programs or simple retention programs, it’s vital to take careful consideration of each customer mindset, beinh realistic about the level of active consideration involved and how communication programs can support this.
Now translate what you know about your customer base and its willingness to read consumer email, or how they visit your site to research a product, how targeting is applied, how frequency is timed to the purchasing decision, the seasonality of the purchase and how historically your consumers have consumed digital channels during these stages and events. Now you have the foundation of your communication strategy.
As easy as it is to try a stuff all advertising into one package to try and tell someone what a media channel is good for, it’s not the way that the mediums work or how people relate to media. How you use Digital Signage to influence and “groom” depends on the type of product you’re selling and the objectives of the campaign.
In the Digital Signage advertising game, many times you now have 3 warring parties who don’t understand the needs/wants of the others. A very “basic” view of the top-line approaches and needs:
- “Advertisers” want Reach, Recency and Frequency. The ability to speak to a lot of people, speak to them often and be the last message/brand in their head before their next purchase of “X” item. It’s a marketing based approach to consumer influence. It rarely takes into account “only sales” as the return as it generally has many different objectives & benchmarks up front and takes into account the complexities of consumer buying patterns and PATHS that consumers take through multiple mediums to get to a decision.
- “Merchandisers” (those who traditionally manage retail executions be it a POP display or a retailer themselves) want lift & immediacy. The ability to have a piece of media actually influence a consumer right then and there, resulting in increased category or Brand sales. Merchandising is a sales based/driven approach to consumer influence. It rarely takes into account influences outside of a physical location or how a consumer got to be there or their general mindset and its general function is to convert a consumer into a buyer, making registers ring. This is generally the crowd that says “I ran a Digital Signage ad campaign and I couldn’t see a real lift in sales in the same month so it must have failed”
- “Digital Signage Network Operators” (DSNOs?
) are caught in the middle. They must manage the lift (sales) expectations of the Retailer and Brand Managers with the media (marketing) expectations of the MarCom folks and agencies. They generally skew to sales as a metric for success and immediacy helps them sell more and expand their networks and influence today.
Like I said, the above is VERY basic and there’s a ton more depth in this but I’m keeping this layman. Too often, we in Digital Signage Advertising and critics of the medium point straight at POS sales as the only relevant metric to measure on. If this is the only area of concentration, we’re leaving money (and consumer influence/behavioural grooming) on the table. We’re in a tough spot because Digital Signage Advertising is a combination of above the line (marketing) and below the line (merchandising) which creates a disconnect with those buying it because it’s a new and different approach. To use Nigel’s comment on Wal-Mart as an example, do you really think that Dodge Trucks wouldn’t want to be all over advertising to Wal-Mart customers?
Example:
2400 Wal-Mart’s totaling a gross monthly audience of 130,000,000 with a frequency of 4 times a month and their Digital Signage has a total ad recall of “50%” (versus TV @ 21%). They don’t sell Dodge in Wal-Mart but the audience, demographic and potential relevance is fantastic. So if your net audience (reach) is really approx 32,500,000 per month and your target market inside that is approx 30% of their total audience, you’ve got a targeted audience of 9,750,000 to speak to, right in the sweet spot of your campaign approaches. Let’s say 10% of those are in the market for a new vehicle, and 30% of those actually see an ad (975,000 * 30% = 292,500). Of those, let’s say 30% recall the ad. That leaves 87,750 consumers who are now qualified buyers who remebered your ad. That’s a decent little number to work from. If 1% of those potential buyers were guided to a dealership and 10% of those bought a $40,000 truck, that’s over $3,500,000 in revenue. Again…REALLY basic example from ONE medium of influence, which isn’t how things work (nothing operates in a vaccum), but…you get the idea. You don’t know when someone is going to be ready to buy your product so you need to be able to speak to them with enough frequency that, when decision time comes around, you get on their radar. And this model doesn’t even take into account any type of “drive to web” or drive to store promotional or incentive advertising/creative.
This brings me to my last point: How to use the Digital Signage medium for ad success. As I mentioned in my post about “Adlets” (link above) and Nigel refers to short bursts of ads in his article, this format works for the impulse buy and the “Quick Path”. It is NOT a catch all for every Brand or situation. More complex products or services require time to educate, which may be a 15 second ad and the may follow the “Long Path”, wherein you use a medium to effectively support a longer buying cycle or more complex decision making process.
As each party matures its understanding of Digital Signage and how it can be used (Advertising for marketing objectives coupled with merchandising/spot media for selling) more Return on Advertising Investment will occur. In the interim, DSNOs have the opportunity to step in and guide both sides so that everyone understands the game and how we can all play nicely together by getting what we all want; sales, brand influence and happy consumers.
Whatever you do, don’t assume every advertiser wants the same thing…
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