Digital Marketing News: How Online Marketing Drives Offline Revenue

We’re collecting a host of links, videos, and assorted analysis on the ever-changing world of digital marketing. We invite you to skim, share, analyze, argue, and refute – just so long as you don’t get embarrassed at the water cooler again. Here are the latest digital marketing news and trends for the week of October 11, 2019.

Podcast: How Online Marketing Drives Offline Revenue

Location3 Director of Marketing Josh Allen was a recent guest on the Marketing Innovation Technology podcast presented by the International Franchise Association. Allen previewed his presentation at MITCon, held October 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

Allen and host, Jack Monson, have a substantive discussion on the advancements in targeting capabilities and how tracking is helping marketers and brands get the most out of their marketing budgets.

Nextdoor Introduces Hyper-Local Ads

Nextdoor, a social network that connects users in common neighborhoods, is introducing a new local advertising offering. Local Deals allows businesses that have set up free business pages to target users in their neighborhood.

In a blog post, Nextdoor head of product Tatyana Mamut wrote, “On Nextdoor, we connect business with neighbors who become loyal, lifelong patrons.” Nextdoor features a strong word-of-mouth component, and Local Deals should only enhance that aspect of the network, which supports more than 248,000 neighborhoods across the globe.

In this post by Laurie Sullivan at Mediapost, several business owners report an uptick in sales and efficiency after using the new ad offering.

Desktop Conversions Fewer But Still More Valuable

The public is overwhelmingly using mobile devices to browse the internet, but desktop conversions are still the most valuable, according to an analysis by AccuraCast.

Mobile conversions increased by 10% in 2019 to almost half of all conversions at 49%. Not only are the majority of conversions still on desktop, but “desktop visitors convert 60% more than mobile visitors, and conversions from a desktop device are worth 93% more than mobile conversions, on average.”

This is likely due to the lagging mobile user experience, according to AccuraCast. While businesses have focused on making their sites and apps mobile-friendly, many are still transitioning to a mobile-centric world.

Of course, these channels often work together, so it’s important for businesses to offer a clean mobile experience while understanding that the final conversion might come on desktop or in-store.