It's time for digital to measure up

Hi everyone

It was interesting to read this week that many Chief Marketing Officers are unhappy with digital. And especially to read why.

"Respondents to the survey found their current ability to access ROI and metrics on their digital marketing lacking, and rated their companies behind the curve".

During these tough economic times, it's more important than ever to measure and assess every marketing activity we do. But while digital marketing enables us to measure like never before, as the latest research highlights, it's become our own worst nightmare.

It seems many marketers, while having access to greater amounts of marketing data, are drowning in it and therefore actually using it less. The study notes that "time after time in the survey, marketers expressed an awareness of digital’s potential, along with a recognition that they weren't close to tapping into it."

What's going wrong folks? Well, some people are happy to blame clients for trying to expect short term results from digital rather than a longer term objectives, but I think that misses the point. The frustration tends to be understanding what and how to measure, not that the results themselves are bad. If you don't know what to measure, how can you ever be satisfied with the outcome?

Most of us have faced this data dilemma at some point. We're not sure what to measure, so we measure everything, or what we've done previously, in the hope that some figures turn out okay.
We don't think hard enough about what we want up front, so are frustrated when we don't see positives in every outcome. Or we think we don't have the budget to measure properly, so we go with the status-quo.

But really, getting the basics right is not about money. We just need to be more realistic about what we measure, and why. Here's a start on how:

1. Align objectives: Know what you want to achieve
- First we need to make a very clear and early choice about the outcomes objective of the campaign, and make sure it aligns with the overall integrated campaign (if there is one) objectives. What's the point of creating a brand banner ad when we need to drive people to a campaign web site for a promotion?
- In identifying these objectives we need to consider a customer's digital behaviour, their user personas, to make sure we know how digital fits in with their overall purchase journey. If you can't do detailed research, do a quick online survey or interview. It will really help focus your thinking.

2. Choose your metrics + tools: Different horses for different courses
- - If we are doing qualitative measurement - like brand impact- be sure we have the measurement in place such as surveys, contextual observations, buzz tracking, usability testing and/or customer interviews.
- For quantitative measurement, many digital campaigns can be measured just with the metrics supplied by basic reporting tools from web sites or media companies. It's worth exploring the usual metrics, but also some we should use more often. But if it's a major campaign, invest a small % of the campaign in the right digital tool for the job

3. Set a baseline: Focus on only the metrics that really, truly matter
- Choose the one metric that matters above all others for your particular campaign. Is it CTR, average viewing time, registration rate, time on game, interaction rate..? You should know from step one
- Choose the one metric that aligns most with our objectives as your benchmark KPI so as we change variables for the campaign, as this is the key measurement we need to monitor that matters

4. Assessment: Put some meaning to the numbers
- Data analytics is often what is missing in all of this. That is, making real meaning from all of the numbers. Too much of the time what we produce is a report on the numbers, and perhaps highlight the key outcomes, but often there is very little insight on the implications of the data
- For complex CRM and data campaigns you need the right people for the job. But 99% of digital marketing campaigns - given we've followed the steps above - can be done ourselves. Many of us are afraid of numbers but as this digital creative points out in this article, it is a vital part of the creative process. "Data itself is meaningless. But data grants insight, and it is only with insight that we can create something meaningful".

5. Test & Optimize: Change your creative variables to improve performance
- Digital marketing allows us to vary elements in a campaign relatively easily and see the results almost immediately. From the CMO research discussed though, few of us do this
- User pre-testing for online ads, prototyping for web sites, etc. are rarely done but are possible. Of course we can and should change elements after launch to optimize as well - but as Kristen Berg says in this article (I stole her title) - for larger campaigns we can save a lot of time and money seeing what works before-hand.

Every single activity, from an email to banner ad to mobile app to web site to widget - we can follow this process and achieve meaningful and measurable outcomes.

This isn't happening though because we're afraid of the outcomes, afraid people will be scared from using a medium we have worked so hard at building trust in. We're worried we won't compare as favourably with other campaigns or benchmarks.

But that fear is stopping us moving forward. Most marketers understand that we can learn as much or more from failure, and that every meaningful piece of data is a weapon for future success.

Cheers, Rob