{"id":117414,"date":"2011-06-28T04:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T09:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/get-a-grip-of-your-roi-in-the-real-world\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T05:49:36","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:49:36","slug":"get-a-grip-of-your-roi-in-the-real-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/paid-media\/get-a-grip-of-your-roi-in-the-real-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Get a grip of your ROI in the Real World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coming out of the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle earlier this month, a few things stood out to me as patent certainties\u2026<\/p>\n

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  1. Early June in the Pacific North-West rarely delivers consecutive days of sunshine<\/li>\n
  2. The conference backpacks are getting fancier every year<\/li>\n
  3. Advertisers and marketers are seeking, more than ever, the magic formula behind understanding the impact of every penny in their advertising arsenal<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As an Australian ex-pat, my tolerance for mediocre climates is low, but then again I voluntarily live in Toronto now so I really shouldn\u2019t spend any time complaining about lousy weather. Similarly, I would enjoy waxing oratorical regarding my opinion of the correlations between SMX Advanced backpack quality and the sophistication of the search-marketing industry, but I\u2019ll keep that to myself (for now), too.<\/p>\n

    More importantly though, if you\u2019ve ever spent a dime on marketing of any kind then you have probably asked yourself (or rather, the dime) \u2018What have you done for me lately?\u2019 Understanding the return on investment (ROI) of your efforts is pivotal to any strategy and never more so than today as we wade neck-deep through a sea of digital performance marketing tools and techniques; trying our best to consume large helpings of word-salad featuring tasty morsels like ‘algorithmic modeling’ and ‘last-click channel attribution’. <\/em>But what does it all mean and why should you care?<\/p>\n

    This is all about giving credit where credit is due. Many technology platforms exist today that will enable digital marketers to gain broader visibility into the \u2018experience\u2019 path that a consumer has leading up to a purchase and then award appropriately divided amounts of that sale revenue to each marketing channel that generated a touch-point (or, influencer<\/em>) along the way. These amounts can get calculated based on lots of different configurable rules that look at factors like elapsed time, number of influencers, value of sale and the type of media responsible for the touch-point\u2026 It\u2019s really quite fancy.<\/p>\n

    For example, a typical experience path for a particular consumer might look something like this:<\/p>\n

    PPC Ad Click –><\/em> Display Ad Impression –><\/em> Organic Search Click –><\/em> $90 Online Purchase<\/em><\/p>\n

    As opposed to awarding the Organic Search<\/a> channel with the full $90 sale, a (very) simple attribution model might award $30 of revenue to each of the three channels, thereby influencing the ROI of each channel accordingly. Nothing too controversial there and definitely a great method for more effectively understanding what is driving your results.<\/p>\n

    Now don\u2019t get me wrong; I am a BIG believer in this type of channel attribution, but unfortunately, not all people fit into a marketing box where 100% of advertising efforts are focused online and where every conversion is an ecommerce transaction with a nice juicy sale value stapled to it. Not to mention being in an environment where our greasy digital fingerprints can be reliably smeared on every single user experience across all web properties and advertising mediums. In the real<\/em> marketing world things are (sometimes) slightly more chaotic.<\/p>\n

    Take a deep breath, if you will, and imagine the following scenario \u2026<\/p>\n

    You\u2019re an agency working on a campaign for a client with a marketing team and a technology department both actively involved in the process. They get on well at company parties and use words like \u2018collaboration\u2019 and \u2018cooperation\u2019 in meetings, but we all know what\u2019s really going on, right? RIGHT?<\/p>\n

    There are three corporate web properties, each owned by different sections of the business and used for different purposes. Did I mention that they are underpinned by completely different web analytics<\/a> platforms? Oh, well\u2026 they are. Throw into this mix a new web property that the agency just built to support the core lead generation campaign and the framework for our \u2018real-life\u2019 little scenario is set.<\/p>\n

    Now, our marketing team isn\u2019t just into digital.\u00a0 They know it\u2019s a big part of what makes them successful but they\u2019ve still got active investments in the Yellow Pages, some direct mail and a quirky little radio spot they run seasonally on a few local stations in their prime markets.<\/p>\n

    Toss into the mix that they don\u2019t actually sell anything online. You are all about getting the lead for this particular client, preferably a phone-call so they can really do some selling. I should also point out that those calls go directly to one of 200 or more locations around the country. I mean, having a nice centralized call-center would just be too easy, now wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

    Oh, and before I forget, throughout the campaign there are two or three major news events that surged interest in your client\u2019s industry segment.\u00a0 You\u2019re not complaining of course, but some of your numbers went pretty screwy there for a while.<\/p>\n

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