Marketers know consumers want relevant, coordinated digital experiences. They are aware that personalisation is now considered a basic standard and most consumers — just over half (52%) — are likely to walk away if brands don’t offer tailored communications.

So why aren’t they adopting measurement tools that enable them to meet these demands?

Marketers have access to more data than ever to inform their efforts, but without the ability to measure all touchpoints and influences along the path to conversion, it’s hard to identify what works best and tailor activity accordingly. According to Econsultancy, a majority of companies (64%) don’t even have a data analytics strategy.

Clearly, change is needed. To fulfil consumer expectations and stay competitive, brands must move away from outdated siloed measurement approaches, towards holistic methods that provide a single view of individuals and the impact of each touchpoint in their journeys.

Yet initiating, managing and implementing change can be challenging, and it’s easy to come up with excuses for keeping poor measurement practices in place. Let’s explore how the top three can be overcome.

1. “I already measure the consumer journey”

Many marketers already use customer journey analytics to track consumer activity across channels and touchpoints and may feel they have enough insight. While these tools can track various brand interactions, such as the ads individuals click on, the emails they open, and the web pages they visit, they don’t reveal the value of each touchpoint. Marketers can see that an interaction occurred, but they don’t know if or how it impacted the outcome. As a result, marketers typically end up giving all the credit to the final touchpoint the consumer encounters. In doing so, they set the value of other interactions at zero: producing a skewed perception of the tactics and channels that influenced a lead, sale or other desired outcome. Even worse, allocating all the credit to the last click can have devastating effects on the efficiency of marketing spend.

To avoid this, marketers must deploy more advanced measurement methods, such as multi-touch attribution, that account for the cross-channel consumer journey. Leveraging individual, user-level data across addressable channels like direct mail, online display and paid search, multi-touch attribution calculates and assigns fractional credit to the marketing touchpoints along the consumer journey that impacted the desired result. Only then can marketers pinpoint which aspects of their campaigns influence consumer behaviour and tailor communications accordingly.

2.  “I can’t add another measurement platform”

The marketing technology landscape is increasingly complex. Last year alone, the number of available solutions grew by 40% to reach a total of 5,381; so it’s understandable that the thought of implementing another tool isn’t initially appealing. The problem is that when marketing and advertising channels are managed separately, and all data pertaining to a channel is housed in its own system in a proprietary format, it’s impossible to get a holistic view of performance. Marketers can’t tell how their channels and tactics are working together to drive outcomes at each stage of the funnel. Even worse, having separate goals and incentives for each channel may actually mean teams are working against each other.

This is where implementing an alternative approach can help. By adopting platforms that take a unified approach to measurement — blending various streams of disparate performance data into a single repository with common measures — marketers can break down inefficient silos and create a ‘single source of marketing truth.’ More sophisticated solutions can even integrate audience attribute data to provide clarity into the messages and tactics that drive the best results – and the best experiences – for each audience.

3. “It will disrupt the workflow”

Although there may be some temporary interruption, the benefits measurement adjustment brings far outweigh its drawbacks. Firstly, updating systems allows marketers to outpace rivals by quickly adapting communications to capitalise on consumer wants, needs and behaviours. Secondly, implementing platforms that can integrate new channels as they enter the marketing mix will give marketers a comprehensive understanding of what’s working and what isn’t. From there, they can move budgets to areas that deliver both the best experiences and greatest return on investment.

Furthermore, it doesn’t mean that old measurement tools must be removed with immediate effect. Starting with a single channel or campaign can help minimise the disruptions of an “all or nothing” approach to advanced measurement. Focusing on a single channel or campaign to start, enables marketers to create an initial set of results that prove the platform’s performance and capitalise on those early successes to build momentum for expansion.

No more excuses…

As consumer habits change and technology develops, the measurement tools marketers rely on must evolve too. In the current age of multi-channel and cross-screen consumer journeys, marketers can’t afford to evaluate performance in silos or mechanically attribute conversions to one final touchpoint.

To provide the seamless and personalised experiences modern consumers want, they must achieve a holistic view of individual paths to purchase — including the influence of every touchpoint on the final outcome. With smart multi-touch attribution abilities, there is no longer any excuse for bad measurement or uncoordinated and irrelevant marketing communications.

The post Data-Driven Marketing: There is No Excuse for Poor Measurement appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Imagine a supermarket rewarding its staff for selling ice creams during a heat wave, or a retailer launching a massive ad campaign for the latest must-have toy in the run up to Christmas, even though it is continually sold out. 

Both of these situations seem nonsensical given these products will practically walk off the shelves by themselves – when in stock – yet this is exactly what brands are doing every day in their digital marketing campaigns. 

Advertising popular products that are in high demand is an easy win for marketing teams, as these ads appear to perform exceptionally well, driving engagement and conversions. Ad management tools and bidding technologies are programmed to target revenues or margins, which naturally incentivises promotion of top-selling products. But these products don’t actually require advertising, as they will sell regardless. What’s more popular products often sell out quickly, meaning ad budgets are wasted promoting SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) that are low in stock or unavailable.  

With other factors such as ad fraud, viewability, ad placement, brand safety, and audience targeting to worry about, it’s no surprise this particular issue is slipping under the radar for the majority of brands. But it is a key cause of ad budget wastage and – with digital ad spend increasing every year – the stakes are continually getting higher. 

There are two steps that must be taken to avoid misusing ad budget, and to allow spend to be reallocated to products that are harder to shift: 

1. Link inventory data with ad strategy  

The main reason brands continue to waste marketing budgets promoting top-selling products is that inventory information such as stock-level forecasts and SKU availability is not accessible to be actioned by the ad tech stack. None of the advertising or attribution tools currently available take inventory data into account when measuring performance of campaigns.

To really understand how ad campaigns are performing, marketers must integrate inventory data with ad tech tools, so it can inform advertising strategy in real time. Ad spend can be increased for high-stock products that need a little help to sell, for instance, or suspended for products that are about to sell out. Many brands already have a similar process in place where inventory data informs pricing strategy – prices are reduced when product stock levels are high – and this thinking could easily be applied to ad spend.  

2. Replace revenue with yield-based KPIs  

The success of ad campaigns is currently measured by their impact on revenues or margins, which inevitably incentivises marketers to promote the highest-performing products. Ads for products that are in high demand will generate boosted levels of engagement and increased margins, which looks great on those all-important marketing reports. The fact that the product would have sold just as well without advertising, and that the ad spend allocated to it would have been far better invested elsewhere, is largely ignored. 

Rather than relying on revenue and margins to measure advertising performance, marketers need to come up with a new yield-based metric that takes account of stock levels in determining success. The industry has yet to devise an exact formula for determining yield, but it might be on a scale of zero for products that will sell easily and can’t be reordered, to the full net sales price for high-stock products that will be tricky to sell. Optimising to yield-based KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) will ensure ad strategies focus on products that are hard to sell rather than those in high demand.      

It may not get the media attention of ad fraud or viewability, but promoting popular, high-performing products is a major cause of wastage in digital advertising and is something brands must address. By making inventory data actionable in the ad tech stack and adopting new yield-based KPIs that reward the promotion of hard-to-sell products, brands can make their budgets work harder and allocate ad spend to the SKUs that really need it. 

The post Why You’re Wasting Ad Spend on the Wrong Products appeared first on PerformanceIN.