Metrics, objectives, KPIs, channels, platforms, targets… The number of factors to take into consideration to ensure that a marketing initiative yields the desired results and, ultimately, generates a high ROI, has made marketing a pretty complex maze.
“Technology is moving too fast for companies…
We need the tools to understand why a campaign is successful or not because, even if a campaign is successful, it doesn’t mean it’s because of what you have done or what you have advertised. There are so many other factors that affect the result of a campaign…” In a few words, the marketing communications manager – customer unit Middle East & Africa at Sony Mobile, Gita Ghaemmaghami, summarises the drama of marketers’ jobs today.
At a time when companies want a bigger bang for each of their marketing bucks, in a market that is looking for a new, more sustainable model as it struggles in the throes of change, with technologies moving so fast that keeping up requires a tremendous amount of agility, it’s no wonder the industry might be a little out of breath and feel like it’s being led on a wild goose chase.
Don’t cut marketing budgets. First, one thing is clear: advertisers shouldn’t give into the temptation to cut marketing budgets during hard times. Nissan Motor Corporation’s head of digital for Africa, Middle East & India, David Parkinson, explains: “There’s always a balance between today’s profit and what the shareholders are asking for today, versus what we can provide in the future. The time to start spending in advertising and promoting your brand in the right way is actually when you are in trouble, not when you’re not. If you do not feed the machine to keep your awareness and your brand in the public eye, and treat your customer in the right way, then you don’t get the sales anyway.”
That point being made, it is still crucial for companies to reassess the way they streamline their communications and know exactly how, why, when and where to spend. In acute need of a high return on investment (ROI), advertisers are – or should be – rethinking the way they market their products and connect with their consumer base.
Forward planning. The Middle East doesn’t make it easy for brands. “For example, in KSA today, it is faster and more cost-effective to go on YouTube rather than to have a spot on TV if you can penetrate the channel and have good content. But, in Iran, they still watch TV due to Internet restrictions. It all varies according to the medium and the market,” says Ghaemmaghami.
In any case, whatever the context, the time and the place, the end goal of any given corporation is to be profitable and sell its products. Most marketing initiatives may not visibly translate into immediate purchases. But identifying the link between these initiatives and the purchase decision – in other words, the conversion process – is precisely what the focus of marketers should be on to ensure a better ROI.
This was the reasoning behind the launch of Nissan’s new global website. “Typically, most business units measure their own metrics very well, but they measure them across the silos very badly. What we are hoping to do with our new web platform is to start to tie together the actual eyeballs with the actual sales,” explains Parkinson. “We can measure the customer’s journey from start to finish: what is the journey the customer takes across the business? What are the touchpoints between digital, customer service, after-sales, dealerships? Against all of these touchpoints, how do we connect it all together? How do we measure that connection?”
Adjust your priorities. Launching a new platform this size doesn’t happen overnight. It took Nissan two years just to refresh its global website – and the whole project is planned over five years. “And once it’s changed, you start plugging in additional technologies and that’s another five years,” Parkinson adds. “It’s an investment of tens of millions of dollars, but we need to move to the future and the future is customer-centric. The technology needs to support that. You need the right processes and tools linked together, working across silos.”
While the size of such investments may deter some corporations, now is the time to plan long-term and readjust the way business is conducted, including on the marketing front. Sony Mobile, for example, went through a complete rethink of the way it operates.
“In 2015, Sony Mobile decided to restructure the company, from geographies to resources, to our portfolio [of products]. 2015 wasn’t about profitability. 2016 will be about creating profit and the Middle East is one of our priorities,” explains Ghaemmaghami, who adds that, marketing-wise, the company is also changing its approach to adjust to the new market realities. She says: “Last year, we increased our digital budget four times, not only on banners but also on content generation, social media, search…”
Unsurprisingly, digital is the place that can make or unmake corporations from now on and that’s where most of the attention is focused.
Find the right metrics. “The ROI of communication campaigns needs to be tracked and measured; digital enables marketers to do so using a robust methodology, making it an ideal tool in general and even more so in tough times, when every dollar spent is under more scrutiny,” says the industry head – FMCG & Luxury at Google MENA, Marie de Ducla.
“Getting the best possible return on the money spent should always be a priority for marketers, but, in tough times, it becomes an even more important focus. Digital platforms allow for better control at each phase of the communication campaign, with robust metrics that do not exist in the offline space,” she adds.
Digital, however, is constantly changing and marketers are only starting to embrace its possibilities – primarily by understanding that traditional digital KPIs, such as reach and awareness, are not enough anymore.
“It’s easy to know how many clicks and impressions you get, but when it comes to content generation and what exactly consumers understand from the message you want them to receive, we haven’t reached the level where we know,” Ghaemmaghami says. “You first want awareness, then you want consideration and then preference, to reach purchase and loyalty. You might want to push sales as well. Depending on the objective, the monitoring technique will change and so will the KPIs to measure ROI. But the end goal will always be to make profit. What has changed is the way to get there.”
Think beyond reach. This feeling is shared by other marketers who also question the validity of the reach-centric approach. “We’re all looking for more bang for our buck; our buck, per se, is not reducing, but we’re looking to make it go further. Everybody’s trying to start thinking properly about the [digital] KPIs that are currently flying around in the region – impressions and things like that – and about the actual end sales we might be getting from this and how we can tie the two together,” says Parkinson.
“The key KPIs that are traditionally measured in this region are based on what regional media agencies are providing us: awareness, engagement ratio, fan counting… Awareness or reach is basically the number of eyeballs that have seen the campaign. But the way these are measured across digital platforms nowadays, the large numbers that you get don’t always reflect the reality,” he explains. “You might get a million impressions from an ad, but where are those impressions? Who is seeing the ad? How long do they see it for? And 50 per cent of these impressions are at the bottom of a gaming app that nobody would look at because it’s one of those invisible ads that people see on websites today. A lot of media agencies are focused on eyeballs, but they find it very hard to connect to the sales. That sort of pure-play, old-school type of metrics are what we try to move away from. They are not as closely linked to sales as they need to be.”
Digital platforms themselves are very much aware of the fact that basic metrics such as reach are not enough anymore and that the results now have to generate ROI, translating ideally into hard sales.
As a Facebook spokesperson explains: “Measurement is one of the biggest challenges facing advertisers today. Knowing how and where advertising dollars are performing is crucial information, but many current solutions don’t offer a complete picture of how different marketing channels perform. For a marketer advertising across many different devices, platforms and channels, it’s hard to know which channels are actually driving additional business. [Certain] technologies for ad-serving and measurement rely more on cookies than real people. Cookies alone don’t work across devices, browsers and publishers; they also don’t capture the entire customer journey.”
Cookies are dangerous. According to Facebook, the use of cookies may lead to:
overestimating reach by roughly 58 per cent
underestimating frequency by nearly 135 per cent (source: Atlas Internal Data, 2016); having an accuracy of only 54 per cent in broad age and gender demographic targeting (source: Nielsen DAR Industry Norms, March 2015)
up to 66 per cent of digital conversion events go unrecognised (source: Atlas Internal Data, March 2015)
“For too long, the digital industry has been overly focused on clicks. But there is no direct link between clicks and the majority of sales. Focusing on the last click is like giving credit to the sign outside of your store for driving all of your sales,” adds the Facebook spokesperson. “A recent study showed that, on average, if you look at people who saw an ad on Facebook and later bought a product, [fewer than] one per cent had clicked on the ad. Digital isn’t just about driving a fast click or immediate purchase; it’s also a powerful way to ring the cash register in-store or drive an online sale days later.”
That is why the main platforms have been evolving in order to provide better, deeper data.
Capture the demand. According to de Ducla, “One of the most important levers, a total no-brainer for companies, should be to capture the demand. In a store, this would translate into a person looking for a product, finding it easily and getting all the info about it, thanks to a salesperson or the information written on the label,” she says. “Online, it translates into being discoverable on Google and YouTube search-result pages, while having the right answers to questions that are frequently asked. This can be illustrated by someone using the web to decide what watch to buy, or a woman deciding between two skin products and looking for information to understand which one would be the most appropriate for her skin, or a person looking for insurance, a car or baby food. Advertisers have a real opportunity to be well positioned right in front of their potential clients, when they actually need them.”
Prioritise between publishers. “We see many advertisers focusing on fewer media that offer the reach and engagement they need at a very efficient cost, while allowing them to protect/grow their brand equity. YouTube has proven to be a great example of that. In the biggest video platform of the region, marketers see a way to secure massive reach (in KSA, YouTube secures a reach of 85 per cent amongst males/females between 15 and 35 years old, according to Ipsos), paying only upon video engagement (when people decide to watch the full length or at least 30 seconds of the video ad),” de Ducla explains.
“All of the above can be achieved while controlling the parameters of the campaign (frequency, targets, cost per view, etc.) and measuring the impact on their brand key metrics. As a result, marketers can validate the effectiveness and efficiency of their communication strategy (YouTube cost per reach point is on average 34 per cent lower than on TV, according to Millward Brown’s meta-analysis on several incremental reach studies),” she adds.
Link digital marketing operations to actual sales results. The metrics set by Nissan reflect the whole process, starting with its own website. “The key metrics we are using in this region now are split between what I call brand power and sales power.
Brand power is still linked to awareness: it is share of voice – how many conversations we have vs our competitors online – and the sentiment of that share of voice. We make sure that the awareness is positive awareness.
Sales power KPIs are test drive requests, website hits and bounce rates: these three things really measure how people who [have] awareness and positive sentiment behave when they come to our website: do they stay or do they leave straight away? Do they take test drives?
Tying these KPIs allows us to focus on sales and, therefore, ROI. The conversion ratio between the number of website visits we get and the number of people who take a test drive is more important than the pure number of website visits,” explains Parkinson.
Follow the costumers. De Ducla explains: “Digital platforms present ample opportunities for marketers as they provide the ability to target the right people with the right message at the right time, proving beneficial for both the advertisers and consumers. For example, imagine a diaper brand interested in targeting only mothers of young children or pregnant women close to their due date. Thanks to YouTube, these women can be specifically targeted through YouTube affinity and in-market targeting technology, with the advertiser only paying when the ad is fully seen. Beyond that, the advertiser can decide on how many times each of these women should see the video ad (frequency) to generate the highest impact on their brand’s key metrics and save money that otherwise would have been wasted targeting the wrong audience at the wrong frequency. In the case where advertisers are looking to close the purchase cycle, they can retarget the moms who have completely viewed the ad by showing them a display ad at the right moment – for instance, while reading an article about their baby’s development. This ad will lead them to an e-retailer where they can convert.”
Retarget. De Ducla adds: “The practice of retargeting would further increase ROI, while providing a great experience to the mother-to-be, as the ad is timely and appropriate to [her] context. On YouTube, a marketer can not only measure the number of unique persons in a target group that have seen a video ad, but also the frequency with which this video ad has been served to each person. More importantly, the impact it had on brand metrics can also be measured. Thanks to real-time surveys that randomly compare control vs exposed, marketers can assess the impact a YouTube campaign had on brand awareness, ad recall, consideration, favourability and purchase intent. This helps in optimising their campaigns in real time and maximising their ROI.”
Facebook. The number and sophistication of tools have grown exponentially, explains the platform’s spokesperson: “We’ve been working to provide marketers with the proof they need to know their ads work – beyond the click. Whether marketers are trying to get people to buy something on their website or in their store, we now have systems in place to prove our advertising achieves their business objectives.”
So far, many companies do not necessarily use these new capabilities. Parkinson, for example, says: “We use the Facebook Page Insights (number of fans, likes, shares, etc.) as a secondary KPI, to ensure you’re giving the right type of content and that the content is healthy. But the quality of the conversations is much more important than how many people liked the post. A like is the lowest common denominator nowadays; it’s almost a give-away KPI.”
However, Facebook claims to be able to provide way more than secondary KPIs. The platform identified key pillars that are expected to effectively drive results for marketers:
reach (targeted, at scale, across devices)
relevance (accurately reach real people – the advertiser’s current and potential customers – based on the fact that, according to Nielsen OCR data, the digital industry is less than 60 per cent accurate in demographic targeting of ads, which means four in ten people are seeing the wrong ads, while Facebook’s age and gender targeting are 45 per cent more accurate than the digital industry average)
ROI/reaction
“We can prove that Facebook campaigns cause additional sales or changes in attitude. We can scientifically measure the actual business lift from Facebook campaigns through test and control methods. This includes systems we’ve developed, but also work we’ve done with third parties:
the Conversion Lift tool – since its launch in January 2015, we’ve helped more than 1,000 business run Lift studies to measure ad effectiveness across objectives and online and offline channels
Datalogix ROI studies for CPG – over the past 24 months, we have conducted more than 290 studies measuring the effectiveness using DLX in the US and found that 82 per cent generate positive incremental sales with an average 2.3 per cent revenue increase in sales due to Facebook campaigns
Telco outcome measurement – our own tool for measuring ad effectiveness for Telco brands: 90 per cent of people who made a purchase after viewing an ad on Facebook never clicked; and retails studies using our own offline conversion measurement tools – partnering with 20 retailers, we found an average rise in sales of two per cent among people who were shown an ad, compared to those who have not, and an 8x ROAS [Return on Ad Spend].”
Facebook’s Adverts Reporting tools allow a campaign/community manager to see how their Facebook Adverts perform, how many people they reach and how to fine-tune adverts. And to help advertisers determine exactly how Facebook ads impact their bottom line, the platform is expanding its Conversion Lift measurement capabilities. “Building on existing Facebook measurement offerings, Conversion Lift allows advertisers to accurately determine the additional business driven by Facebook ads and make future marketing decisions based on this information. Conversion Lift accurately captures the impact that Facebook ads have in driving business for marketers,” says the spokesperson. “Facebook’s ad tech solutions give marketers and publishers the tools to reach real people – across all of their devices – and connect the dots between online marketing and business outcomes. Our solutions mean more money for both publishers and advertisers and more relevant ads for people.”
Keep learning. De Ducla says: “Advertisers need to continue their deep dive into the way they measure and constantly challenge themselves to leverage the most advanced measurement technologies.”
“Companies should always challenge themselves and try to enhance the quality of the way they measure their marketing initiatives. For example, since a video ad viewed completely has a better chance to impact a potential consumer, advertisers should start looking at the cost per completed view of their video ad for each unique user and not only the cost per impression, as the former would enable them to better assess their campaigns’ results. Advertisers are starting to embrace more sophisticated measurement technologies,” de Ducla adds. “One of the challenges [marketers] face is to homogenise the data they get from different publishers and different media touchpoints. A part of this complexity can be solved thanks to programmatic platforms that links most media buys with several publishers under one umbrella.”
Find the right partners. Identifying the right partners to help them make sense of it all is one of the most challenging issues marketers are faced with today. This is also why the way they interact with their traditional partners – agencies – is changing too.
Ghaemmaghami doesn’t sugarcoat it: “We manage a technology brand and, yet, it is difficult for us to find a company that can measure the results, not just quantitatively, but also qualitatively when we conduct an advertising campaign.”
Advertisers complain about the fact that it is not only difficult for them to keep up with the pace of change, but they also lack the support they need from their partners, agencies that should guide them in the digital labyrinth and help them make sense of it all. Each advertiser will find its own solutions. For Sony Mobile, it means using a company based in Europe, due to the lack of better options in the region.
“We are asking for a different service from our agencies. When we have a pool of data and a target – a budget and a sales target – and we give objectives and KPIs to our various agencies – media, digital, social media, PR… We have been able to find a couple of companies that can monitor every single alert related to us or to our competitors. Then, we have a report that provides the sentiment analysis monthly. For a digital campaign, the easiest is banner advertising measured by click or per impression. You can get this daily. But when it comes to social media and content generation, it becomes a bit difficult. Until now, I don’t think there’s a strong agency here that can monitor social media communication. That’s why we use Global Source,” explains Ghaemmaghami.
Change your model. “Some companies, including Sony Mobile on a regional level, have units tasked with analysing and understanding data. Having too much information and not making the best out of it is just a waste of money,” she adds. “We have to rationalise our spending and, if need be, increase our spending on research, as long as it’s qualitative.”
Nissan opted for a different approach. Parkinson explains: “We have to work with agencies to become more integrated. There is no one-size-fits-all for agencies. Agencies have their own specialty; we have to take the best in each market and make sure that the media and creative agencies are integrated properly as one voice back to us, to get the best value we can from both. We manage this by having an agency called Nissan United that helps pull everything together and create that integration. Integration is the key and it is demanding for agencies, especially in a competitive market.”
All of this means that the industry is a long ways off from finding a stable model – probably because there isn’t one in an environment where the only constant is change. Agility and adaptability are therefore the qualities most required to adjust, as companies try to reach the elusive consumer and the even more elusive ROI.
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