It wasn’t so long ago that marketing teams had an easier time measuring the bang they got for their buck. They would send out a direct mail piece with their phone number and address, then track how many people called or visited their stores. When online advertising arrived, marketers simply swapped phone calls and foot traffic for eyeballs and clicks. Yet those early Internet metrics, as it turns out, were a red herring when it came to measuring return on investment (ROI). As companies began to mix online and offline advertising together, those dollars became even more difficult to track.
Today, measuring marketing ROI is one of the top priorities—and one of the top challenges—for many Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). In a recent poll of marketing professionals, conducted in the 2014 State of Digital Marketing, many organizations are unable to deliver a clear ROI for cross-channel marketing spend. In fact, 26 percent of the marketers polled don’t know which channel delivers the best leads, and 33 percent are unsure as to which channel generates the most revenue.
Does that leave CMOs between a rock and hard place? Not at all. It just means they need to look beyond themselves to find their answers.
Here is what we know today:
- Multi-channel advertising is on the rise. Digital advertising is expected to grow 11 percent year over year, with mobile advertising growing by 50 percent each year.
- Advertising is getting more personal. In the highly competitive communications service provider (CSP) market, there is a pronounced shift away from wide reach advertising toward personal, targeted advertising.
- Online activities remain largely anonymous to most companies. Connecting offline advertising with online conversions is inherently difficult to track, but more important than ever in measuring true marketing ROI.
Here is what many companies should know
Neustar is helping businesses track multi-channel marketing ROI right now. With Campaign Conversion Insights (CCI), CSPs, advertising agencies and cross-industry enterprises are able to link online and offline campaign data with Neustar’s extensive data resources—including data from our extensive list of industry partners—and combine it with Neustar’s powerful analytics. Now, marketing teams can connect the dots between offline advertising and online conversions to make better decisions about where their dollars are being best spent, while still respecting consumer privacy.
CCI is helping marketing teams get a better handle on the big picture by:
- Understanding what messages and offers drive online and offline purchases;
- Refining target audiences and identifying new markets;
- Aligning the right messaging and channels with specific customer segments;
- Using analytics rather than educated guesswork to drive campaign strategies; and
- Definitively demonstrating marketing’s contribution to revenue.
It’s a long way from where marketing began, but ROI-based analytics is the future of marketing. Neustar’s strength in analytics and heritage in data (and data privacy) is helping companies get there today by revolutionizing the way online marketers correlate consumer interactions.