According to PhD web psychologist Liraz Margalit, the answer is yes. I came across a rather interesting article on the distinctive cognitive styles of women and men when it comes to searching for and perceiving information on a given website. In a ClickTale study, Margalit used heat-mapping as a way to graphically observe how women and men interacted with a recipe website. What she found was that women interacted (via click) significantly more than men with recommended side-bar recipes as well as top-menu bar categories. Men on the other hand, showed minimal click activity, seemed to focus more narrowly on recipe information, and then left the website immediately after the desired information was acquired. The two cognitive styles highlighted by Margalit’s study are systematic, mission-oriented (male) and empathizing, experience-oriented (female).

What are the implications of different website-user interactive styles on businesses? Well, if you own a yoga studio, it may be valuable to recognize that female students make up a large segment of your market, and therefore, you may wish to adjust your website experience to accommodate for potentially increased browsing behaviour. If you are in the business of selling men’s suits, perhaps your website should consider having fewer sidebar and exploratory tabs to accommodate for the lower likelihood of men lingering on a website if information cannot be efficiently found.

Article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251315

Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2313138/Ever-think-halfs-brain-wired-differently-New-research-reveals-youre-right.html

Most of us millennials have used Facebook for a solid chunk of our teenage years in high school, and now well into our present university lives. But somewhere within those weekly status updates, funny cat video shares, new friend requests, “poking” wars, and incessant Candy Crush invitations, Facebook became the largest, most influential and effective market research organization in the world. The line between private and public information has been blurred, if not completely erased, by a social media platform so expansive and so fundamental to how we connect and communicate in society today, that we would feel isolated from our culture without it. Facebook tapped into the fundamental human need for social belonging, and digitized it. And what is the business in which a social media platform like Facebook operates? The business of information sharing.

Anyone with a valid Facebook Ads account can use the Audience Insights tool. This tool allows marketers to pull information like age, gender, location, religion, political views, relationship statuses, number of friends, and more, and use that information for whatever purpose – like, perhaps, conducting a preliminary target market needs assessment before designing a social media campaign. Furthermore, as we explored in class, Audience Insights allows you to monitor “likes,” clicks, conversions, and other analytics to gain a rich understanding of consumer lifestyles, behaviours, personalities, trends, and spending habits. 

Article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-marketing/why-facebook-is-the-best-advertising-platform-ever-invented/article26850542/

Photo: http://rack.0.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE0LzExLzE5LzU2L2ZhY2Vib29raG9uLmQwN2M1LmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTEyMDB4NjI3IwplCWpwZw/c9d27ff1/12b/facebook-honest-notifications.jpg

With the explosion of mobile and app technology, marketers are eager to adopt to new methods of measuring, analyzing, and managing  e-marketing campaigns across numerous media platforms, networks, and operating systems. At the forefront of internet advertising, of course, is Google. Towards the end of September this year, Google announced two new product launches that use automation and integration on mobile to enhance and complement its AdWords experience: Customer Match and Universal App Campaign. (in an earlier post, I discussed automation in an email marketing context, which you can read about here). 

The main benefit of Customer Match is its ability to identify and reach a company’s highest-value target audiences, and seize the optimal moment to display an advertisement – that is, when that audience is most receptive to a company’s ads. It can also categorize similar audiences across platforms such as Youtube, Gmail, and Google Search to reach new audiences who, based on their browsing behaviour, are more likely to be interested in a company’s products or services. Combined with Universal App Campaigns, which integrates  apps and app users across YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, Google Play, and Google Display Network (GDN), managing AdWords campaigns becomes a rich, flexible, convenient, and all-in-one marketing tool. 

Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2015/10/07/googles-new-universal-apps-campaign-for-adwords-and-what-it-means-for-marketers/

Photo: http://img01.thedrum.com/s3fs-public/news/tmp/1086/google-blog2.jpg

Nearly three-quarters of marketers agree that email marketing is fundamental to their business, and that email marketing produces significant ROI or will in the future (source: class 3 slides). What if there was a way to further capitalize on the effectiveness of traditional email marketing by tailoring it to specific, behaviour-based consumer segments? Software like Marketo and Drip have been developed to accomplish just that.

The idea behind automation is that the information received by the subscriber or user via email is unique and relevant to their past behaviour. For example, if a consumer had been browsing cheap deals on Whistler snowboarding passes three times in the last two days, Groupon (through automation software) would be able to pick up that lead by first marking, categorizing, and tracking that user. Then, it would generate and send a tailored email that included recommendations of different snowboard rental and pass packages available in Whistler as well as Cypress and Big White. In contrast, a consumer who had spent less than five minutes browsing snowboard gear before moving on to other tasks may not be responded to as immediately or in the same format. Email automation is a more effective approach to marketing to a variety of users based on their unique individual wants and needs. Identifying and responding to leads becomes quicker, thus speeding up conversion rates and ultimately boosting customer sales.

Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-calder/why-marketing-automation-_b_8281832.html

Photo: http://blog.bigcommerce.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ecommerce-email-marketing-guide.jpg