How Data is Reshaping Digital Media
Acquiring data has drastically changed how digital media works. Brands can learn more about their targeted audiences than ever before which has helped them increase sales, decrease bounce rates, improve in return on ad spend, and the list keeps going. A brand that successfully did this was Panasonic, a Japanese electronics corporation that has grown to be one of Japan's largest electronics producers.
Panasonic was having trouble with reaching their audience at the right time. They wanted to improve their clickthrough rates and decrease their bounce rates; however, there was one main issue. Each Panasonic product had its own advertising campaign, so there wasn't one central place that the consumer marketing division could go to for analytics. They wanted to increase customer engagement because Panasonic Japan doesn't sell products directly from its website, but the company had to develop a single platform in order to do so.
They decided on using Google Analytics 360, a set of integrated products to help marketers go beyond with their data analysis. The reports allowed them to dive deep into on-site behavior metrics and fully understand which keywords and displays ads were generating the most engagement with its website. They started by building remarketing audiences in Analytics 360 for all of their main products and creating different audiences based on levels of engagement using segmentation features. They learned how to better place ads toward audiences that desired the specific product and took advantage of products that were often purchased together.
A theory that supports this is the Uses and Gratification Theory. This theory describes what types of media people gravitate toward and what they ultimately get out of it. Even though Panasonic is an electronics company and not media, their audiences uses their products for certain purposes. Panasonic used data to target certain people and advertise products that would be most beneficial for them. For some consumers, purchasing a laptop was for business purposes, so often times Panasonic would also advertise another product that would benefit that user alongside the business laptop. They figured out what people where looking for, when they were looking for it, and why they were looking for it. This data allowed them to promote products that would be most beneficial and convincing to their customers.
In 2015, Panasonic had $69 billion in yearly sales and over 260,000 employees. They weren't exactly struggling, but they wanted to focus on increasing their engagement and creating a customer-centric advertising strategy. By using data, they were able to improve their return on ad spend by 30%, cut their bounce rate by 50%, and increase their clickthrough rates by 300%. Companies using data analytics to learn more about their audiences has allowed them to market toward the right people with the right products, and it can only improve as technology becomes more advanced.