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Convincing online buyers to whip out their wallets

Clay Cook.

These days it is almost impossible to get customers to buy after seeing only a single marketing message.

Integrated campaigns along the buying cycle are critical to conversion.

The question facing marketers has been which digital channel works best for each stage of the cycle.
Unfortunately, as with most things in marketing, the answer is not simple. With so many permutations of buying cycles, it is hard to get a definitive guide. Especially considering trends vary across industries, locations and business sizes.

Google has just released The Customer Journey to Online Purchase interactive tool and report.
As the tool explains: “These days, the customer journey has grown more complex. We analysed millions of consumer interactions through Google Analytics and distilled how different marketing channels affect online purchase decisions.”

Providing purchase timelines across several industries and countries, the tool indicates where along the buying decision path a digital marketing channel most influences the process.

The digital marketing channels included in the report cover display, social, email, both brand and generic paid search, search engine optimisation (SEO), referrals and direct traffic. This covers most of the paid, owned and earned digital marketing opportunities available to businesses.

One of the most important insights from the report is the value early-cycle marketing plays in the journey. With attribution often not accurately tracked, most businesses focus solely on last-click strategies. That means important opportunities are being missed.

The Google aims to help marketers better cover the “four crucial tenets of measurement-focused marketing”; to focus on the right metrics, put customers before transactions, attribute value accurately and prove marketing impact.