Electronic Retailer - June 2012 - 40

can indicate the relative cost per lead or sale a marketer is likely to obtain. In addition, organic search, which appears below paid positions, is crucial. The challenge is that it can take several months for a new marketer to achieve favorable positioning in the organic results, so striking a balance between paid ads and organic search, especially in the early going of a campaign, is important. Marketers who do not heed this advice risk having their consumer traffic siphoned off by competitors. Imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars in media, only to have your competition seize the consumers’ attention right when they are primed to engage with your product or service. One of the more onerous practices involves fake review sites that will denigrate your offering and push consumers into an alternative product. This is a practice that marketers can combat through legal means and by blowing the whistle with the search engine companies. Even so, given how dynamic the online space is, it is crucial that your agency be monitoring your search rankings at all times to make sure that your placements are solid and that the competition is not sneaking in the back door and stealing your customers. Two other vital areas that must be controlled are distribution and pricing. DRTV marketers cannot afford to have their offers undercut online by resellers – legitimate or otherwise. Once a consumer has checked out your product and is ready to buy, he will likely search to see if he can purchase your product at a discount on one of the prominent value sites such as Amazon.com, which allows third parties to set up storefronts under their banner. Unless marketers are willing to wholesale their product to such resellers, it is essential that they control pricing so that their own direct selling efforts are not undercut. Beyond that, it is also entirely possible that your consumer may go onto eBay or Craigslist to see if the product is available from a reseller or on a gray market basis. Oftentimes, these are the preferred selling avenues of counterfeiters, so it is critical that a marketer monitor these sites on a regular basis.

is most people will go to their favorite search engine and type in the name of the product. In order to determine which television media is driving the most traffic, at Koeppel Direct we use a sophisticated algorithm to assign response to various media. This methodology can predict, with a very good degree of accuracy, the media source of various inquiries. The way it works is that the system detects patterns of response by cable network, local broadcast and syndication, and then, based upon historical data that is refined over time, assigns a corresponding degree of response. Other variables that are considered include, but are not limited to, the timeliness of response relative to an airing and the geographic location of a lead or purchaser. As an overlay to this process, traditional Nielsen metrics, including reach and frequency and target rating points, are tracked against each airing to ensure that said airing is meeting its delivery criteria.

Enter the Second (or Third) Screen
Technological advances have ushered in an era where accessing the internet, whether it be on your television or via a second screen such as a laptop, tablet or smartphone, is becoming commonplace. In fact, Nielsen recently reported that some 42 percent of tablet owners use them while watching TV, while 40 percent of smartphone owners are doing the same. Digging a bit deeper, 19 percent of tablet and smartphone users said they looked up product info for an ad. Interestingly, given the overriding stereotype that it is women who drive home shopping, more men (21 percent vs. 17 percent of women) indicated they engage in this behavior. Furthermore, 13 percent of tablet and smartphone users indicated they looked up coupons or deals related to an ad, with women outpacing men 15 percent to 13 percent. Clearly, consumers are doing their due diligence in real-time response to your ads, so the marketer who makes it as effortless as possible to find their service or product is likely to win the day. Despite all of the complexity of offline and online media and related consumer behaviors, there has never been a time where it has been easier to engage with consumers on a direct basis. If you consider the expense of opening multiple brick-and-mortar retail locations, for example, the comparative simplicity and expense of opening an online storefront is incredibly compelling. At the same time, if your customers don’t know you exist, they will not be able to find you. Using DRTV as the driver to fuel interest, leads and sales, and then having the ability to capitalize on that interest online, is a model for success. Partnering with an agency that has the expertise to harmonize both DRTV and online media may just be the glue that holds that model together. Peter Koeppel is president of Koeppel Direct, a full-service media buying agency based in Dallas. He can be reached at (972) 732-6110 or online at pkoeppel@koeppelinc.com or twitter.com/DRTVBUYER.

Cause and Effect
Since DRTV is the primary engine for many direct marketers to educate consumers and drive them online, how does one determine whether they are buying effective TV media? From the 1980s to the 2000s, this was easy because dedicated toll-free numbers were used to track response against specific media. While the telephone is still a valid response mechanism for some consumer segments – especially campaigns aimed at seniors – the web is increasingly the preferred platform for engagement amid younger consumers. With these prospects now migrating to the internet, the fundamental attribution model of DRTV – that is, the ability to correspond response to specific airings – has eroded greatly, though not all is lost. While dedicated URLs, surveys and promo codes can be used to track some response, the reality 40

electronicRETAILER | June 2012

Electronic Retailer - June 2012

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