One of my first jobs in digital marketing was to manage analytical reporting of the traffic to clients’ websites. At the time this all seemed very sophisticated with talk of ‘hits’, ‘weblogs’ and ‘webmasters’ hinting at scientific precision. However, in reality, our analysis in monthly client meetings often amounted to no more than showing that the overall traffic was increasing, with accompanying charts showing steep lines pointing northwards. Of course, this impressive data was merely the result of a rising digital tide lifting all corporate websites that, at the time, were a new phenomenon along with talk of the information superhighway exciting headline writers and stock markets around the world.
That was all very much when digital marketing was a niche player – and sometimes eccentric relative – in the brand marketing world. Twenty years on, such views look positively quaint. Today, digital analytics is much closer to financial modelling using powerful systems such as those from Google, IBM and Adobe – among many others - that can digest information from any digital source be it online, offline, in-app, in-store, onboard, in-home or out-of-home. A vast swirling ocean of signals that individuals are...
...broadcasting about their lives and are now valuable enough to be traded in electronic markets akin to their more established financial cousins.
Additionally, now that digital marketing is no longer the poor relative but the big brother of brand marketing, the scrutiny these budgets come under means reports of clickthroughs, pageviews, impressions and visits are quickly being replaced by economic value, cohorts, ROAS, segments and good old-fashioned profit and loss. In other words, digital marketing has grown-up and is now subject to the same commercial interrogation as all other aspects of corporate investment and governance.
In the Digital Strategy Sessions I run, ROI in digital marketing has long been a hot topic that we have tackled using Avinash Kaushik’s Digital Marketing and Measurement Model (DM&MM). Having applied this deceptively powerful framework many times to a very wide range of scenarios, sectors, categories and brands, this area has taken on a life of its own as a new strategy and training session entitled Better ROI In Digital Marketing launched in partnership with my long-time compadres at the IAB.
In the sessions, we use the DM&MM to work through clients’ real-world scenarios and data to create plans that stand up to the new scrutiny that digital budgets now attract.
These days reporting about return on digital marketing and media investment is likely to be for a senior corporate audience who are interested in real-world commercial outcomes such as market share, ROI, profitability and CAPEX. And no one wants to be tackling that tricky scenario standing in front of a chart pointing north with analysis showing merely that the rising digital tide is still rising.
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