I was working with one of the top apparel brand in the UK for digital marketing. I have done quite few analysis for the brand and I came across various insights over a period of time. Recently I was studying the weather impact on the customers buying behaviour and online search behaviour. I came across few very interesting insights in-fact it will save lot of money in my future marketing plan. I am not sure whether you consider macro economic impact before designing your digital marketing plans. The term macro economics means the the “external factors” that affect the business.
One of the main reason for considering macroeconomic impact on digital marketing plan is that, the organisation may not be able to control the macro economic factors. But if the factors are considered properly the decision making of where and when to invest become much more easier which will avoid potential risk also. One of the good analytical tool to understand macro-economic impact is the PEST tool referred to political, environmental, social and technological factors that affect your campaign.
A tool to jolt down PEST factors is mind map. I often use mindmeister for mind mapping. Another traditional handy tool for marketers is post its.
Some examples of macro economic factors that should be considered during while making digital strategy are given below. The macro economic factors will solely depend on your product or service.
1) Weather impact on your product or services. This is quite important because in countries like UK, Canada, Germany etc during the winter season customers often prefer to shop online more than visiting a shop.
It is very important to analyse your existing campaign and weather impact on consumers buying. I will write a separate post on how to analyse weather impact on product purchase. When ever you decide a digital plan you should be validated with data. The high accountability of online transactions can help in this regard.
2) Festival seasonal impacts, some of the product might have very good online sales during the festive season.
3) Currency stability, if you are offering services in different countries how you are minimising the risk of changing currency value.
4) How well you are coping your campaign with advertising guidelines in your countries? There are several strict guidelines in the UK decided by Advertising Standard Authority. This is especially very important if you are working with alcoholic brands.
5) This year when the VAT rate increased to 20% there was difficulty in online sales for companies according to RSM Tenon; however, there was an increase in online sales before year ending. Lot of companies capitalised the market, for instance John Lewis benefited a lot according to BBC.
If you like the post please share it your friends. I will be writing how to use Pearson coefficient to understand customer buying behaviour and weather in my next post so keep tuning in to iamaceo.
Tags: digital strategy, macro economics, Marketing, PEST Analysis, weather impact
[...] my previous post about macro-economics I promised to write how to analyse buying behaviour and weather of your customers. Here I am going [...]
by Study Buying Behaviour of your customers | I am a CEO on April 10, 2011 at 7:50 am.
This was a really interesting article. Thanks for the great insight and information!
by Brett Widmann on May 12, 2011 at 5:05 pm.