This document discusses advanced attribution for brand marketers. It notes that branding marketing is more challenging to measure than direct response marketing. The document proposes creating a single currency to calculate the true impact of each touchpoint across channels, campaigns and tactics. This would allow for scenario planning, media buying automation and optimization based on attributed metrics. The document uses Dell marketing as a case study, showing how advanced attribution can understand the full funnel impact of different tactics on awareness, consideration and conversion. It demonstrates measuring the branding impact of TV and digital channels using a single currency.
Let’s face it, direct response marketers have held the championship title for quite some time when it comes to quantifying the impact of their marketing efforts to the CMO. And it’s become easier than ever for direct marketers to prove and predict ROI across each of their channels and tactics, thanks to advanced attribution.
So it’s no wonder that direct response marketers can easily make the case for additional budget, leaving their poor brand marketing counterparts to pick up the scraps of what’s leftover.
[CLICK] But it hasn’t really been a fair fight. It’s much easier to hit your target when there’s only one, clearly defined target…an online sale, a completed application, a call center lead, etc.
Brand marketers don’t share that same luxury. So it’s much harder for them to make the case for more budget because they don’t have the right tools to measure the true impact of their efforts, and they don’t have the right data to optimize fast enough to have an effect mid-flight.
[CLICK] And yet, Branding continues to make up a big chunk of the overall marketing spend – especially when buying TV – because businesses need to invest in the mid- and upper-funnel to avoid hitting a point of diminishing returns in the lower funnel.
In fact, according to eMarketer, Branding will account for 45% of US Digital Ad spending this year. [CLICK] That’s 5% growth from 2014. By vertical, Branding accounts for:
65% CPG
60% Entertainment
45% Media
44% Healthcare & Pharma
44% Telecom
42% Computing & Consumer Electronics
40% Automotive
So it’s clear that CMO’s still believe they should be investing in brand marketing. But how do they hold their branding budgets accountable?
Our recent survey of over 500 brand marketers in the US and the UK revealed three key challenges that they are facing when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns:
[CLICK] 80% says that measuring the impact of branding is more challenges than measuring the impact of direct response
2) [CLICK] 76% find it challenging to isolate and quantify the impact of individual digital channels on their branding metrics
3) [CLICK] 69% find it challenging to isolate and quantify the impact of TV advertising on their branding metrics
So how to brand marketers overcome these challenges? The answer lies in creating a single currency with advanced attribution that becomes the source of truth for [CLICK] measurement, [CLICK] planning and [CLICK] activation.
Let’s take Dell’s consumer marketing as an example:
[CLICK] They run direct response campaigns with lower-funnel KPIs:
Conversion: online sales
Purchase Intent: chat with a representative; download a coupon
But they also run branding campaigns with mid- and upper-funnel objectives to continuously fill the funnel for their direct response efforts. Otherwise, their direct response efforts would quickly hit a point of diminishing return without new prospects to target.
Chat with a representative (consideration; mid-funnel)
Register for their loyalty rewards program (consideration; mid-funnel)
Interact with a rich media ad (awareness; upper-funnel)
Watch a video on their site through completion (awareness; upper-funnel)
Among others…
All of the pieces of the funnel are working together to move consumers down to the point of conversion
Need an advanced attribution model that can support the entire funnel – not just direct response, but also branding efforts
In this case, Dell’s brand marketing team is using a mix of offline and digital channels to drive brand engagement activities
Although branding budgets are growing among digital channels, TV is still an important awareness channel for many brand marketers. Therefore, they need an attribution solution that uses a single currency to measure both TV and digital channels to get a holistic view of performance.
[CLICK] After running the entire marketing funnel through an advanced attribution model for both Branding & Direct Response, Dell will not only understand the true impact of each of their lower-funnel channels and tactics on conversions….
But they’ll also be able to understand how each of their branding channels and tactics are driving brand engagement activities that are most likely to influence prospects to convert in the future. And they’ll be able to quantify that impact at a very granular level for each channel:
TV’s impact by network, daypart, geography, creative, etc
Digital’s impact by channel, publisher, placement, keyword, creative, etc
Ultimately, Dell’s brand marketing team wants to drive more of the brand engagement activities that have shown to have the greatest impact on future conversions. And by defining a single currency that accounts for all of these activities, advanced attribution will not only measure the true impact of each of their channels and tactics on brand engagement, but it will also enable them to plan and optimize their budget to drive the greatest brand engagement at the most efficient cost moving forward.
Advanced Attribution for brand marketers should also be able to answer the question:
[CLICK] How does each of my branding channels, including TV, impact digital engagement with my brand?
Historically, brands have only attempted to measure the impact of TV on digital conversion responses. That means those marketers are trying to measure the effectiveness of a very upper-funnel channel based on the most bottom funnel metric (online purchases, completed applications, etc.).
But brand marketers should also be able to use advanced attribution to measure their TV advertising’s impact on brand engagement responses, and see the impact of their TV and digital branding channels within a single view to understand the overall lift of their mid- and upper-funnel efforts
Key Benefit: Provides a single currency to optimize brand marketing spend across TV and digital channels to maximize overall brand engagement lift. No longer using two different metrics to evaluate the two different channels (e.g. GRPs for TV, surveys for digital channels).
When brand marketers adopt advanced attribution, it creates an alignment throughout the funnel because both are…
[CLICK] Using the same dataset and attribution methodology for measurement (apples to apples)
[CLICK] Looking at their budget’s impact within the context of the entire funnel
[CLICK] Optimizing towards a common business goal
….which gives them equal seats at the marketing table – and a fair distribution of their CMO’s marketing budget.
Now both can be held accountable for driving business results for the company.