The Lead: Marketing Measurement
Marketing makes the most impact when you measure it. But that’s just the start. We’re addressing the key to sustainable growth that all marketers should be asking about: is your measurement timely, actionable, and holistic enough? Join the chat in our latest edition of The Lead: Conversations that Matter, where our experts talk through the importance of unified marketing measurement, why it’s time to go beyond traditional metrics like ROAS, and why you need a comprehensive view of your marketing program. Trust us, adopting these measurement mindsets could be the linchpin that transforms your business.
Check out these conversations on the changing measurement landscape:
How ROAS Fails Marketers
Many marketing teams—and their reporting systems—are focused on last-click ROAS. But because it’s typically online only and revenue only, it’s not the perfect metric. And from a finance point of view, stakeholders don’t have a great understanding of what the metric really covers. We’ve seen companies struggle to effectively spread dollars across the purchase funnel and splurging too much on performance media. So, what happens when a brand is too focused on driving last-click dollars and investing mostly in search and social channels?
Fortunately, the tides are shifting. We’re seeing (and supporting) clients jumping from last-click attribution models to the world of incrementality to measure the true value of their marketing efforts. A truly effective marketing measurement system doesn’t just look at online sales; it’s all about margins, customer value, future value, and the combination of online and offline. The result? Marketing measurement that unites marketing and finance teams.
How to Improve Your Marketing Strategy with Unified Measurement
Building a marketing machine that drives business transformation isn’t easy. It starts with aligning everyone on the marketing metrics that matter. It isn’t enough to zoom in on one digital channel. An enterprise view across multiple channels—like e-comm, in-store, and wholesale—is needed to drive change. This challenge is exacerbated by the misalignment of various teams who emphasize different marketing KPIs. For example, let’s talk about the role of a digital experience teams. Is it solely to drive digital conversions? What if there is even more value in driving a consumer to a store? These individual data points need to tie back to core central metrics if you want to unify teams around a holistic media strategy and enterprise progress.
And that’s not all. As your company moves away from ROAS and toward sophisticated measurement, every data point and tactic must serve the big picture: from media strategy to creative to audience targeting. When each of these components are aligned, you’re not only creating a smooth customer journey. You’re also moving the business toward real, sustainable growth.
How Frequent Reporting Improves Media Performance
For brands trying to level up from last-touch attribution, lag time or outdated data is a buzzkill. Quarterly or even monthly reporting can slow a marketing program to the point at which it’s impossible to make agile, data-informed decisions. Balancing precision and actionability is key
Our Ovative experts activate on weekly reporting with data reflective of the latest week. This kind of data is priceless, enabling our team to make timely budget recommendations and fine-tuned optimizations. Our teams are interpreting data and making real-time adjustments daily. Plus, they work closely with our media optimization experts to solve complex measurement problems and infuse those solutions into the algorithms that matter most to our clients’ programs.
The Importance of Measuring Future Customer Value
Marketing is a powerhouse for both immediate and future impact. But what about the finance teams? Understandably, they’re focused on achieving short-term goals and closing sales gaps. These short-term goals tend to take first priority. However, value-sizing customers is difficult for brands that only prioritize driving those sales in the short term. A strategy completely focused on immediate revenue can end up targeting and exhausting the same customers.
What if it’s possible to do both? Beyond measuring immediate revenue, we encourage marketers to replicate our own experts’ approach: consider the customers you can acquire and their long-term value. It’s all about balancing short-term wins with long-term business transformation.
The Four Pillars of Enterprise Marketing Return
Pay attention. We’re about to reveal Ovative’s secret to business transformation. It’s how we maximize the impact of marketing for your entire business. Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR) is a unified optimization metric that holistically measures a marketing program’s full impact. It’s a metric, but it’s also our approach to driving full-business impact.
First, we consider enterprise revenue—marketing’s impact on every sales channel, from online and offline to mobile. Next, we look at that enterprise impact’s incrementality, or marketing’s truly causal impact as seen through modeling and testing. Future Customer Value is our third pillar, measuring marketing’s long-term impact on a healthy customer file. Finally, we consider profitability—adding margin to emphasize investment bottom-line impact.
Combining of these four powerful pillars enables us to make data-informed decisions not just around paid digital media but also linear TV, OOH, email, SMS, and any other channels through which you reach your customers. This 360-degree view enables smarter and more impactful full-funnel spending.
Getting Started with Unified Marketing Measurement
Want to get started with EMR and unified marketing measurement? We’re glad you asked. It’s all about getting teams and stakeholders on the same page: achieving alignment between marketing and finance teams and ensuring executives understand the true value of a holistic view of their marketing program.
Real talk. Deploying a unified marketing measurement approach takes time—it doesn’t happen all at once. In fact, it might only be possible to make progress against one of the four EMR pillars we mentioned above, depending on the situation. This progress-over-perfection approach simplifies what might otherwise be a complex change.
Level Up Your Marketing Measurement and Analytics
Are you measuring the marketing KPIs that matter? From diversifying your media mix to solving advanced measurement problems, Ovative’s media and measurement experts are here to help. Reach out today to learn how we can augment your measurement strategies, support testing roadmaps, power media performance reporting, and so much more.