Even when you’re building web marketing campaigns to drive online conversions, you have to remember that not all purchases are made online. In fact, according to data from Ripen, 92 percent of purchases still take place offline.
Most are looking are looking to connect with customers online, but not all just want digital conversions. And now, Google is trying to capture the behavior that takes place in brick-and-mortars following a web interaction with a new AdWords metric called store visit conversions.
It isn’t a cut and dry figure of every single person who looked at an advertisement and subsequently visited a physical outlet to buy something. However, it’s based on the rough estimate that certain proportions of users who view ads for in-store products will eventually come in and buy. This is an important portion of the buyer’s journey that brands need to bear in mind, because otherwise, they could be missing out on a huge potential client base without ever knowing it.
Starting customers on the right buying path
Here’s a good example of how one company used its website to direct consumers toward conversion in-stores by putting this kind of thinking into action. A network of child-oriented retail stores wasn’t looking to drive conversions on its website. Instead, it just wanted to raise awareness of its brand and direct users to a store locator page.
With a blend of SEO-focused blog articles and a social strategy that fostered conversation about these blogs in Facebook comments, we drove qualified traffic to the site – and the store locator page in particular. Ultimately, the site saw 151 percent more traffic, and 95 percent more traffic to the desired landing page, leading to greater awareness of the store network and increased revenues from brick-and-mortar purchases.
The hardest part of running a web marketing campaign is dealing with abstracts – what people want, how users perceive brands and what they do between browsing sessions. With a healthy awareness understanding of how people interact with content and tools to measure between the lines, brands can fill in the gaps and reap the rewards that come from smart content strategies.
