How tighter budgets are helping online marketing

While marketers often look to the US as a benchmark for all things gold in marketing, stick rate is an area that APAC is doing better in than the US. This could be very much attributed to the tighter budgets APAC marketers have to work with.Stick rate (the percentage of visits that last more than one page) saw an increase in most countries except South Korea. India led all countries with the nation’s ‘best of the best’ marketers improving their stick rate by over 14% year on year. In SEA, 43% of visits lasted more than one page while in US only 38% do.In a conversation with Marketing, Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index said that the budget constraints allow for fuller optimisation of media spend.“My theory is that marketers in APAC have tighter budgets, are forced by the nature of these budgets to not be inefficient and spend more wisely. As a result the whole region is getting better traction than US,” Gaffney said. She added that marketers who have also figured out how to keep their consumers on the page are pulling way ahead of the curve than their competitors.Stick rate is much more than just simple acquisition of new consumers. It is about what you do when they land on the page and how you can lead them to the next page. A good balance is needed to bring new consumers to the page and keep them engaged. It is hence imperative that marketers understand where consumers are coming from and with what intent.“There is no such thing as ‘offline’ any more. The data is telling us that delivering seamless experiences across devices and within social media is driving the best performance and leading to superior business performance,” Gaffney (pictured) said.“Across Asia Pacific, those marketers delivering best in class are on par with top marketers around the world. For example, we can see that stick rate is higher across Asia Pacific than in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. This is a leading indicator of two important elements of website success – optimised marketing acquisition activities and homepage relevance and engagement.”Here are 3 tips Gaffney shares to keeping your consumers on the page:Self analysis - This is the first step. If you don’t know as a marketer where your website struggles and how well you know your consumers, you can't move forward. A first assement is needed to understand where you stand amongst your peers and competitors. Finding out where your organisation falls within the tiers of the Benchmark will help identify strengths and weaknesses and can help marketers prioritise areas to focus on.Centralised customer record – This is important to understand who is coming to your site. You need to know if you know them and if they are return customers. If they are indeed return customers, you can not by any means treat them as though you don’t already know them. Today with the abundance of information and portals, personalisation is key in the digital world to build a bond with your consumers and to keep them coming back for more. Accuracy is vital in building up a consumer profile.Creativity and design – Don’t discount creativity. It is vital to engagement and creating a human aspect to the digital sphere. Ultimately, marketing is still creativity based and creative design still is key. However, the design must also allow for seamless use be it on the tablet or mobile to enable ease for the consumer to return at a different time.Meanwhile, a new study from Adobe also found that across Asia Pacific marketers who deliver “best practices” are pulling further away from their competitors. The research also confirms that digital excellence can be closely linked to revenue growth and other business success metrics. The Adobe Digital Index Best of the Best Benchmark for Asia Pacific compares the overall average versus websites in the top 20% on six key performance indicators across six regions: Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, China and the United States.Key findings in the "Best of the Best Benchmark" study for Asia Pacific include:- Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, have seen the most overall growth in tablet share; the best of the best sites achieve about 5% more tablet visits than the average.-Time spent on websites is higher in Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, but has fallen year on year in all other countries.- Websites optimised for smartphone visitors in South Korea see nearly 90% difference in share of smartphone traffic than an average site; in the past year the gap between average and best in class for mobile optimisation has grown in every country. Mobile optimisation refers to websites which have been optimized for smartphone visitors.- The ‘best of the best’ websites increase the amount of return visits by as much as 25% compared to the average across Asia Pacific.