The 4 biggest changes in marketing through a measurement lens
Over the past decade alone, we have seen massive shifts in the marketing landscape, and those trends have only accelerated in the past 18 months
To answer that question, we at Analytic Partners have asked team members from around the world to share the 4 biggest changes they’ve seen in marketing through a measurement lens: from increased complexity in the industry, to a broader reach leading to less understanding of impact, to too much focus on the short-term and more noise making it harder for brands to break through. We took a closer look at how brands can adapt and evolve to future-proof against whatever changes come next. Watch the full video on our website or read the details below.
Information overload for the consumer
We live in an omnichannel world. Consumers of the 21st century can make purchasing decisions or obtain information about products anytime and anywhere they want. Nevertheless, this factor creates enormous tension, as consumers are often paralyzed by too much choice and more dissatisfied after making a decision.
It is therefore important for marketers to stand out without losing their own values. You have to get creative, but still remain authentic. According to our studies, the creative is actually one of the key factors when it comes to increasing ROI. After the level of investment, creativity is the most important driver for advertising performance. Our ROI Genome indicates that two thirds of the impact of a video impression is driven by the quality of the creative itself. It is critical to evaluate message quality and incorporate that within your campaign assessment as
well as future planning. Given the strong impact from creative – the difference in business impact from even average creative to strong impactful creative can be significant!
The agony of choice for marketers
The fact that consumers are overloaded by advertising is also due to the fact that marketers have an unprecedented selection of marketing instruments at their disposal. It is therefore easy to overlook which channels have good effects on a brand or product, and that owned media or first-party data can also have a decisive and cost-effective effect. Striving to be present on as many (new) channels as possible, the quality of planning and implementation often suffers. But focusing on just one or two channels is also not advisable.
Our ROI Genome shows that there is a strong case to be made for a combined multi-channel approach to drive campaign effectiveness. For example, we have found that combining offline and online channels in a combined approach is 45% more efficient than offline alone and more efficient than online alone. Marketers should ensure their campaigns incorporate multiple channels and layer for synergies to support their growth. The prerequisite to build up targeted synergies is to align the message across all channels, but at the same time tailor and adapt creatives to the individual channels.
Analysis Paralysis in measurement
As the choice of channels increases, so does the multitude of options for measuring instruments and metrics. Contrary to initial assumptions, this complexity does not lead to more but actually to less understanding of the individual channels and thus makes unified measurement and analysis more difficult. As a result, marketers and their companies can hardly track which drivers are responsible for the increase or decrease in performance.
Current data privacy developments such as the death of the third-party cookie further increase this complexity. In the case of the cookie, marketers will need to start relying on cohort data, contextual advertising or the increased development of first party data. A plus point of this approach is that a personalized and sustainable customer approach can also succeed in the future.
Measurement has to be carried out holistically and in line with the complete brand experience of your customers. The most successful programs holistically capture all business drivers - internal, external, controllable and non-controllable. With this multi-dimensional, consumer-centric focus, it is possible to look at the big picture to understand synergies and more accurately forecast business performance. This enables a greater business impact through optimizations and measures in all major investment areas - including marketing, operations, CRM or the introduction of new products.
Short-term planning
All of the above mentioned changes and new market dynamics are affecting the awareness and behavior of many marketers and companies. Rapid changes are calling for faster reactions. Performance and short-term sales have therefore become more important in recent years, although they are not the main drivers of long-term growth. This short-term focus on immediate sales can lead to potentially negative long-term effects.
In fact, our ROI Genome found that 2/3 of the impact of an advertisement happens in the weeks after it airs – not immediately. The temptation to base decisions on real-time, short-term ROI metrics has increased, but the easy answer is not always the right one. To ensure that you don’t ignore tomorrow for today’s gain, marketers should have measurement practices in place to be able to evaluate both short-term and long-term effects and balance budgets with both time horizons in mind.