Marketing measurement is vital to the design, execution, and effectiveness of marketing strategies, though it is often the most difficult part of a marketer’s job. In a recent survey completed by BCG, 83% of companies could not make connections across consumer touchpoints required for effective measurement.¹ To help our clients evaluate and mature in their measurement capabilities, Ovative developed a Measurement Maturity Scale. Read on to learn where your brand falls on the scale and how you can move the needle.

Ovative’s Measurement Maturity Scale evaluates brands across five stages, from “nascent” to “leader”, with 80% of retailers spread across the three stages of “emerging”, “advancing”, and “sophisticated”. To become a measurement leader, marketers must focus on key areas including organizational readiness and goals alignment, connecting siloed data sources, ensuring metrics reflect the customer, and elevating testing and learning.  

Benefits of Measurement Maturity

While marketers recognize measurement can be one of the most difficult parts of the job, those who progress in maturity build for their brands differentiators using their own data that no competitor can replicate. Additional benefits of maturing your measurement capabilities include: 

1. Orienting and aligning your organization around common strategies and business goals
2. Enabling the ability to profitably scale your business
3. Driving more valuable customer relationships
4. Facilitating optimization within and across channels, increasing overall performance and driving increased Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR)² 

How To Mature Your Measurement Capabilities

Marketers are asking what can be done to help an organization mature in its measurement capabilities. We see that leaders on the measurement scale are prioritizing and succeeding across the following fundamental areas: 

Organizational Readiness

Leading organizations are creating an atmosphere that is backed by leaders who have the right mindset: a commitment to disciplined measurement and decisive action through testing. They deploy cross-functional teams that are not siloed by department, they ensure the right tech is implemented that can quickly build content or connect user actions across all channels, and they source best-in-class talent that is ready to test, learn, and push boundaries. 

We find that media and marketing teams are siloed with limited interactions and understanding of each other’s goals, despite the common desire to drive customer growth and revenue. The most successful leading organizations leverage cross-functional teams that can share learnings, use varying expertise, and co-create / prioritize goals and strategies.  

Connected Data

Organizations leading measurement maturity are unlocking the ability to connect data from both online and offline sources, connecting customer data to their web data or connecting competitive data to sales data. They are also able to identify touch points in a user’s journey that can be directly linked to business outcomes.  

For example, we partnered with a luxury fashion retailer with multiple, complex sales channels who was struggling to understand where to profitably invest their media dollars to reach a new customer base and grow their business. The customer, media, and financial data sets were disparate, and teams had disconnected goals which created silos and a lack of visibility for managers. By investing in Ovative’s Modern MMM+, the retailer was able to connect their data across teams, unlocking a powerful view of the customer linked to Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR) that all teams could align on. This new visibility allowed the retailer to set new media thresholds to profitably scale paid media budgets by +200%. 

Consumer Lens

Measurement leaders are placing consumers at the center of their marketing strategies and putting their needs and motivations at the forefront of their priorities. To understand their effectiveness, these leaders are also prioritizing customer KPIs in addition to media KPIs like new customer acquisition. Having a consumer-first approach to your business is critical from strategy to execution and measurement.  

For example, we worked with a branded mattress retailer who wanted to leverage strong home purchase trends and DTC ecommerce disruption in their category to rethink their marketing strategy to be more customer-centric. By using primary and secondary research data, we developed four needs-based segments requiring their own full-funnel strategies, personalized content, and targeting approach. By building a more personalized journey for each segment, the retailer found that those engaged by marketing efforts were +229% more likely to search its brand terms driving both brand awareness and revenue. 

Testing

Leaders on the scale are creating a testing culture that is not afraid to test, fail, and learn to quickly understand important lessons for their business and move on. To create a testing culture, organizations need to implement agile ways to ideate, quantify, and prioritize tests as well as align on critical KPIs to measure and act on results.  

For example, a top ten US retailer was unable to determine the true incremental value of their advertising channels across the US. Ovative teams across data science, measurement solutions, and consulting partnered with the client to deploy best in class testing methodologies. Test results demonstrated that the client’s existing MMM model significantly underestimated the incremental ROAS of select channels, presenting an opportunity to increase ad spend and drive efficient scale. 

To move the needle on measurement maturity, you must first understand where your organization currently lies on the maturity scale, and then identify the steps needed in order to progress. Opening opportunities to maximize your budgets, optimize within and across channels, profitably scale, and gain / retain valuable customers are just some of the unlocks marketing maturity can provide for your organization.  

Would you like to learn more about what it takes to become a leader in marketing measurement? Contact our team of experts today!  

SOURCES: 

1 | BCG

2 | Ovative Group, EMR (enterprise marketing return) is a KPI for valuing digital investment