In the past we have seen various aspects of digital marketing rise rapidly in importance, from the development of video, the explosion of social media and of course we are still all waiting for the year of the mobile. Given the state of our economy though, and the need for more intelligent use of marketing dollars, 2009 has got to be the year for analytics.
This is a video interview I did with Ben Mangold, Analytics Director with Mangold Sengers who is hosting the “Designing Data Centric Approach to Evolve your Digital Strategy” discussion on the ad:tech program.
Ben
The bottom line is that marketing costs money and everyone is looking to save money. The only way that marketers and agencies will be able to retain and increase their budgets is with hard, definitive proof of what’s working and why.
Many people have predicted that digital marketing will not suffer from the recession in anything like the proportions of the more traditional channels. This we hope is largely because of the infinite measurability we are able to achieve and the very specific tracking that digital enables.
Although many marketers still aren’t analysing at all, some are at least starting on the journey of analysis. Unfortunately once you get into it, you realise that we are capable of producing data at a phenomenal rate, and we have an increasing need to analyse this within shorter time frames. The most important questions then become: what to measure, how often and what tools should you use.
It doesn’t stop there though, there are a plethora of analytics tools available but these also cost money and often measure different things making them hard to compare. Perhaps another question for this panel should be how to measure and justify the ROI on analytics tools themselves.
Let us know any other questions you might have around the subject of data analytics for the panel and we will be sure to include them on the day.
In the mean time, we have some interesting new speaker updates:
Fionn Hyndman, (CEO of dgmAsia Pacific), Jennie Bewes (Head of Online for Vodafone) Anton Sher (Director at Front Foot) and Justin Baird (Senior Product Specialist at Google) have now joined the speaker line up
Also, don’t forget about the competition we are running, submit a question for a panel and get entered to a prize draw, the winner will be announced COB Friday 20th February
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I started and headed up a Marketing ROI consulting practice within a global interactive marketing agency from 2004 to 2008. While I am no longer in the business of “measuring marketing”, I still have strong opinions on the matter. I have two questions for the panel.
First, I often wondered if clients in middle management really even cared about the measurement of marketing. I came to suspect that many did not want to measure and analyze marketing performance because if they did so, it might provide evidence that would reveal just how poorly their budget expenditures on marketing served their company’s shareholders. After all, such a revelation might cost them their job or a big promotion.
Whereas our consultant teams were on an analytical quest for “The Truth” about what worked and what didn’t work from the standpoint of how a client’s particular marketing initiative contributed to the client company’s shareholder value, many clients appeared to not care about such insights. Instead, many clients appeared to be more concerned with how sub-par performance numbers could be spun to make them look best to their bosses despite a campaign’s lousy performance. So, more often than not, a consultant’s exercise in objective ‘truth-finding’ quickly turned into an exercise in spinning the numbers for a frantic young client just out of a top-tier MBA school fearful that he or she may not get that sought-after promotion to brand manager of a US$1 billion brand (with its commensurately higher salary and bonus plan).
Question #1: How do members of the panel propose that marketing measurement practitioners address this ethical dilemma inherent to their jobs — serve the self-interest of the individual client paying the agency’s invoices, OR serve the collective interest of the company’s shareholders whose money the individual client is spending?
Second, I found many practitioners in the entire ‘marketing analytics’ industry to be overly focused on the analytics software tools and the plethora of metrics they spew forth. Interactive marketing is especially hampered by too much meaningless and inaccurate data generated by too many software tools on the market that essentially measure the same things equally inaccurately (there is absolutely no accuracy in “unique visitors”, for example).
At my former firm, we spent a great deal of time away from the software tools to sit down with blank pieces of paper to ask, “What do we want to measure, and why?” We did this first and foremost from a business perspective. More precisely, we did it from a shareholder’s perspective. In doing so, we kept coming back to the fundamental purpose of marketing (and its tactical subcomponent, advertising): positioning and conditioning a consumer or customer for a sales transaction. That’s the only reason marketing and advertising exist; no more, no less. So, marketing analytics is about measuring, analyzing, and evaluating the degree to which a particular marketing initiative was successful — or not — in positioning and conditioning consumers or customers for multiple sales transactions.
Importantly, we created process-oriented analytical frameworks for measuring, analyzing, and evaluating the performance of a marketing campaign. We did this well in advance of the start of each marketing initiative. We identified Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that we agreed in advance we would use to evaluate success during and after the campaign was complete. We would set a Target Level for each KPI that we agreed in advance would dictate whether or not the marketing initiative was successful. Then, once the marketing initiative started, we would log into the analytics software tools once a week or once a month to pull data on those few consumer behavior metrics we needed to fill in our pre-defined analytical framework. Using the framework, we would then compare actual performance to date against the pre-defined Target Level for each KPI. If actual results fell well short of the targets, we’d raise a red flag and make optimization suggestions. If results were good, we’d justifiably raise a checkered flag to let our clients know that they were on track for a successful marketing initiative.
Question #2: Do the panel members agree or disagree that marketing measurement practitioners should approach the marketing measurement process for a particular marketing initiative with a pre-determined analytical framework (usually captured in one simple spreadsheet tab) that enables them to be less dependent on analytics software tools and the plethora of unnecessary and unneeded data they create?
Thank you for the invitation to submit questions to the panel.
Kind regards,
Logan Flatt
Dallas, Texas USA
Wonderfully refreshing insight from Logan. After completing research and analysis on some hundreds of campaigns, my experience in Australia is similar. In fact, now the trick is finding those marketers who really do want to know how to improve results (and are prepared to listen)!
Its almost as if people seek to ‘tick the metric box’ on their checklist. Asking brand managers to do a neat little projective exercise during the briefing process can help. Fast forward them to the results presentation where their key metric has just been found to be 42% – now what do they do? How is 42 actionable…to create marketing value?
So, the discussion quickly extends beyond metrics into actionability. Action that is appropriate, relevant and timely creates value. And value is the mantra for most business in ’09.
But the path from metric to action needs to be described with enough richness for marketers to work with. That requires some clever planning. This is similarly parallel to the blank sheet of paper approach by Logan because it suggests a deliberate and considered architecture phase upfront.
This prompts some discussion around the ‘Path-to-Value’. Do the panel agree with the following Path-to-Value steps:
1. Most metrics have very limited thought put into their DNA
2. Good measurement ‘architecture’ is broad in its thinking and extends to diagnostics
3. Metrics must be correctly interpreted to become insights
4. The potential of an insight is only unlocked by action
5. Actions need supporting qualitative information often overlooked but essential to unlocking value.
6. Value is created for the business directly from the action but only indirectly from the metric.
Look forward to your further thoughts.
Regards
Michael Ziviani
CEO – Precise Business Decisions
Sydney, Australia
http://www.precise-value.com.au