“Marketing … Marketing always changes.”
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As you might have guessed, I took the liberty to generalize an entire field with that quote, but it rings true nonetheless for those of us who live and breathe in the marketing realm. With a new technology tomorrow, a new way to distribute content the next day, and a new way to track interactions between the two the very next week, the environment of marketing and advertising is in constant flux. With these continuously changing variables, how are we supposed to present some sort of holistic marketing view to our clients? As a digital marketer, do I really have to pull reports from six different sources to do so? The answer is no and that’s because much of this problem can be alleviated with proper data aggregation and usage of digital analytics. Which brings us to the real point of this post, why is it necessary that we use digital analytics and data warehousing in this industry?
Everyone else isn’t doing it.
According to eMarketer, studies showthat 63% of digital marketers use customer data and analytics strictly internally, while 38% share data with business partners and only 34% make some of the data available to their clients. These numbers do not reflect the necessity for us to stay ahead of the curve as an agency.
However, if you look at data from 2015, 40% of U.S. CMOs indicate that analytics are one of the top increased management expectations in the past year. Therefore, more and more organizations are recognizing the need for the sophistication and implementation of analytics platforms and solutions these days.
Analytics are for everyone.
Like I illustrated in my above point, everyone else isn’t doing it, but everyone should be! With the absolutely massive amount of data that is being collected through various channels, it is imperative that marketers and companies utilize this information to enhance their efforts in both internal and external processes. Since2012, marketers have indicated that analytics have contributed to nearly 50% of their company’s performance. If I could increase my company’s let alone my campaign’s performance by 50% solely by implementing a new business practice, then count me in.
But I run a lot of traditional media!
So, you think traditional media can’t be useful to your digital analytics pursuits? Well, I’m here to prove you wrong in that regard. While measurement and automation practices are somewhat antiquated at a macro-level for things like TV and Radio, efforts are being made to bring more measurable and timely reporting from traditional mediums. In fact, last month tech-startup, iSpot.tv, raised $21.9 million in funding for tracking national TV ads in real-time. As mentioned earlier, this industry is constantly changing and becoming more sophisticated and this even applies to mediums that have been around for ages.
Below are some examples of basic comparisons someone like you can do with a traditional media schedule presented alongside basic real-time reporting from digital campaigns. We see traditional media schedules up against our Google Analytics sessions by week. With this information, we can begin looking at correlations between traditional media presence and increases or decreases in website traffic.
Below we have the same traditional schedules held against an overview of our digital marketing efforts. Do traditional placements affect the performance of digital placements? Well, we can’t know for sure from this particular report, but we can look for key points to help drill down and find concrete evidence and that is what drives our understanding that media works together to perform in its own way.
While implementing and maintaining a data warehouse and the various feeds that support it is no small endeavor, hopefully this post has helped you to better understand some basics of its use as well as the rationalizations behind it. Here at True Media, we’ve definitely endured through growing pains in our rollout of these solutions, but we have in turn learned a lot throughout the process. With the help of our partners, Alight Analytics, we hope to continue to upgrade and advance our marrying of digital and traditional advertising campaigns with supplemental data from CRM systems, eCommerce data, and others.
TV-Ad Measurement Firm iSpot.tv Raises $21.9 Million in Funding (http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/ispot-tv-raises-21-9-million-1201500532/)