Breaking the information overload to improve marketing agility
How often have you got reports from internal team or from agency partners which doesn’t talk to each other? In today’s environment, where brands prefer to have specialists like Media Agency, Creative Agency, Social Media Agency, Performance Agency, ORM Agency and what not, it has become highly difficult for marketers to see a holistic view of their marketing campaigns/spends leading to delays in decision making. Collaboration maybe a good buzzword to have, there is a hardly a collaborative culture in reality.
The base challenge of working with specialists is that marketers get reports in silos. The reports from different teams can be spread across a week or couple of days minimum. By the time every report is generated, collated, and then presented to the management, we have effectively lost 5 valuable days. In the digital economy that we are in today, five days is a long time. If you compare the lost time with a 5 week campaign which you are running, then 20% of the campaign period is lost.
The primary challenge to this is the lack of Single Measurement unit. In TV & to an extent Radio, there is a single measurement of GRPS. It doesn’t matter if the marketer is doing a tactical campaign or a branding campaign. In comparison, in digital the metrics in Paid Media itself is disparate. How do we compare or have a single base for a Video Campaign / Banner Campaign / Search Campaign / Content Campaign & Innovation? Put in the branding vs performance twist, and one is lost. Now that Paid Media approach is muddled, add in the communities on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & Instagram which has individual metrices, Website & App analytics where one is lost on what to measure and finally the social conversation which is happening outside of your control. In such a scenario, how will marketers be able to take decisions even though there is truckloads of data.
I remember this conversation that I had with a client sometime back. He was looking for big bets in digital marketing. To say that I was surprised at this conversation is an understatement. In this information or data age, why are we placing bets and not have data led decisions? The realization sunk in much later that my client was getting overloaded with information but no insights.
In the highly fragmented digital space, what is required then?
- Data Democratization: We use tools like DMPs, DSPs, Marin, AEM, etc which does only one of the many activities that the brand is using. It’s time for bringing every little data under one roof.
- Data Intelligence: Once you start collecting data, it’s important to understand, analysis and show insights in a holistic view. The relationship between partners, mediums, consumers, infrastructure, etc needs to be considered in the intelligence.
- Data Collaboration: We need to ensure that everyone starts working towards single goals in the easiest manner.
- A single measurement unit: Once you set up the back, it’s easy to understand the single currency of measurement. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. For this to happen one needs to understand the brand’s goals, campaign plans, relationship between mediums and so on.
