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66% of marketers ‘lack confidence’ in ability to achieve revenue goals
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Research has highlighted the importance of data/analytics for marketers working to protect budgets and prove ROI in 2023.

A study conducted by Sprinklr and the CMO Council, Outsmart Adversity: Weathering Economic Headwinds and Emerging Poised for Growth, found that 2 in 3 marketing leaders lack confidence in their ability to achieve goals in the face of economic adversity and uncertainty.

Nearly 8 in 10 express concerns around lack of investment or budget cuts. Challenges with executing data-driven marketing strategies contribute to this lack of confidence.  

The report surveyed nearly 500 global marketing leaders to reveal key findings about how marketers feel about economic adversity, and how they can achieve revenue goals.  

Key findings include:  

  • 78% of marketers don’t strongly feel that they can convince the CFO to invest in marketing and not cut the budget. 
  • Facing budget challenges, a majority (68%) strongly agree that it’s imperative for CMOs and CIOs to collaborate this year to develop a competitive advantage with customer experience.  
  • However, even among highly confident marketers surveyed, only 32% are very satisfied in their ability to leverage data/analytics. Among less confident marketers, this falls to 10%. 
  • Internal collaboration and maximising ROI across marketing channels will be key to success. In the next 12 months, most marketers plan to create omnichannel customer experiences to help them emerge from economic uncertainty.  

“Marketers will have to build alliances with finance and IT to protect budgets and MarTech investments, and they’ll need to identify and shore up capabilities to build their confidence,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. “These capabilities include gathering real-time insights that reveal how audiences really feel about your marketing on multiple channels, and then easily distributing this knowledge throughout the organisation.”

“In uncertain times, marketers face even more pressure to protect budgets and programs by demonstrating clear ROI,” said Arun Pattabhiraman, Chief MarketingOfficer, Sprinklr. “As our research with the CMO Council shows, marketers must embrace the opportunity to enhance the way they gather data, identify actionable consumer insights, and strengthen their engagement strategy across channels.”

Third of marketing budgets spent on operational excellence, but results inconsistent
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Thirty-one per cent of marketing budgets are spent on the pursuit of operational excellence, despite having inconsistent impact on overall organisational performance.

Gartner surveyed over 400 marketing operations (MarOps) leaders between August and October 2022 to find that 94% of marketing organisations are formally pursuing operational excellence (e.g., improving processes, building new capabilities). This indicates an acceleration of investment since 2020, when only 49% of marketing organizations surveyed had a dedicated MarOps leader.

However, the survey found that 72% of operational excellence pursuits don’t actually demonstrate characteristics that align with success, putting enterprise growth and marketing transformation at risk.

“CMOs are under pressure to make every dollar count,” said Michael McCune, Senior Director, Advisory in the Gartner Marketing practice. “However, their teams are spending a large proportion of their budgets pursuing change and improvements in ways that aren’t effective.

“‘Business-as-usual’ marketing activities do have to change, but CMOs shouldn’t divert funds away from activities such as advertising and trade shows that could have a more significant impact on marketing’s overall remit to drive growth.”

Strong pursuits of operational excellence complement the day-to-day management of marketing’s work and are associated with characteristics such as automated workflows, effective use of Agile methods and persistent effort over multiple years.

Organizations with strong pursuits were 43% more likely to report exceeding their operational performance goals compared to organizations without strong pursuits, but at a greater cost: They spend 45% more than average and dedicate 18% of their staff to achieve MarOps excellence, compared to the average 5% of staff dedicated to all other pursuits.

“Marketing organisations can’t blindly or ineffectively invest in improvement at the expense of business as usual unless it shows results, given the tight economic and labor markets,” said McCune. “They need to lay a better foundation for that investment and can look to strong pursuits for guidance.”

In order to maximize the impact of future MarOps investments, Gartner says marketing leaders should:

  • Communicate to stakeholders that pursuits of operational excellence will not have a persistently high cost. A new pursuit likely has many opportunities to drive improvements, but it should not be a cost dragged on marketing over the long term. As improvement occurs, resource requirements for continuous improvement should diminish.
  • Seek resolution of known critical gaps. CMOs often know about systemic problems, but lack resources to address them at the start of operational excellence efforts. Make sure to have a dedicated team working to resolve one or some of the known critical gaps so that investment in the pursuit has early payoffs.
  • Ensure that MarOps efforts don’t duplicate enterprise initiatives. Alignment with operational excellence pursuits in sales and service functions is always a good idea, but CMOs should avoid neglecting the enterprise-wide efforts of other functions such as finance and HR that may lighten marketing’s lift over time.

The year of impactful work: Redefining priorities for marketers
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By Esther Flammer, Chief Marketing Officer at Wrike  

Current economic uncertainty means that many businesses and consumers are struggling with reduced budgets. With global growth expected to slow down even more in 2023, it’s never been more important to connect with the right audiences and stand out from competitors.

At the same time, the pace of work has increased significantly, as businesses have had to quickly adapt to seismic market and economic shifts and reduced spending has been met with higher expectations. For marketing teams, the pressure to deliver is higher than ever, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be calming down any time soon. This has shed light on numerous productivity challenges that have affected the industry for decades, including the need to prioritise innovative strategies that get in front of buyers and do high-value, results-driven work that maximises ROI while still getting pulled in too many directions by work that isn’t tracked or measured.

Recent research from Wrike found that the total cost of wasted time for marketing teams is around $59 million per year, significantly higher than other departments. The average marketing professional is wasting 16 hours per week on miscellaneous work. This equates to 820 hours, or 103 working days per year. This staggeringly high figure goes to show that business leaders must find a better, more efficient way for marketing teams to work.

In order to excel in this current period of economic uncertainty, marketing teams must find a way to maximise their most precious resource – time. Only then can they boost productivity, deliver better results, and produce their most meaningful work.

Marketing and the Dark Matter of Work

Research from CERN revealed that we can only see about 5% of matter in the universe, with the other 95% flying under the radar as ‘dark matter’. This can also be said about much of the work we carry out today. Many of the activities we undertake and the interactions we have are never captured, tracked, or measured against a specific goal.

The very nature of a marketing professional’s job is exacerbating the problem. The need to constantly move at pace, producing and using reams of data alongside a never-ending list of applications can be challenging. When a task isn’t managed in one single platform it can create Dark Matter. Whether it is trying to find notes from the latest creative huddle or missed messages about editing work which were shared over email, Dark Matter is everywhere.

As marketing teams get busier –  taking on more projects per year (11 large-scale) – and with the number of messages increasing to 301 each day, this Dark Matter is beginning to have serious repercussions, and not just in terms of a lack of productivity. In fact, 80% of marketing professionals are experiencing burnout. This human cost of the Dark Matter of Work is sadly unsurprising. Many marketing teams are feeling the stress of trying to navigate broken workflows, which leads to misalignment, missed deadlines, duplicate work, and stalled projects.

Delivering impactful work

Working in synchrony is key for marketers to eliminate wasted time and tackle feelings of burnout. It’s important that every team has the ability to collaborate effectively cross-functionally and cross-departmentally, without silos and within a single source of truth. Teams also need access to tools that increase visibility into the work taking place and allow them to automate time consuming, mundane tasks like approval processes. This leaves more time and space for creative thinking and the ability to focus on delivering what really matters – brand consistency, customer experience, and maximised ROI.

At the moment, marketing leaders don’t have visibility into 45% of work taking place. In response to this, 97% of marketing professionals said a single source of truth would reduce stress for them and their colleagues. So, what’s the solution? This is where collaborative work management platforms come in.

Collaborative work management platforms ensure that individuals are aware of exactly what they are contributing to a project, meaning fewer mistakes, greater consistency, and a shared knowledge of what others are working on. This creates an environment in which creative thinking is encouraged from start to finish – which will ultimately enable marketers to create more impactful work.

One company already witnessing the benefits of these technologies is AVEVA. Over 20,000 enterprises in over 100 countries rely on AVEVA to help them deliver life’s essentials: safe and reliable energy, food, medicines, infrastructure and more. By connecting people with trusted information and AI-enriched insights, AVEVA enables teams to engineer efficiently and optimise operations, driving growth and sustainability. However, with the company going through a significant merger the leadership team urgently needed to work out how to consolidate multiple project teams, tools and processes. This is why the marketing function decided to implement a collaborative work management solution.

Implementing a collaborative work management solution has enabled AVEVA to centralise multiple project teams, tools, and processes, while bringing together employees in one easy-to-use platform. By helping to boost visibility across marketing teams and the other departments they work with, this technology has been key to building better brand consistency and improving results. Since onboarding, the organisation has grown from 248 to 505 users and collaborates on approximately 1,000 tasks in the platform each month.

With a looming recession, marketing teams cannot afford to fall victim to the Dark Matter of Work. In order to be successful, they need to gain greater visibility and better integrate applications. It is only then that they will truly understand the work being done across an organisation and streamline it. By implementing these changes, marketers will have time back to focus on work that drives ROI.

Content Management

Content marketing ‘providing increased value to CMOs’
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Over a third of CMOs believe establishing a thought leadership position provides best results for sentiment and relationship building.

That’s according to the findings of iResearch Services’ thought leadership research, which asserts that content marketing, supported by issues-led thought leadership, is the way forward for CMOs.

The research gathered insights from 500+ CMOS/-1 professionals spanning the UK and USA. The aim of the research was to establish how, when and where marketing budgets are being allocated and through which brand channels the majority of effective content is being published.

The survey asked experienced marketing professionals to choose which form of marketing engages best with their audience and the budget allocated to each area; share their preferred techniques they use as a marketer to research their target audience when creating their marketing strategy; and analyse what types of content they believe provide the best engagement.

Key findings include:

  • Content marketing receives the biggest marketing budget allocation (23.5%) compared to just 10% spent on product marketing and social media marketing separately.
  • On a scale of 1-5, most marketers believe that content marketing delivers the highest levels of audience engagement compared to other forms of marketing.
  • One third of marketers believe opinion based content provides the best engagement and almost three quarters (71%) believe thought leadership provides the best results for sentiment and relationship building, yet two thirds (66%) of marketers still believe advertising is an effective element of a marketing strategy. 
  • 61% of marketers believe that issues-led content that shows an understanding of the audience’s business or industry challenges receives higher engagement.

The research shows the way people are consuming content is changing, with more CMOs utilising content marketing (23%) as opposed to investing in event marketing (11%), as the remainder of the calendar year will continue to focus on virtual events as a result of Covid-19.

Yogesh Shah, CEO of iResearch, said: “It is important for us to continue to address the needs of CMOs and to ensure they can effectively communicate with their target audience and therefore strengthen their sales pipeline. Creating relatable, issues-led content is key to this and it is clearly a form of content that is an integral part of all marketing strategies. Organisations need to position themselves as industry leaders by sharing their expertise, and a data-driven thought leadership strategy is exactly the way to do that.”

For the full research findings, click here.

6 killer marketing metrics that really matter
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By Adam Oldfield, MD of Force24

The life of a digital marketer is rarely straightforward. Whilst other communicators may perhaps argue it’s easier for their digital peers to evidence ROI, those within the world of email marketing, for instance, may be quick to defend their position.

Because yes, they have a wealth of metrics at their fingertips, but it can be difficult to know where to start.

Rather than focusing on what is arguable a vanity metric – like a click rate or, even worse, an email open – it’s important that marketers look deeper at the data to offer a true bottom line impact.

Insight relating to a brand’s data subjects, list segmentation, and the evolution of those segments, will help a marketer to understand what excites people and drives them to engage. Instead of asset-based reporting, professionals should therefore be concentrating on audience reporting, to assess campaign performance through a user’s eyes.

But how do marketing departments get these bottom up metrics that matter?

  1. Segments are key

Not exactly a metric in itself, but the data that matters can’t be uncovered until segments have been built to see how they are performing, how they’re growing (or shrinking) over time, and what the average lead score is. The more segments created – the better. Automation should make this possible in only a few easy clicks.

  1. Lead score matters the most

‘Lead scoring matters only for B2B marketers’ is a huge myth! Savvy lead scoring takes ALL engagement from any type of user. A points-system should be set so it can be tallied and a pre-defined ‘tipping point’ – tailored to the brand – should trigger when to act. Lead scores help to decide exactly who to focus on at any given time.

  1. Analyse average lead scores per segment

The average lead score of a segment may peak and trough over time. This data can be used to draw engagement curves that indicate seasonality, optimum purchase times, crucial cross-sell periods and when an existing customer is most likely to re-book/buy. This type of analysis also helps to quickly identify strong or weak segments within a data set. It also helps draw correlations between lead scores and campaigns, web activity and, most importantly, the number of leads actually secured. 

  1. Segment evolution

It is important to understand how a list is growing or shrinking – is the data in a segment diminishing, for example? And what might this mean? 

  1. User web engagement

We know browsing behaviour gives us a deeper insight into a user’s interests and needs, but only one in six organisations use it effectively. Web collateral should therefore be designed to support this information gathering, and engagement across this online real-estate should be analysed.

  1. User marketing preferences

It’s just as important to understand what your segment does NOT want to see – you’ll be surprised by the level of variation between data sets.

C-Suite execs urged to step up to B2B marketing plate
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Even in the age of virtual reality activations, social video and mobile apps, the most effective media format for branded business content remains the good, old-fashioned ‘opinion piece’.

That’s the view of Michael Feeley, Founder of Feels Like Content, who previously spent the five years working as a consultant journalist with marketing media brand The Drum, advising hundreds of marketing agency clients on their content marketing output.

Feeley says that while there he was surprised to find that, on average, it was opinion pieces, above all other content types, which generated most readers, most engagement, and most click-throughs.

He said: “My experience was that a well-written opinion piece would often outperform all other branded content types online – even video, animations or infographics – by a factor of three-to-one.”

Feeley has now launched Feels Like Content to offer a range of content coaching and development services which he believes “plug the gaps” in the traditional agency/client relationship. The first of these services, the Thought-Leadership Sprint, is a 60-minute training and content package that teaches senior executives how to recognise and develop great ideas for opinion pieces.

Feeley explained: “For opinion pieces to be truly authentic and cut-through to your target audience, they need to originate from the ideas of your senior team, and be based on their sector experience, their real-world expertise and the conversations taking place inside your organisation right now.  

“The problem is that senior executives are busy people. Ask the average over-worked sales or IT director to write produce an article on the latest industry trends at short notice and their immediate response is likely to be unsuitable for publication! However, it’s a big mistake for C-suite executives to view content marketing as ‘something other people do’, so I want to help shift that mindset wherever I can.”

Feeley claims that during the 60-minute group session (and subsequent 1-2-1s with participants) he can convince senior execs to become “enthusiastic content creators” and, using a unique ‘5 magic questions’ approach, show them how to develop thought-leadership articles easily that deliver genuine ROI. Each participant then develops their first opinion piece in collaboration with a professional journalist to kick-start their journey as industry commentators.

Feeley said: “The vision is to make content marketing make less about automation and being on the latest hot social platform without really knowing why, and more about reconnecting your content with the expertise inside your organisation.”

Feels Like Content is currently trialling the Thought-Leadership Sprint with selected organisations in Scotland and will formally launch the training and content development package across the UK from June 2019.

Emarsys and Persado team up for campaign automation
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Persado and Emarsys customers are now be able to generate, test and serve their marketing campaigns in minutes using a combined platform that the partners claim takes a fraction of the time of a traditional setup.

Through the joint API, Emarsys campaign results will flow back into Persado, giving clients access to quantitative and qualitative analysis on the variables that impact performance.

Happy Socks used the system last year for its Black Friday campaign, which is being held up as a the poster boy of the collaboration.

“This integration is incredibly exciting because both Persado’s and Emarsys’ technologies are critical for driving success. Emarsys gives us freedom to easily setup and test campaigns, and Persado helps us empower our messages by generating the perfect language to improve our content’s performance and relevancy,” said Marc Verschueren, Director of Online Marketing and Sales at Happy Socks. “Coming out of our recent Black Friday campaign, we saw an average open rate uplift of 21 percent, and an average click-through-rate uplift of 37 percent. These technologies helped us stand out by taking more risks and thinking outside the box, all without worrying about missing the mark.”

“Today’s CMOs are bombarded with solutions claiming to drive ROI, so identifying the technologies and offerings that provide real value has become increasingly difficult. Marketing teams need products that intelligently achieve results and close the gap between goals and outcomes,” said Assaf Baciu, Co-Founder & SVP of Product and Engineering, Persado. “Through this partnership, we are uniting our strengths in automation, AI-powered predictive insights and analysis to add mathematical certainty to the development of creative while eliminating burden. We are thrilled to work together to give marketers the confidence they deserve.”

“We know that poor attempts to tailor communications will turn customers off. Marketers therefore rely on smart technology to automate and personalize communications across channels, at scale and often in real-time,” said Dave Littlechild, Global Head of Partnerships & Alliances at Emarsys. “This partnership helps us bridge the technology adoption gap that stands between a marketer and his or her ability to profitably driving more revenue. We are excited and look forward to the future as partners.”

The integration of Persado within Emarsys is available to clients now.

GUEST BLOG: Gauging the return on investment available from marketing
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According to figures published by Google in its Car Purchasing UK Report in April 2018, £115.9 million was invested in direct mail and online display by UK car dealers during 2016 alone.

While automotive manufacturers often have a substantial marketing budget available to them though, this is not always a luxury to firms when they are looking at their marketing campaigns.

Due to digital visibility not usually coming cheap due to the increased interest in online platforms, VW service providers Vindis takes a look at whether such investments are indeed worth the cost…

The automotive industry

Within Google’s Drive To Decide Report, which was created in association with TNS, a discussion took place about how the auto shopper of today is more digitally savvy than previous generations. In fact, over 82% of the UK population aged 18 and over have access to the internet for personal reasons, 85% use smartphones and 65% choose a smartphone as their preferred device to access the internet. These figures show that for car dealers to keep their head in the game, a digital transition is vital.

Research online will also be carried out by 90% of auto shoppers, the same report goes on to reveal. 51% of buyers starting their auto research online, with 41% of those using a search engine. To capture those shoppers beginning their research online, car dealers must think in terms of the customer’s micro moments of influence, which could include online display ads – one marketing method that currently occupies a significant proportion of car dealers’ marketing budgets.

Of the entire UK Digital Ad Spending Growth throughout 2017, eMarketer claims that the automotive industry accounted for 11% of the total. This placed the industry in second place behind the retail sector. The automotive industry is forecast to see a further 9.5% increase in ad spending in 2018.

As many car purchases still occur on the forecourt though, what effect is online having on influencing the decisions of auto shoppers? 41% of shoppers who research online find their smartphone research ‘very valuable’. 60% said they were influenced by what they saw in the media, of which 22% were influenced by marketing promotions – proving online investment is working.

Across the automotive sector, traditional methods of TV and radio continue to be the most invested forms of marketing. In the last past five years though, it is digital that has made the biggest jump from fifth most popular method to third, seeing an increase of 10.6% in expenditure.

The healthcare industry

An entirely different set of rules are followed for marketing when it comes to the healthcare sector. This is generally because it is restricted by heavy regulations. The same ROI methods that have been adopted by other sectors simply don’t work for the healthcare market. Despite nearly 74% of all healthcare marketing emails remaining unopened, you’ll be surprised to learn that email marketing is essential for the healthcare industry’s marketing strategy.

Email is used by approximately 2.5 million people as a primary form of communication. The use of email has also increased in value and usage over the past few years. This means email marketing is targeting a large audience. For this reason, 62% of physicians and other healthcare providers prefer communication via email – and now that smartphone devices allow users to check their emails on their device, email marketing puts companies at the fingertips of their audience.

Those in the healthcare industry should see online marketing as another platform that will make for worthwhile investment as well. This is especially the case when you consider that one in 20 Google searches are for health-related content. This could be attributed to the fact that many people turn to a search engine for medical answer before calling the GP.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, a search engine will be the starting point of 77% of all health enquiries. What’s more, 72% of total internet users say they’ve looked online for health information within the past year. Furthermore, 52% of smartphone users have used their device to look up the medical information they require. Statistics estimate that marketing spend for online marketing accounts for 35% of the overall budget.

Don’t forget the appeal of social media marketing either. Whilst the healthcare industry is restricted to how they market their services and products, that doesn’t mean social media should be neglected. In fact, an effective social media campaign could be a crucial investment for organisations, with 41% of people choosing a healthcare provider based on their social media reputation! And the reason? The success of social campaigns is usually attributed to the fact audiences can engage with the content on familiar platforms.

The fashion industry

The success of many fashion retailers will depend on their investment online. This point is underlined by the fact online sales in the fashion industry reached £16.2 billion in 2017! This figure is expected to continue to grow by a huge 79% by 2022. So where are fashion retailers investing their marketing budgets? Has online marketing become a priority?

Almost a quarter of all purchases in December 2017 were tied to ecommerce. This is according to the British Retail Consortium, as online brands such as ASOS and Boohoo continue to embrace the online shopping phenomenon. ASOS experienced an 18% UK sales growth in the final four months of 2017, whilst Boohoo saw a 31% increase in sales throughout the same period.

Next, Marks and Spencer, and John Lewis are just three of the well-known brands in the industry to have invested millions into their operations and marketing efforts online. Such tactics aimed to capture the online shopper and drive digital sales. John Lewis announced that 40% of its Christmas sales came from online shoppers, and whilst Next struggled to keep up with the sales growth of its competitors, it has announced it will invest £10 million into its online marketing and operations.

It also seems that many shoppers aren’t willing or interested to head to the high-street in order to shop. Instead, they like the idea of being able to conveniently shop from the comfort of their home, or via their smartphone devices whilst on the move.

In research carried out by the PMYB Influencer Marketing Agency, 59% of fashion marketers increased the budget they had available for influencer marketing last year. In fact, 75% of global fashion brands collaborate with social media influencers as part of their marketing strategy and more than a third of marketers believe influencer marketing to be more successful than traditional methods of advertising in 2017 – as 22% of customers are said to be acquired through influencer marketing.

The utilities industry

Comparison websites are now being used by so many consumers when they are trying to find the right utilities supplier for their needs. These websites could be the key to many suppliers acquiring and retaining customers.

Comparison websites often spend millions on TV marketing campaigns, which are then watched by so much of the nation. Therefore, it has become vital for many utility suppliers to be listed on comparison websites and offer a very competitive price, in order to stay in the game.

Compare the Market, MoneySupermarket, Go Compare and Confused.com are currently the four largest comparison websites. These companies are also among the top 100 highest spending advertisers in the UK, but does that marketing investment reflect on utility suppliers?

The difference between a high rate of customer retention for one supplier and a high rate of customer acquisition for another supplier can be determined through comparison websites. If you don’t beat your competitors, then what is to stop your existing and potential new customers choosing your competitors over you?

Instead of customer acquisition, British Gas has altered its marketing goals towards customer retention. Whilst the company recognise that this approach to marketing will be a slower process to yield measurable results, they firmly believe that retention will in turn lead to acquisition. The Gas company hope that by marketing a wider range of tailored products and services to their existing customers, they will be able to improve customer retention.

A loyalty scheme offering discounted energy and services has received a £100 million investment. This scheme focuses on the value of a customer, their behaviour and spending habits over time to discover what they are looking for in the company. The utilities sector is incredibly competitive, so it is vital that companies invest in their existing customers before looking for new customers.

Digital should be a key focus for those in the utilities sector too. 40% of all searches in Q3 2017 were carried out on mobile, and a further 45% of all ad impressions were via mobile too – according to Google’s Public Utilities Report in December 2017. As mobile usage continues to soar, companies need to consider content created specifically for mobile users as they account for a large proportion of the market now.

Concluding thoughts

Online marketing investment should be seen as very important for some industries, such as the fashion and automotive sectors. With a clear increase in online demand in both sectors that is changing the purchase process, some game players could find themselves out of the game before it has even begun if they neglect digital.

The picture grows even more for sectors such as the utilities industry. Whilst TV and digital appear to remain the main sales driving forces, it’s more than just creating your own marketing campaign when comparison sites need to be considered. Without the correct marketing, advertising or listing on comparison sites, you could fall behind.

The average firm is expected to allocate a minimum of 41% of their marketing budget to online strategies during 2018. This is according to webstrategies.com, with this figure expected to grow to 45% by 2020 too. Social media advertising investments is expected to represent 25% of total online spending and search engine banner ads are also expected to grow significantly too – all presumably as a result of more mobile and online usage.

Where do you stand when it comes to investment into marketing strategies? If mobile and online usage continues to grow year on year at the rate it has done in the past few years, we forecast the investment to be not only worthwhile but essential.

Sources

https://pmyb.co.uk/global-fashion-company-influencer-marketing-budget/

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-uk-clothing-market-2017-2022-300483862.html

http://uk.fashionnetwork.com/news/Online-is-key-focus-for-UK-fashion-retail-investment-in-2017,783787.html#.WrOjxOjFKUk

http://www.mobyaffiliates.com/blog/retail-accounts-for-14-2-of-digital-advertising-spending-in-the-uk-in-2017/

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2933401/Energy-price-comparison-sites-spend-110m-annoying-adverts.html

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/03/28/british-gas-shifts-acquisition-retention-marketing-know-the-value-keeping-the-right

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-companies-online-advertising-spend-10-billion-more-last-year-2016-pwc-a7678536.html

https://www.webstrategiesinc.com/blog/how-much-budget-for-online-marketing-in-2014

https://www.kunocreative.com/blog/healthcare-email-marketing

http://www.evariant.com/blog/10-campaign-best-practices-for-healthcare-marketers

https://getreferralmd.com/2015/02/7-medical-marketing-and-dental-media-strategies-that-really-work/

GUEST BLOG: The secret sauce for measuring social media ROI
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By James Carroll, Digital Marketing Manager, Tableau

If you’re a digital marketer, social media is probably a key part of your marketing strategy. But if the idea of proving out the ROI of your social media presence to your marketing leaders keeps you up at night, you’re not alone. Research from DMA shows that “only 48% of marketers agree that social media gives them any return on investment”. Gathering and analysing social media data comprehensively and connecting it across all platforms to show the value of your social programs is no easy feat.

So how do you know if your team is measuring performance with the right social media metrics? To answer this, you need to understand what problems you’re trying to solve. Before diving into the data, you must have key performance indicators (KPIs) that support your objectives and align with revenue attribution models. Each social platform has unique audiences and definitions for metrics on engagement, reach, and more, as well as native reporting. So, before you step in front of senior leaders to report on social media performance, understand what you’re trying to accomplish with your programs and have clear goals in place.

Approach social media data with metrics in mind

When you’re determining which social metrics matter, be cautious of committing to KPIs that may not be measurable. If you don’t have access to the right data to back up a KPI, don’t plan to include these metrics in your goals until that data becomes available. Understand that some in-platform metrics help measure impact or influence on business goals—like reach, website visitors (returning and net-new), actions on your website or app, and the cost for those actions, such as cost per acquisition (CPA). Other metrics may require tying together a social post or ad impression and click with business-critical actions, such as: filling out a form, submitting credit card information, or buying something in-store.

Depending on the maturity of your analytics strategy, you may already be answering the below questions, but review them to frame your thinking and 2019 planning. Here are things to consider:

  • What are you using your social channels for? (e.g., grow awareness, convert leads, engage with clients and community, etc.)
  • What are your paid social goals? What are your campaign goals?
  • Can you measure success with platform data alone or do you need additional data sources?
  • Do you understand who your website visitors are? Can you compare them with your social followers?
  • Are you able to quantify the cost of acquisition and lifetime value for each customer?

Formal social metrics need data points to map back to and establish a method by which your stakeholders and leaders can track performance.

Social analysis is relative to analytics maturity

Once you’ve determined metrics that are aligned with marketing analytics goals, you’ll need to access and analyse social data to measure success. Sounds simple enough, right?

Viewing insights natively within Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook is straightforward. Analysing data and identifying trends across platforms is another story. If you’re trying to create a comprehensive view of performance so you can slice and dice the data, it’s necessary to export your social data outside the platform.

How should you approach deep analysis of your social data? Start by being honest about the maturity of your marketing analytics program. Early on in your journey, you should be able to track your basic performance and report by platform. As your analytics organization matures, reporting on your social data across platforms and campaigns should be happening on a regular cadence. Next, focus on gathering insights across platforms and attribute social data to benchmarks that inform platform ROI and plan your budget accordingly. If your social analytics program has the previous steps in place, you should be in a comfortable position to predict and forecast investments across channels and regularly report on the ROI of all your platforms.

For reporting, there is a variety of approaches also aligned with your analytics program maturity. Application programming interfaces (APIs) offer direct and automated access to your social platform pages and advertising data, allowing you to access all of this information in in one place. If you’re using third-party tools like AdStage, SproutSocial, or HootSuite, these platforms aggregate data and assist you in focusing on different priorities with their report templates.

Other APIs that connect with a BI platform, like Tableau, and social data sources help you access your data and create high-level, aggregate dashboards for your team, senior leadership, etc. When you create social media dashboards in Tableau with a live API connection, you have more control over the data and how you visualize it, customizing the view for your audiences to tell a compelling story. This particular set-up means you only need to create dashboards once and they will update automatically on a monthly or quarterly basis—depending on your reporting cadence. These dashboards offer quick insights into the performance of paid social ads, the paid social budget for the month, or anything else your marketing department is reporting on.

When comparing your platforms next to each other, look for macro trends, especially in different regions. Are fluctuations in performance seasonal, related to campaign launches, or caused by something else?

Monitor your cost per click or acquisition throughout the week and see if there are ebbs and flows that you can take advantage of—potentially optimizing your ads on a daily basis. As new trends and technologies emerge, you’ll need to prepare your strategy—and your reporting—to reflect these changes.

Understanding the clear goals you’re trying to achieve with your social channels and the business problems you’re trying to solve will ground your organic and paid social programs—and show your marketing leaders that you have data at the core of your social media analytics.

Nielsen acquires Visual IQ
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Global information and data company Nielsen has acquired Visual IQ, a provider of multi-touch attribution (MTA) modelling of advertising on digital platforms.

The deal will be in place by the end of October.

Nielsen claims that the acquisition will improve its ability to automatically ingest and process large datasets, as well as provide Nielsen with access to more proprietary big data from advertisers, publishers and retailers.

“Our acquisition of Visual IQ strengthens Nielsen’s powerful capabilities in the marketing effectiveness space, bringing speed and granularity at scale to ROI measurement,” said Matt Krepsik, global head of product leadership for marketing ROI, Nielsen.

“Visual IQ’s rich history of marketing attribution and digital intelligence combined with Nielsen’s gold-standard marketing effectiveness solutions will provide advertisers, publishers and agencies with a holistic platform that offers the transparency to optimise and improve the return on marketing investments.”

“Our mission at Visual IQ has always been to drive marketing effectiveness with algorithmic attribution technology that allows customers to view tactical advertising performance through the lens of key audience segments,” said Manu Mathew, Co-founder and CEO at Visual IQ.

“Our team is excited to be joining the Nielsen family as we integrate our capabilities with theirs, and provide increased value to clients and a more powerful combined solution to the industry as a whole.”

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