Online/Offline Marketing
I am always amazed when store chains operate their website as a separate store, completely unrelated to the brick and mortar. Not utilizing your website as a means of marketing for your brick and mortar seems like a waste. This happened to me one time while attempting to purchase something at CompUSA. I spoke with the sales person about something I had read on their website about a product that they carried and he stopped me to make sure that I understood that the website was a completely separate entity and had nothing to do with the store. Different products, possibly even different prices. That changed things. It just doesn't make much sense to operate like that.
I recently walked into a Target and was interested in their marketing campaign for Back to School. The posters hanging from the ceiling read "Back to looking smart" or "Back to friends" or "Back to favorite subjects." It was an interesting campaign, seemingly trying to highlight everything positive about school, while not actually mentioning it. Interesting tactic. I wonder how it worked out for them. So, I thought I'd check out their site and see how they were marketing their Back to School campaign there. Much to my surprise, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was a link in the upper left that mentioned getting the necessities for your dorm room. At first I thought that there was nothing else. Then I found that they do have the campaign on the website, the fifth link down on the left, after all of the "New This Week" stuff and that link is in red, somewhat highlighting it. You click on that and you find a page that I would have expected on the home page. (Note: LinkChecker found over 500 links on Target's home page. I didn't see that many, but there are some AJAX menus that contain lots of links which I didn't personally count. Aside from those menus, there are easily over 100 links on the front page.) After some googling, I found a little game that Target had designed for kids to play with their Back to School products. I don't know how you'd get to it from the home page, but it's there. So, why would Target not highlight their in store marketing on their homepage?
Possible reasons:
1. They have found that a completely different demographic uses the website than those that enter the store. This is possible. Maybe the only people shopping at target.com are buying office supplies and don't have kids and so would not be interested in the Back to School sale. Maybe they've found that those shopping for Back to School items do not visit websites, but go straight to stores or that online marketing does not influence back to school purchases. Who knows. But that's one possible reason.
2. They have a separate online marketing department and the online marketing department has different goals and different benchmarks they are reaching for. This would mean that the marketing department for in-store comes up with the "Back to friends" campaign but it isn't a joint effort with the online department and so they try and get the online department to highlight it after the fact. The online department probably says, "We'll give you a link on the home page." The in store marketing department complains that this isn't enough and the online department says, "Fine, we'll highlight the link on the home page. We'll make it red. Are you happy?" This is because the online department has been working out with precise measurement where to place things and how to increase pageviews and get users to follow-through to other pages and eventually convert to sales. It isn't that the in-store department has bad ideas, they just weren't a part of the planning and so now they're expected to change things for someone else's campaign.
3. Kids are the real shoppers of back to school merchandise and big signs in the store make them excited. Parents really don't care about the advertising, they just want to get this over with and get their kids back in school. The kids don't care whether the advertising shows up on the website. (This could be the demographics issue).
These are all possible. I would lean towards number two. That's sad because it's avoidable and there could actually be some great work done if the two departments worked together.
I recently walked into a Target and was interested in their marketing campaign for Back to School. The posters hanging from the ceiling read "Back to looking smart" or "Back to friends" or "Back to favorite subjects." It was an interesting campaign, seemingly trying to highlight everything positive about school, while not actually mentioning it. Interesting tactic. I wonder how it worked out for them. So, I thought I'd check out their site and see how they were marketing their Back to School campaign there. Much to my surprise, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was a link in the upper left that mentioned getting the necessities for your dorm room. At first I thought that there was nothing else. Then I found that they do have the campaign on the website, the fifth link down on the left, after all of the "New This Week" stuff and that link is in red, somewhat highlighting it. You click on that and you find a page that I would have expected on the home page. (Note: LinkChecker found over 500 links on Target's home page. I didn't see that many, but there are some AJAX menus that contain lots of links which I didn't personally count. Aside from those menus, there are easily over 100 links on the front page.) After some googling, I found a little game that Target had designed for kids to play with their Back to School products. I don't know how you'd get to it from the home page, but it's there. So, why would Target not highlight their in store marketing on their homepage?
Possible reasons:
1. They have found that a completely different demographic uses the website than those that enter the store. This is possible. Maybe the only people shopping at target.com are buying office supplies and don't have kids and so would not be interested in the Back to School sale. Maybe they've found that those shopping for Back to School items do not visit websites, but go straight to stores or that online marketing does not influence back to school purchases. Who knows. But that's one possible reason.
2. They have a separate online marketing department and the online marketing department has different goals and different benchmarks they are reaching for. This would mean that the marketing department for in-store comes up with the "Back to friends" campaign but it isn't a joint effort with the online department and so they try and get the online department to highlight it after the fact. The online department probably says, "We'll give you a link on the home page." The in store marketing department complains that this isn't enough and the online department says, "Fine, we'll highlight the link on the home page. We'll make it red. Are you happy?" This is because the online department has been working out with precise measurement where to place things and how to increase pageviews and get users to follow-through to other pages and eventually convert to sales. It isn't that the in-store department has bad ideas, they just weren't a part of the planning and so now they're expected to change things for someone else's campaign.
3. Kids are the real shoppers of back to school merchandise and big signs in the store make them excited. Parents really don't care about the advertising, they just want to get this over with and get their kids back in school. The kids don't care whether the advertising shows up on the website. (This could be the demographics issue).
These are all possible. I would lean towards number two. That's sad because it's avoidable and there could actually be some great work done if the two departments worked together.
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posted by Dan at
2:03 PM
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