Customer behaviors have become more complex as the number of devices and touchpoints they use expands. Consequently, marketers must be able to understand their behaviors and preferences to deliver the best messages, to the correct customers, at the ideal times.
To accomplish this, marketers need to be able to effectively access and use data to achieve marketing relevance. As behaviors continue to evolve, a unified marketing measurement strategy can create a complete view of your performance. Furthermore, it empowers marketers to better understand their target customers, make smarter decisions and optimize their investments.
In fact, Equifax recently commissioned a Forrester Consulting study to examine the state of marketing measurement maturity. It highlights new challenges marketers face, and how implementing measurement best practices can help leaders drive more business success.
We’ve uncovered five do’s and five don’ts from the study that we believe marketers should include in their measurement approach.
1) Do create clear, customer-centric measurement objectives across your business; Don’t have objectives that focus solely on you.
Understanding and leveraging the customer journey is a big goal for marketers. Only 30 percent of marketers use journey analytics to inform their tactics, and they identify the complexity of the journey as their biggest measurement challenge.
Marketers can overcome this challenge by ensuring that their marketing and business objectives are customer-centric. Some possible objectives could include meeting customers with the right message on the right channel or improving customer satisfaction rates.
66% of marketers say that improving customer satisfaction is now one of their main objectives.
2) Do identify the appropriate measurement model for your objectives; Don’t continue using models that can’t offer what you need.
Many marketers have measurement models that can’t answer their core questions. Data comes from many sources, so marketers can’t effectively analyze it. In fact, only 21 percent say their insights help them make tactical decisions and inform their digital and offline cross-channel marketing strategy.
To mature your marketing measurement, think critically about the questions you need to answer with your data. What insights are you trying to derive? What outcomes are you hoping to accomplish? Your analytics should be able to answer these questions. While measurement should be an organization-wide activity, don’t rely on other functions to give you the data you need. Know your requirements and focus on your own measurement activities, or else you may be at the mercy of the sales and finance departments for the necessary data.
3) Do an honest assessment of your firm’s measurement maturity; Don’t continue using measurements without knowing if they’re what you need.
If you want measurement to be a priority in your organization, then your actions must support the priority. For example, do you have the right processes or technology in place to accomplish your objectives? Where are you struggling to get answers? On average, marketers say their investments in marketing measurement are expected to grow 37 percent over the next two years to make up 10 percent of their overall marketing budget. Does your budget reflect measurement as a top priority?
Complete an honest assessment of what you can and can’t do, and where you’d like to be in the future. Ultimately, this exercise will help you identify the best steps to take in maturing your measurement strategy.
4) Do have a unified approach to measurement; Don’t cobble together data, solutions and technology to create measurement.
Marketers say some of their biggest challenges are unconnected data sources and an unmanageable volume of data. As a result, their measurement accuracy can vary.
In fact, the number one missing capability marketers have identified (40 percent) is that data integration remains incomplete. This is a big reason why many marketers rely on different methods, including marketing mix modeling (73 percent), advanced digital attribution (70 percent), last-/first-touch attribution (29 percent), and test vs. control measurement (49 percent).
Leaders have a better understanding of how to integrate and manage their data and know how to get more insights from their data. More and more data will continue to come at you, so it’s best to get a handle on it now and determine how to make the most of it. Identifying the measurements that matter most to the marketing function will be central to your maturity journey. Once you know which measurements you need, you can identify ways to unify your measurement processes and technology so your strategy is linked together and data-driven.
5) Finally, do select a measurement partner that can deliver against your objectives; Don’t put your new measurement plans in place alone.
A unified measurement approach should:
- Offer a complete view of your online and offline channel performance
- Help you understand how customers interact with all touchpoints
- And help you discover new optimization opportunities
But, it’s difficult to put it in place.
Therefore, marketers need core capabilities such as sophisticated measurement, a highly capable platform, support services, forward-facing planning capabilities, and finally, the ability to ship data to buy-side platforms for rapid optimization. In addition, your partner should also help you manage the model-building process, wrangle data, assist you as you learn the platform and its analytics capabilities, and offer guidance and insights.
Ultimately, your tools and processes should ease data management and help you uncover actionable insights that drive marketing forward. You won’t get there overnight, but following these five do’s — and avoiding the five don’ts — will help get you on the right path.
OptimaHub Helps Marketers Drive Sales
We think one of the best ways to put measurement maturity best practices into action is by incorporating OptimaHubTM from Equifax® into your strategy. Because we’re a data company, we know how to shed light on data, information and insights marketers need to do their jobs well.
OptimaHub incorporates unified measurement capabilities that integrate touchpoints from multi-touch, multi-channel campaigns so you can deliver more relevant campaigns. By leveraging customer journey analytics and marketing attribution capabilities, the right partner can help you get a clearer understanding of your marketing’s impact on customer behavior and retention — and ultimately improve conversion and drive sales.
Learn how Equifax data-driven marketing can help you create a unified measurement model to take your business to the next level. Read the full Forrester report on how holistic marketing measurement drives business success.
Source: Leader of the Pack: How Holistic Marketing Measurement Drives Business Success, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Equifax, January 2019.
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