5 Key Marketing ROI Tips To Fit On A Postcard
‘The best financial advice for most people would fit on an index card’ stated University of Chicago Professor, Harold Pollack -- something which we think can be applied to marketing analytics! The world of marketing is ever changing, and that means that marketers are exposed to the shiny new thing often. However, sometimes the new thing is not fully understood and marketeers can end up failing to understand the ‘so what?!’ element. So, how do we ensure the ‘So What’ element is the driving force?
- Align marketing analytics objectives with the wider marketing objectives
Set clear and realistic objectives that fit into the wider goals of the marketing plan. No good can come from starting a project with the intention of understanding how to increase revenue from marketing activity if the key goal of the year is to increase awareness of the brand, or drive web traffic to the online store. Data scientists are spoiled for choice in terms of techniques used to match the analysis with the objective. An example of this is understanding how to use key digital channels from driving sales to understand the profit uplit.
2. Know your data
Data, data, data! It underpins everything Brightblue does and if you have great data we can get great insights. However, if the data quality is poor, of quarterly intervals, or of unknown origin with missing periods it can be hard to use and thus will provide less insight. To learn how to turn your data into insights click here.
Before starting the campaign, ensure you record everything from all relevant factors. So for example take Youtube, being able to know how many extra likes / views by campaign on a daily basis helps understand the impact of Youtube marketing on the sales funnel. Without the right data, analytics cannot help deliver those marketing goals.
This is why branching out to other departments can help deliver data that the marketing department might have limited access to. Additionally, we grasp a better understanding if there is anything in the piece of work that might help other departments reach their goals.
- A rule of thumb can be useful, know when to use it
There is a common rule of thumb in the advertising community that for the majority of FMCG clients running TV with a burst strategy for their brands works well. But for the other 20% of brands, it does not. It is important to understand if you fit in with 80% of FMCG clients or the other 20%, this is where analytics can help understand the right strategy for your brand. Projects are great at proving or disproving rules of thumb, for instance you may choose to model the awareness of your brand if you are certain that is the metric to fuel customers further down the funnel, and you can use an approximate measure as to how they will convert into store visits and then later purchases.
- Extraordinary claims – how do the results sit with other analytics
‘The world’s 15 largest ships pollute more than all the cars in the world,’ was a claim pushed out a few years ago, however it is not quite true. It is a modelled exercise with some dubious assumptions like for example, all cars use the least polluting fuel and the ships always use the dirtiest. When working through data or going through a report on marketing analytics you will come across some unlikely results. We need to pull this apart and put it back together to understand it fully, what are we measuring here? Do we have to unweight i.e. multiply to get to the total market value – is this a reasonable assumption that everyone behaves in the same way?
Knowing exactly what data, method and assumptions were used helps put the claim into context. But most importantly, it helps marketers know when they should and should not be quoting the claim.
- Understand the claim
Our overall marketing ROI is up by 55%! — we come across statistics like this regularly and the first thing to do is understand the claim, in particular the context it is in. For this instance, we scrutinise the time period it is up and whether it is up year on year or, quarter on quarter. When the context is understood, we can delve deeper and look at factors such as; is this a result of decreasing marketing spend? The introduction of a new channel? Executing creative better? The claim must be entirely clear for all parties to understand so that decisions can be made with sound reasoning. At Brightblue we have a large database of results going back in time across industries and media channels to help us understand any claim put in front of us.
Why is this significant to Brightblue?
The aim of this is to show what we can achieve and where our limits run thin with our current resources. This is important to marketers so that they are not led astray by the new thing on trend. If we get the basics right then even the smallest detail of analysis will prove more useful insight than exploding on a piece of analysis that wows everyone because it ultimately gives a false direction on a business’s future. In such cases, we must take this with a pinch of salt!
Brightblue Consulting are a London based consultancy which help businesses drive incremental profit from their data. We provide predictive analytics that enable clients to make informed decisions based on data and industry knowledge. Through Market Mix Modelling, a strand of Econometrics, Brightblue has a proven track record showing a 30% improvement in marketing Return on Investment for clients’ spend. If you are interested to find out more please contact us through email by clicking here and one of our consultants will get back to you shortly.