Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

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E-commerce & Retail lead digital marketing growth

Travel and financial services are lagging behind

Financial services and insurance brands saw weaker organic search growth between Q2 and Q3, but financial services saw a much larger deceleration with visits up just 10% year-on-year in Q3, compared to 36% in Q2.

The quarterly research report analyzes and highlights trends within paid and organic search, paid social, and display ad spend. It also provides insights into digital marketing trends in Q3 2020 that were inextricably linked to the course of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the response to it across Google, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, and more.

Google
Google search ad spending rose 11% Y/Y in Q3, up from 9% in Q2. Google organic search visits to brand sites increased 28% Y/Y in Q3 2020, down somewhat from Q2 growth, but still well above the pre-pandemic historical trend. With consumers shifting some of their activities back offline, Google click growth slowed from 39% Y/Y in Q2 to 24% in Q3.

Spending on Google Shopping ads grew 12% Y/Y in Q3 2020, up from 7% in Q2. Google text ad spending was up 9% in Q3, compared to 10% a quarter earlier. Since July, Local Inventory Adshare of total Google Shopping ad clicks has been relatively steady at less than half of its pre-pandemic level. In early Q1 2020, LIAs generated 25% of Shopping clicks, compared to just 10% in Q3.

Amazon
Amazon again outpaced other major platforms in advertiser spending growth, even with Prime Day pushed back to Q4. Amazon had struggled with fulfillment challenges into April, but Amazon ad click volume began to rise significantly over late Q2 and into early Q3. Amazon Sponsored Product ad spend growth accelerated from 22% Y/Y in Q2 to 50% in Q3.

Amazon Sponsored Brands ad spending was up 74% Y/Y in Q3 2020, up from 58% growth in Q2. Click growth was weaker than in Q2, but average CPC for the format increased 16% Y/Y in Q3 after falling 19% in Q2. Amazon Sponsored Product ads continued to generate a higher average sales per click than other Amazon ad formats in Q3 2020, but the gap between Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands ads has nearly closed.

Social
Spending on Facebook ads rebounded in Q3, coming in 12% higher Y/Y, excluding Instagram. Any impacts from US election spending on Q3 CPMs appeared to be small as Facebook CPMs fell 10% Y/Y, just a moderate improvement from the pandemic-driven decline of 17% in Q2. Other digital channels with less competition from election ads saw similar improvements in pricing trends between Q2 and Q3.

Instagram saw a smaller decline in spending growth than most other digital ad platforms in Q2, and with some acceleration in Q3, it is nearly back to its Q1 spending growth rate. The trajectory for Instagram Stories ads remained strong in Q3 as the format generated 29% of total Instagram ad spend, among participating brands, and 35% of impressions.

Across all platforms, paid social ad investment was up 19% Y/Y in Q3 2020, an increase from 11% growth in Q2 2020. Spending on more traditional display ad platforms fell 3% Y/Y in Q3, an improvement from an 11% decline in Q2. Pinterest and Snapchat received 17% of total social budgets each among their advertisers in Q3 2020.

"The third quarter saw an overall strong sustained rebound, especially with retail and e-commerce, which are lifting platform growth despite continued low levels in categories like travel and financial services," said Mark Ballard, VP of research at Merkle. "Across channels, most of the numbers continue to show industries are still adjusting to the impacts of the pandemic, navigating changing consumer and B2B behavior trends."

Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

Learn the insider's tricks and techniques to turn every customers into a 'super spreader' for your brand. It's better than free advertising. Once you start this ball rolling, your brand can grow rapidly through word-of-mouth, advocacy, influencers, and customer loyalty. Super-charge your company's marketing strategy, build up your market share, and make more sales through repeat business and customer loyalty.

Find out what works - and what doesn't - and who's succeeded, and how they did it. See how the world's top brands keep their competitive edge against all odds.

The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook walks you step-by-step through the techniques, metrics, reporting, analysis, marketing models, technologies, tools and innovations for successful marketing strategies - both traditional and emerging - with expert guidance from thought leaders in every major market. Find out the best ways to gather, analyse, and act on customer data to increase profitability, build your brand, empower your customers, beat the competition, reduce churn, and increase customer profitability. This is a marketing book you simply can't afford to be without.

This book aims to hand you all the facts, figures and research data you need for the best decisions for a more profitable, more engaging marketing strategy. It also highlights all the facts, forecasts and trends identified by our experts from the global Marketing Factbook's vast database of market data, news, studies, research and articles, and presents you with an invaluable library of ideas and practical support you can call upon at will.

With The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook at your side, you'll have instant access to a true goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, research and market data, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid, profitable marketing strategy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)