More Advertiser Behavior & Analytics

Interesting analytics that ContactAtOnce! generates include time-based distribution of presentations of presence icons and lead requests from prospective customers. The analytics work effectively across all online publishers for a given advertiser.

These analytics demonstrated interesting consumer behaviors in the automotive classified context. The analytics demonstrate two consistent peak times of online automotive classifieds views: in the afternoon business hours and between 10-12 at night, presumably after the kids are in bed.

When presenting these analytics to the sales team for an auto dealer that uses ContactAtOnce!, one of the sales reps had the "Aha moment". The rep realized he'd be better served by shifting work hours to match the hours that prospects were actually viewing classifieds and engage those prospects when they were shopping for cars. The internet sales rep subsequently shifted working hours to match the peak viewing hours and generated many new leads and sales in the after hours window.

Who says that SME Advertisers don't pay attention to analytics?

SME Advertiser Behavior & Analytics

Conventional wisdom holds that Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses are too busy actually running their businesses to spend much time analyzing web trends and other metrics. As with most conventional wisdom, I suppose many examples can be found to support the argument.

My observations, however, having spent time with hundreds of SME employees, differ from the conventional wisdom. The SME owners and operators, in my travels, quite acutely monitor and analyze the critical key measures of the internet to them. I've yet to walk into an auto dealer that did not have, at hand, their web lead report that shows leads delivered by source and close rates associated with those leads. Do they typically have a pyschographic expert on staff to analyze consumer demograhics and behavior on their sites? Of course not. Are they paying attention to leads, lead source, lead quality, cost per lead and close rates? You betcha.

Research On, Buy Off Redux

After last week's post on Research Online, Buy Offline, I had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Kendall. Jeff is co-owner of Custom Exteriors, a high-end San Francisco Bay Area Windows Doors company with clientele all over the Bay Area. Custom Exteriors has been using presence-based marketing for some time now.

Jeff related a recent success story. A prospective customer was in the market for a whole-house window replacement job and had been online researching several prospective suppliers when the prospect found Custom Exteriors through a presence-based online search. Custom Exteriors won the customer's business -- a $12,000 project. Subsequently, the customer told Jeff that his evaluation had been very close and he had narrowed the field to Custom Exteriors and their primary competitor. The customer's final tipping point: the ability to see when Custom Exteriors was online and immediately engage them with his questions, a capability the competition could not match.

Score one (or 12,000) for presence-based marketing and advertising in the research online, buy offline sector.