Experts from Ovative’s measurement team, Beth McKigney and Troy Neidermire, hosted a webinar alongside Forrester’s Tina Moffett discussing how to bring a growth mindset to a company’s measurement approach. Watch the full webinar to hear their perspective.
It’s no secret that we’re in a time of disruption. Brands are experiencing massive changes that are causing chaos within organizations. Marketers must be mindful of growing privacy regulations while preparing for the deprecation of third-party cookies. On top of that, competition between brands only continues to increase as consumers have more choices than ever.
To avoid losing market share, marketers need to embrace these disruptions and future-proof their measurement mindsets. The best marketers will do so by focusing on capturing first-party data, utilizing predictive AI tools, and diversifying their marketing strategy. On top of these strategies, marketers must also embrace a marketing measurement growth mindset. We put together this guide to show you how to embrace disruption, develop a growth mindset, and make sure your marketing program doesn’t fall behind.
How To Embrace A Marketing Measurement Growth Mindset
A growth mindset can improve the efficiency of your data, technology, and partner relationships. When paired with flexibility, partner collaboration, and being receptive to change, a growth mindset can make your resources more resilient. A marketing measurement growth mindset can be developed by doing the following:
Refocus Your Measurement Ethos
With upcoming changes to the data ecosystem, marketers need to prepare for a future that is walled, data-sparse, and more protected than ever. To make the best use of the data that they do have access to, marketers need to understand the causal impact of their marketing efforts. To best understand this, we recommend using a mix of measurement approaches and testing for the incremental effect of your marketing using a holistic measurement approach like Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR).
Additionally, marketers should identify their team’s primary objectives and key intended results. Using the Objectives and Key Results model, marketers can help data and analytics professionals understand what to prioritize. Finally, marketers should benchmark their program effectiveness using their current measurement approaches. Although industry benchmarks can be helpful, they don’t consider whom your team is targeting, how much you’re paying for marketing, or what your goals are. Set a baseline for what success looks like within your organization by benchmarking against yourself.
Lean On Your Marketing Measurement Partners
Measurement partners are typically more aware of changes within the data ecosystem. With deeper analytical expertise, measurement partners allow you to gain an outside view of what’s driving incremental value within your marketing program.
Apply Machine Learning to Measure Marketing Effectiveness
Data-driven decision-making is more important than ever as the demands of marketers reach a global scale. The computing power of technology allows marketers to automate and scale their measurement programs to meet these demands. From predictive to prescriptive analytics, machine learning helps marketers understand customer behaviors in ways that lead to marketing efficacy.
Build Data Literacy Within Your Organization
Not everyone needs to be a data scientist! But everyone within your organization should at least be data aware. Internal data experts should identify the appropriate data literacy needs across their organization and help improve the data literacy of their counterparts. In doing so, marketing teams can improve their growth mindset by being more flexible and receptive.
How To Maximize the Potential of AI in Marketing
AI is a powerful tool that can be leveraged to understand both what has happened and what will happen in the future. By leveraging predictive models, AI can be used to improve your activation capabilities down the line.
Pair AI with Human Insights and Creativity
AI is growing in its usability, but it’s not a singular answer. To unlock its full potential, AI capabilities should always be paired with people who are familiar with your business and the overall landscape.
Partner With A MMM Provider
To best leverage AI within your marketing measurement, we recommend utilizing a Media Mix Model (MMM). MMMs have the benefit of both being protected from data deprecation while also providing insight into incrementality. However, instead of using a monthly or quarterly model that provides delayed data insights, utilize a forward-looking model such as our Modern MMM+ that gives you frequent results. This will allow you to adapt to the ever-changing landscape and drive incremental value. Look for partners who can provide frequent enough modeled outputs to be truly actionable for your business.
Feed Platforms Additional Data Signals
Platforms typically have data limitations that don’t allow them to have a full view of all media impacts. Feeding platforms with additional signals can make them smarter and help them optimize to the outcomes that matter most to your business. For example, feeding platforms offline conversion data helps to paint a more in-depth picture that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to see.
Experiment Using Generative AI
Marketers should experiment with ways they can use generative AI to improve their programs. For example, when paired with performance data, generative AI can be utilized to identify creative asset attributes that best drive performance.
How to Utilize First-Party Data to Improve Marketing Effectiveness
With upcoming changes to the data ecosystem, first-party data is growing more and more important. Although these changes make it harder for marketers to understand customer behavior, they also present opportunities to improve customer experience and drive program efficiencies. To capitalize on these opportunities, marketers need to develop a data strategy using the following steps:
- Understand what first-party data your business is collecting today.
- Identify use cases for first-party data.
- Understand what data you need for these use cases.
- Develop a strategy to capture that first-party data.
- Identify key partners and build for flexibility.
- Test and learn, then test some more.
Diversify Your Marketing Strategy
To help combat this disruption and avoid over-dependence on specific tactics, there will be a resurgence in brand-building strategies as this is a proven, timeless way to capture customers. However, the industry is not prepared to effectively measure the long-term effects of these strategies. We recommend diversifying your marketing strategy by doing the following:
- Create A Learning Agenda: Identify your objective and ways you can iterate against it.
- Experiment Up the Funnel: Identify ways to continue improving your strategy, experimenting up the funnel and in new channels.
- Focus On Your Customer: Make sure you can measure and understand customer profitability and long-term value.
- Account for Lagged Impact: Brand building doesn’t happen overnight. Ensure you’re leveraging comprehensive measurement approaches to measure the long-term impact of your efforts.
- Leverage Comprehensive Measurement: Don’t have competing KPIs and siloed views of measurement across strategies. Ensure your measurement plan allows you to understand tradeoffs between KPIs.
Don’t Fear Disruption, Learn to Embrace It
Although disruption can cause organizational chaos, it also creates opportunities for innovation. Take advantage of these opportunities by accepting that disruption is imminent, embracing a growth mindset, and future-proofing your marketing measurement strategy.
At Ovative, measurement is part of our DNA. We help brands solve their hardest measurement problems to maximize their enterprise impact. Connect with us to ensure your marketing measurement is reaching its full potential
