Awards & Press
Unlocking the Potential of Your Digital Marketing Investments
The world of marketing is changing – but this isn’t breaking news to anyone. However, one thing Ovative’s CEO & Founder Dale Nitschke talked about during this month’s session for the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association on Unlocking the Potential of Your Digital Marketing Investments, which I don’t think many marketers are really owning and empowering themselves with, is the fact that marketing now owns a legitimate seat at the table. We are responsible for the levers that drive business outcomes in today’s growing digital world.
One of the key points of Dale’s presentation was that marketing teams shouldn’t be siloed anymore. They need to be close collaborators with CMO’s, CFOs, CTOs, merchants and others throughout their organizations. Businesses are no longer successful when they focus purely on the product or the brand. They are successful when they focus on the customer.
In addition to this, Dale gave the audience four ways marketing leaders can start unlocking the potential of their digital marketing investments.
- Challenge your current metrics
Always align the metrics that impact decisions around what you are actually trying to accomplish–using revenue and customer file growth. Channel results don’t tell the whole story. Often times, there is a bifurcated view of marketing, which leads to a fragmented view of the story that the data is telling. Metrics like Last Touch (an attribution model where last recorded interaction gets 100% credit for the eventual conversion event) or ROAS (Return On Ad Spend; calculated by dividing revenue or or sales by cost or spend) don’t take into account how other marketing initiatives might be working together to influence final sales. With one client, Ovative found online ads of vacuum cleaners might not be profitable for actually selling vacuums online, but for people researching vacuums before buying in store, it had a 30x impact on sales. It’s important to challenge the story your metrics are currently telling. - Identify the measurement gaps
Know what you ideally want to be measuring and what your goals are. From there, you can break down where your gaps in measurement are that hold you back from being able to measure and track them. - Build awareness and trust
Many organizations leaders’ success DNA is not digital or data, but they do know how to read reports – speak in their language. Get them in a comfortable starting space, where you can then lean in and help teach them. Come with an attitude that brings it as a discussion, not a demand. Conversation creates the opportunity to drive change. - Do: test, learn, share repeatThere is no formula for the right marketing tactics every time – it’s all about constant testing and learning. You have to build trust among your team and company so you are able to do. You need to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Encourage your team to test and do something different.
The other main topic Dale touched on throughout the entire presentation was the importance of culture. If your organization doesn’t have two key pieces as an integral part of their culture, Trusting and Doing, then all the points above won’t work. Great culture delivers great results. If your company doesn’t trust you to do what is best for the customer and for the organization, and if you don’t trust the company to have your back when testing and doing, then your organization cannot unlock its fullest potential.
The final piece is actually just doing. How many great ideas have you or people at your organization had that just wither away and die out because it never gets approval or the trust to move forward on it? If you don’t have a culture of testing and learning and doing, and your team doesn’t feel safe doing, then staying innovative and on top of trends can’t happen.
