The consumer’s path to purchase used to be a fairly straight line, but the Web has turned that into a very windy road.  Today’s consumers research purchases online, compare notes on social networks, and make their buys from all kinds of devices wherever and whenever they want. How can marketers connect with consumers in this fragmented e-marketplace?  Leo Polanowski, Yahoo’s Head of Client Services for the Americas, offered recommendations at the recent Digiday Retail Summit in his presentation titled “Connecting Retail Brands With Consumers' Digital Daily Habits.”

Consumers’ daily habits are increasingly digital, said Polanowski, and shopping is a clear example. He cited retail statistics from last November and December that clearly show retail is moving online:

• E-commerce sales increased 12% over the previous year
• Brick-and-mortar foot traffic decreased 14.6%
• Mobile users accessing shopping information increased 180%

Today’s shoppers expect retailers to deliver personalized and relevant experiences to them across screens, said Polanowski, and retailers that do this reap real results.

“Our research shows that when ads are personally relevant to consumers and contextually relevant to the pages they’re viewing, they’re 40% more likely to engage with that ad experience,” he said.
 
To break through to shoppers in a complex e-marketplace, retailers should deliver those personalized and relevant messages across multiple marketing channels. For example, Polanowski shared the example of a Yahoo advertiser who combined search and display campaigns and leveraged our Personalized Search Retargeting solution for greater results:

• a 488% lift in CTR over typical remarketing campaigns
• an 18% increase in their return on ad spend
• a 2X increase in website visits

Fragmentation poses another challenge for retailers.  Many try to connect with shoppers across media, devices, and platforms using different point solutions, said Polanowski, but that makes measuring overall performance and results difficult.  Yahoo’s new unified ad solution was created to bring all marketing channels together with consistent data, he said, and help advertisers combine the synergies of separate campaigns for better results.

For more information on Yahoo’s unified approach, contact your Yahoo Account Representative and see “Introducing the New Yahoo Advertising” and this video.