According to a BCG study, advanced advertisers that have previously used data-driven marketing tactics are enjoying significant benefits: up to 30% expense reductions and a 20% income increase. However, according to the same report, only 2% of advertisers are using social media. However, just 2% of advertisers are fully utilizing the potential, according to the same survey.

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To bridge this gap and assist organizations in understanding the foundations of digital transformation, we've created a handbook comprised of five essential concepts known as the 5 As. Boost your Skills by learning: Digital MarketingTable of Content:
5A's in Digital Marketing
5A's in Digital Marketing:
1) ASSETS + ADS:
Next, every retail performance marketing campaign must give attention-grabbing, relevant touchpoints. You're probably thinking, "Sure, Adlucent is an effective marketing agency; of course, this is your recommendation," but you'd be shocked how many marketers miss out on easy gains from utilizing media and creative solutions, particularly in sponsored search and retail. Serving ultra-relevant information, making your advertising valuable to the individual receiving it, is the ultimate version of attaining ad + asset maturity. The more relevant your commercials are to the consumer's present or future requirements and desires, the more likely they are to engage. To customize to the user's experience, you automatically provide customized product suggestions across numerous touchpoints and formats using dynamic creative.
Fortunately, Google Merchant Center simplifies this process by powering free product listings, paid Shopping Ads, and buy/sell on Google. Google Shopping Ads account for 89% of all non-brand sponsored search clicks. They feature a highly visible format, numerous meanings such as "curbside pickup", and are effective at increasing both online and foot traffic (through Local Inventory Ads). For Blain's Farm and Fleet, our team used Google Ads capabilities like ad customizers and numerous bid changes to increase engagements by 122% and clicks by 86% year over year, ensuring Shopping Ads were appropriate for shoppers.
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Hopefully, you can understand why step one was audience maturity - you'll need to employ the first-party data and audience insights we discussed earlier to succeed here. Ad and asset techniques also include A/B testing ad formats and assets on a constant basis to get insights and enhance digital media performance. For example, using our rigorous approach to asset testing based on specific target segmentation, our digitally native fashion brand client, Mizzen + Main, improved their click-through rate (CTR) by 379%. Finally, maturity in this category entails having good product feed management with completely optimized product qualities and few disapprovals in order to reach your omnichannel consumer. Product data delivery to the Google Merchant Center serves as the foundation for supporting Shopping Ads and Local Inventory Ads (LIA), both of which are highly engaging phases in the consumer journey. The following is a list of Google's best-performing ad products and when to utilize them:
- Shopping Automation: Drive simplicity, performance, and reach using machine learning.
- Shopping campaigns: Increase traffic to your site or local store and get higher-quality inquiries by promoting online and local inventories.
- Local Campaigns: These are designed to assist companies in providing potential consumers with the information they need to select when and how to visit their local establishments.
- Discovery Campaigns: Use a single Google Ads Campaign to provide rich, tailored ad experiences to customers who are eager to discover and connect with their businesses.
- Local Inventory Ads: Increase omnichannel sales by highlighting your items and pick-up alternatives to customers.
- Video Campaigns: Use YouTube and other platforms to keep people engaged and reminded of your product or service on a regular basis.
2) AUDIENCE:
The first step in mastering your performance advertising for commerce is managing audience data in order to discover, analyze, impact, and develop your most important audiences across the customer experience. You're determining who your most lucrative audiences are and what audiences you should focus on increasing. Then you activate data management to monetise these audience segments in the most effective way possible. The optimum method to this process comprises leveraging analytics to target based on expected customer lifetime value and regularly updating audience groups based on real-time inputs in order to improve toward this.
Does that seem tough? Yes, it is. As a result, marketing technology solutions such as Adlucent's Deep SearchTM and ad networks such as Google have created tools to assist you in maturing your audience targeting approach. Most commerce-focused advertisers, according to Adlucent, are not reaching this optimum degree of audience maturity and are still in the "emerging" phase. We've developed our services and technologies to accelerate our customers' commerce maturity, pushing them from the embryonic to multi-moment phases.
They have audience segments defined by personalities, remarketing, or purpose and refresh their audience lists across channels and ad kinds on a regular basis. Even simple changes to your audience approach, particularly when using full-funnel online advertising solutions like Google, can lead to big improvements in marketing success. So, how can you accomplish the ideal situation of - brace yourself for a mouthful - continuous audience maintenance across different segments, based on expected lifetime value, developed utilizing your company's first-party data?
3) ATTRIBUTION:
As a performance marketing agency, attribution is one of our favorite problems to address. Because today's sales funnel encompasses so many channels throughout siloed networks, and recent user privacy regulations in the advertising sector make monitoring more difficult, this phase in this marketing maturity paradigm is frequently regarded the toughest by commerce organizations. Accurately tracking and evaluating consumer interactions across the omnichannel route to buy will aid in budgeting, media planning, and resource allocation, resulting in more efficient growth outcomes.
To make media adjustments, mature commerce attribution requires creating a full measurement ecosystem across channels and devices, assessing online and offline ROI, and tying performance to lifetime customer value. We seldom meet shops and brands who achieve this, so don't be concerned if it appears difficult or unrealistic. In reality, we notice that many customers who use our performance advertising services, particularly in search engine marketing (SEM), continue to make media decisions based on last-click data. This is why, to test, assess, and scale media initiatives, we created Model-Driven Planning, an incrementality testing method. We can help any shop with physical sites.
We propose that each shop with physical locations employ solutions like these for omnichannel measurement and optimization. Measure the performance of digital commerce activities, including offline KPIs such as shop visits and retail purchases, to create a holistic perspective of omnichannel consumers, and optimize advertisements based on this omnichannel ROAS. More on this is provided below, as well as other recommended practices for achieving commerce maturity in the attribution area.
4) ACCESS:
Reduced friction across the customer experience, reaching both new and current audiences, and employing both push and pull digital marketing strategies are all part of access. This stage essentially connects the previous two and focuses on researching, evaluating, and selecting the finest keywords to attract qualified visitors from search engines to your online presence. The greatest method to attain access maturation in your digital performance marketing efforts is to use automation to provide thorough, full-funnel keyword coverage. At Adlucent, the most restrictive behavior we find on new, incoming paid search marketing customers is a concentration on branded keywords and general lower funnel phrases with keyword duplication by match type. If this sounds similar, it may be time to reconsider your options.
If this sounds similar, it may be time to reconsider your sponsored search term approach in order to optimize ROI while keeping the appropriate amount of control. When we redesigned their sponsored search approach and utilized only a handful of these best practices, our client, Woodcraft, successfully managed to achieve a 50% revenue gain over the past twelve months with a 40% lower cost-per-click (CPC) and a 76% increase in CTR.
5) AUTOMATION:
Automation is the newest participant in the digital marketing strategy game, and it is swiftly gaining universal acceptance. Our third element to improving profitability and growth is understanding when and how to use automation to streamline marketing processes. Consider this if you're avoiding the usage of automation in your digital marketing plan for whatever reason. If you're hesitant to include automation into your digital marketing plan for whatever reason, consider this your formal invitation to begin testing in three key areas: audience targeting, creative assets, and bid/budget automation.
We will never urge you to rely just on automation, because one of Adlucent's value propositions is Human + Machine: the combination of retail knowledge and critical thinking with the machine learning and insight Deep SearchTM brings. We are adamant that any planned, long-term performance marketing campaign requires human decision-making and monitoring. However, effectively employing automation may result in incremental performance benefits, saved resources, and scale, as well as a competitive edge over competitors who may be slower to embrace certain strategies.
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Because Facebook advertising is essentially an audience auction, automation has been employed almost from the beginning, particularly in targeting. Google Ads, on the other hand, which is generally a keyword auction and is thus more mature, has been gradually bringing out automatic bidding alternatives over the last few years. If - and only if - you have achieved considerable progress in the previous four levels of this paradigm, an ideal version of reaching digital maturity involves employing automation across channels. If not, return to step one and correctly provide the groundwork for automation to perform its work. Algorithms are only as good as the knowledge and data that they are fed.
Google has created Smart Shopping to assist advertisers in reducing the complexity and time required to manage campaigns. Smart Shopping campaigns use machine learning to optimize based on both their insights and advertiser data to maximize conversion value based on your company goals across Google's whole consumer reach. Simply said, you establish a target ROAS objective and Google does the rest. These advertisements mix shopping and retargeting and are distributed through Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail. Last year, Adlucent developed Smart Shopping campaigns for our customer, Gardener's Supply Company, to assist break the performance plateau that often occurs during their traditionally sluggish winter season.
Year over year, their Christmas present collection generated a 756% profit rise and a 465% sales increase! Omnichannel Bidding is another simple Google solution that increases conversion value. This automated solution enables you to supplement brick-and-mortar performance with digital by utilizing both offline and online purchase intention signals to optimize targeting clients who switch between channels. Remember when we had to manually manage bids on each device and channel? Fortunately, owing to machine learning, those days are over. Smart Bidding with shop visits or store sales values automatically reacts to changes in online and offline conversions for each auction, so that when store traffic varies, bidding adjusts dynamically to favor signals most predictive of a conversion.
In this final segment, commerce marketing maturity implies you're running complete auto-bidding, optimizing based on profit margin, projecting omnichannel customer lifetime value, and performing dynamic media purchasing. You can see how all five of these processes are required to acquire complete maturity. In this final segment, commerce marketing maturity implies you're running complete auto-bidding, optimizing based on profit margin, projecting omnichannel customer lifetime value, and performing dynamic media purchasing. You can see how all five of these processes are required to acquire complete maturity.
According to a recent Boston Consulting Group survey, 98% of advertisers are not utilizing data-driven marketing to its full potential. According to Google study, just one out of every three brand interactions is deemed actually worthwhile by customers. Clearly, there is room for improvement, and here is where technology may assist. Data-driven marketing may help you better understand your consumers and develop engagement at every stage of the customer journey, especially if you use automation to boost performance.
According to a BCG study, advanced advertisers that have previously employed data-driven marketing methods are reaping huge rewards, including up to 30% cost savings and a 20% boost in income. However, just 2% of advertisers use social media. According to the same poll, however, just 2% of advertisers are fully using the potential. We've designed a guidebook composed of five fundamental principles known as the 5 As to bridge this gap and aid firms in understanding the foundations of digital transformation.
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