Answer this One Question -- And Drive Better Marketing

Identify the Right Spend, Touchpoints and Customer Experience

It’s critical that marketers track their marketing performance on a regular basis. After all, how else can they identify the right spend, the right touchpoints and the right customer experience? It's a lot to figure out, but marketing measurement can be boiled down to one key question: “How can we deliver increased return on our marketing investment (ROMI)?” Marketers can answer that question with today's new marketing measurement tools. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Figure Out What’s Working -- And What’s Not

Sounds like common sense, right? But, without the right tools, it’s easier said than done. Let’s start with the purchase path, often referred to as the customer journey. This includes all online and offline touchpoints that consumers have with a brand before they buy. It can include TV ad views, display ad views, paid search clicks, direct mail, website visits, emails, onsite visits, mobile app engagement, support call center interactions and more. Powerful marketing analytic solutions can:

1. Record all online and offline touchpoints with a consumer
2. Use advanced modeling techniques to determine how much each touchpoint helped drive the final purchase

When marketers can clearly see which touchpoints are working well, they can focus on these areas to create a better customer journey. After all, that’s what it’s all about — creating an easy, pleasurable experience where consumers want to complete their purchase and become, or remain, a loyal customer. As for what’s not working, marketers can see that, too. Insights can reveal ineffective touchpoints that can negatively impact the customer experience and cause lost sales. In these cases, marketers can reconfigure or remove those touchpoints -- and reallocate those marketing dollars to higher-performing touchpoints, initiatives and channels.

Find a Marketing Attribution Solution...

Using data-driven analytics to understand what’s working, and what’s not, can deliver a big pay-off in marketing performance and budget optimization. However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Collaborate with an experienced solution provider to help ensure your business's unique needs, objectives and future goals are addressed.

...But do your Homework

Here are a few things to consider when evaluating solutions.

• Ensure the provider is impartial and has no vested interests. Some ad platforms offer attribution as a built-in value add. Yet, if they make money by serving or selling display ads, can they be truly impartial? And, for example, recommend a decrease in display ad spend?
• Look for a “data agnostic” approach. Some providers that sell ad measurement naturally favor certain data sources from affiliate companies. However, independent providers choose whatever data source is best for the challenge at hand -- or may even combine multiple data sources for an incremental lift in match rate or coverage.
• Closely evaluate the data and its ability to deliver:
  1. reliable identity management to help match the right consumer to the right touchpoint
  2. improved touchpoint quality to reflect true channel ROMI
  3. the ability to not only report on campaign ROMI in general, but also by segment
• Compare models. Consumer behavior is chaotic, so it’s important to leverage a modeling approach that accounts for that. Look for an approach that models consumer behavior, since ad spend and other high-cost marketing decisions will be based on the model insights.
• Measure all channels and touchpoints -- both digital and traditional. Marketing analytics should cover all possible touchpoints. Remember, the whole point is to get a holistic view of what’s working and what’s not across all channels. If you’re only capturing half the touchpoints, and excluding traditional channels such as TV, radio and print, it will be reflected in the accuracy of your metrics.

OptimaHubTM is a Game Changer

You might think Equifax is a credit reporting company, but we’re also experts in all aspects of data-driven marketing, including marketing measurement. OptimaHubTM from Equifax is a game-changer because it combines multi-touch attribution (MTA), Media Mix Modeling (MMM) and powerful Hidden Markov Models with unique, proprietary Equifax data assets. This results in precise marketing measurement tools for analyzing the customer journey. Explore how we can help optimize the effectiveness of your marketing programs.