Online ad targeting is like politics: it’s all local

November 8th, 2011

Brendan Morrissey

By Allan Maurer

Nowadays, nearly all of us do online research before buying anything of consequence. But how often do we actually buy online? Take a guess. If you guessed more than 6 percent, you missed the mark.

Brendan Morrissey, CEO of Netsertive, a Research Triangle, NC-based company selling a platform that connects national brands to local channel marketing.

Prior to founding Netsertive, he was VP of Business Development at Motricity, an interactive marketing technology company serving media, entertainment and mobile carrier clients.

Before that he was a VP at Los Angeles based startup GoldPocket Wireless, whose technology platform connected media firms and brands with mobile carriers and consumers, where he helped drive rapid growth leading to its successful acquisition by Motricity.

He is one of dozens of digital media and marketing thought-leaders participating in the Internet Summit , the largest digital marketing event in the Southeast, at the Raleigh, NC Convention Center Nov. 15-16, which still has a limited number of seats available.

Most commerce still occurs in local markets

“We’re 15 years into the consumer Internet, but lots of people don’t realize that most retail commerce still happens in local markets,” says Morrissey. He points to what he calls “the three 90s.”

While 90 percent of people use online search, online reviews and so on to research before buying a product or service, 90 percent of consumers still buy most items within 50 miles of their homes, and 90 percent of retail sales still occur over brick and mortar retail counters.

One problem that raises for online marketers is that even when working with 100 percent of the information available, you might know that a given consumer clicks your ad, hits your site and looks at specific products. But when that same consumer finally goes to a retail store to buy, how to you attribute that sale to online marketing?

Online discovery absolutely necessary

“Only now are we seeing deep pockets of expertise on how to connect online discovery with local consumer sales offline,” Morrissey says. “Most marketers are still trying to apply the old rules of e-commerce and old measurements such as click through rates or conversion rates.”

He notes that it’s absolutely necessary for retailers to be online so consumers can find them. “People don’t use the Yellow Pages anymore,” he says. They discover merchants or services online.

“Yet,” he says, “figuring out a return on investment (for online marketing) is tricky. As soon as the consumer leaves the web site to visit the store, you can no longer connect him to what brought him there.”

But, “You have to get there,” says Morrissey, even more so now with mobile coming on like the railroads that once steamed across the nation changing commerce. “People want to be targeted based on the device they carry and the location they’re at with a message that makes sense for what they are doing there.”

Tracking digital connections to offline sales

There are ways to track those digital connections, though.

“You can try to hook people with special offers and coupons with tracking codes. You can make it easy for someone online to contact you for more information about that new washing machine – but not with 19 required fields on a form. You can connect online discovery at the product level – tell me where I can get one within 20 miles from my house.

He adds, “You can have a process in your local offline business. Ask customers where they learned about you.” That can be useful even if a business only does it by tracking 30 days at a time a couple of times a year. “That’s enough to know if your online marketing is driving any business.”

Few businesses are doing that with any rigor, he says.

Netsertive, founded in 2009, works with small to medium-sized businesses with $2 million to $20 million in annual revenues, to bring national brand advertising to local markets with dealers and retailers selling their brands.

It’s similar to the “Co-op” advertising that puts advertisements for national products in local media outlets such as magazines and newspapers.

Morrissey will elaborate on this at the Internet Summit.

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