Today, a click is no longer enough. It wasn’t so long ago that ‘digital conversion’, or a click that led to an action, was the measurement of choice by modern marketers. Now though, better campaigns, ones built on quality measurement, use a far more intelligent approach when utilising data insights and marketing analytics.
The first step in adopting a more meaningful and actionable approach to measurement is realising that we’ve created proxies for measurement and rely on metrics that just aren’t indicative of real world impact. It doesn’t matter if someone clicks on an advert for a new washing machine – what matters is that the consumer is washing their clothes with that machine a few days later.
For marketers, this consumer journey can be shaped by visibility and measurement of the right variables. Is the message resonating? Are we targeting the right audience? Is the campaign converting into actual sales? Clicks are nice to have, but conversion is what counts.
To deliver the best possible results, the modern data-driven marketer needs to take a 360 degree, end-to-end view of the consumer, both online and offline.
Ideally, marketers will bridge their proprietary customer data with highly accurate offline data such as physical addresses, phone numbers, devices, purchase behaviours, etc. – provided by a neutral source, rather than a publisher with ad space of its own to sell- and combine this with online media intelligence and targeting. Keeping all this offline data up-to-date can be challenging but it is very important when it comes to running a successful campaign and driving your marketing efforts.
By connecting online sales to offline data and including point-of-purchase and third-party data, marketers can be more effective at closing the sales loop. However, it is still important to ensure that the display ad reaches the right consumer and to be able to measure how it affected that consumer’s offline behaviour.
The solution; a multiplatform attribution model that ties in offline data and shows which channels perform the best when it comes to converting a prospect into a new customer and bring to the fore the most effective channels to be considered for the next media buy.
Let’s take, for example the case of a shopper who learns about a product from an online advertisement, uses an online search engine to find a review, gets a reminder through their social media channels, then drops in to buy the product when passing by their local shopping centre. This is how people behave, and capturing the data has always been one of the marketers’ biggest challenges. So is it possible to capture all the data required to explain this journey and attribute this sale?
Yes it is – by using cross-channel measurement.
All any brand team really wants is to connect with its customers, or potential customers, in a personal and meaningful way. The goal for marketers today is first to tie all their disparate proprietary data together.
The first step in adopting a more meaningful and actionable approach to measurement is realising that we’ve created proxies for measurement and rely on metrics that just aren’t indicative of real world impact.
Cross-channel measurement means taking all of your advertising channels, that is: online display media, mobile, search, social, email and TV, and then attributing a conversion event (a purchase or email subscription), back to the mediums and channels that the customer has engaged in before the conversion event.
Once the marketer has built up an accurate a picture of the consumer and they are targeting them in a meaningful way, catching their attention in the right places, it is then important to ensure that frequency is kept under control, extending the budget and optimising impact. It doesn’t matter how well placed a banner or advert is, if a system serves it multiple times a day to the same consumer, the result will always be counterproductive; wasting budget and damaging a brand by irritating the very customers the marketer has worked so hard to identify and target by repeatedly showing them the same content.
Data management platforms are now so advanced that they can provide agencies, brands and marketers alike with the capability to plan, target, engage and measure both offline and online campaigns more effectively. Real-time visibility allows them to better define target audiences, allocate media spend across channels and implement the most effective messaging. It is even possible to change current campaigns based on data feedback.
With access to new technology and datasets, unlocking unprecedented insight into consumer behaviour on a daily basis, it’s important for marketers not to lose sight of the metric most relevant to their success. It may seem like a daunting task at first glance, but by sifting through the noise and measuring the data that matters, marketers are edging closer to truly understanding what drives their target consumer and getting the maximum return on investment.
