The one true goal of marketing is to reach its consumers at the moments that most influence their decisions. At present, with the availability of options the consumer journey doesn’t just begin and end in the store.
Since consumers have moved out of their usual routine of researching before purchasing products, a range of other factors like digital and video play a major role in bringing in customers through the door. 80% of people say they typically switch between online search and video when researching products to buy. Therefore, brands are now looking for the best way to incorporate the two in order to drive growth.
An American tax preparation company, H&R Block recognized that more than half of their offline investors gather information online first, while only 60% of their customers visit the retail stores to get in-person tax help. Trying to explore a new avenue for growth by merging the company’s online & offline experiences, they launched a YouTube campaign that led to a 31% increase in incremental reach, almost 1.4 million store visits, and 79,000 confirmed retail appointments.
An Omnichannel Strategy Based On Intent & Affinity
H&R Block classified the types of customer behaviors into two by using Google search data and identifying the frequently asked tax questions. The two behaviors are: those who first did online research before visiting a physical store, and those who looked at doing everything from research to filing all their taxes online.
They then built video tailored ads to suit each consumer need. For example, if someone searched for “tax help nearby” they would see a video inviting them to make an in-person appointment with H&R Block. Someone searching for “online tax software” would see a video guiding them to H&R Block’s online tax preparation.
“Looking at user intent on search helped us customize our video message and connect with our audience in a much more powerful way,” said Amy Clark, director of media at H&R Block.
Targeting more than just these two audiences, HR & Block created more than 15 different ads showcasing a range of common tax questions, and also used Geotargeting to create customized ads for areas where it was snowing. H&R Block was hyper-relevant to their audience and gave them exactly what they were looking for in the moment which assisted them in getting rid of the clutter.
Finding the best proxy for the job
Measuring success is the final step of the campaign. H&R Block was not able to quantify the full picture of online appointments made by connecting digital campaigns to digital KPIs. So they used the store visits tool to identify the impact of the online campaign in driving customers into their retail stores which were anonymous, aggregated statistics that determined the number of people who viewed or clicked an ad and actually visited the store.
A treatment and control group was also used to understand the accurate incremental lift of the video ad campaign, and the result was over 1 million store visits and 79,000 confirmed appointments.
Although this is just one prominent case, it still shows the significant impact of the Omnichannel strategy and proves the fact that this strategy influences the growth of brands, helping them reach new pinnacles.