Is ‘Digital Marketing’ really more than 10 posts a month on Facebook?
“Why is my ad not the 1st on Google for these keywords, ask the team to increase bids”
“The engagement rates are not increasing, boost some posts”
“Let’s do 10 posts on Facebook and put 30 tweets on Twitter from this month”.
“The email Open Rate is only 6.3%, change the title and lets target 10%”
“The TVC (Video) completion rate on YouTube is higher, lets put more money there instead of Hotstar”
“To get a spike in engagement, let’s plan a quick contest”
“Why is the overall Plan CPC at Rs.12, as against the initial rate of Rs. 10?”
Do these sound familiar?
Imagine if the conversations sounded like below.
“The last campaign – ‘How To’, that aimed at educating the consumers has seen the brand’s recall score go up in our category. It has also led to more time spent and improvement in pages viewed/session & there are 28% positive mentions on social”
“Hey, the video series on health has actually improved our awareness scores in top 8 cities by 8% plus there were about 2500 transactions that were initiated from the traffic via these videos”
“The revamped website is mobile and seo friendly, plus the single page checkout has increased the ratio of visits to addtocart by 18%, and the wallet integrations have made the customer journey simpler”
“The current campaign has seen great traction on Twitter, as against Facebook hence we topped it up with influencer campaign to generate more buzz. Our overall SoV in the apparel space has gone up, along with brand preference scores, thanks to our on the fly posts, quick response with customized replies”
“The ad reach via Television was not great in Delhi, Punjab, so we boosted it on YouTube & Hotstar with a 20% & 50% Share of Impression for 3 days… now we have reached our GRP target and the TOMA is also on track”
“Forget Reach or Impressions.. let’s look at unique engagements, Viewability of our ads and the target match- we had F 25-34 as the main TG, what % of the campaign has reached this TG – let’s get it checked via NielsenDAR and Sizmek”
“Heard it somewhere that 44% of visits to our website are bots or inhuman traffic, and about 50% ads are not viewed due to lack of proper Viewability… so in essence, about 60% of my spends were wasted… we should invest in some tools to rectify (even if the cost is about 10% of my budget), at least I won’t be wasting 60% of my money!”
“The Comscore data says A,B, C are my top affinity genres, but the performance report shows B, E, G are the best performing categories w.r.t conversions and transactions… I guess my performance budget should target B, E, G as this campaign is about RoI and not Branding”
“My next campaign is a follow-up to the launch campaign, so my KPIs will not be Reach! It has to be Recall, Engagement and Driving conversions. So let’s not look at just Impression, Reach, CPC, CTR and Page Likes… we have to consider Engaged Users, Brand mentions andPositive sentiment on social; Logins, New Registrations, Time spent, Bounce Rates, Repeat visitors, Transactions on the website and top sources for conversions, top sites for high revenue users, best genres in programmatic, and best RoI platforms from media spends”
These conversations would need a drastic change in the way digital marketing is considered in the scheme of things within the marketing team, synergies with the e-comm teams; social media data talking to display, video and email campaigns; and a focus on sophisticated tools that tracks ad Viewability, human vs non-human traffic, 3rd party ad serving, social listening tools and brand uplift studies.
So, where to begin?
Well, start with considering Digital Marketing as an important medium for business which is both effective and efficient in realizing business goals.
Audit the current digital presence, some of the recent campaigns and set up templates for reporting.
Study the Impact of various activities on the brand’s measures like Awareness, Differentiation, Recall, Emotional connection, Perception, Loyalty, etc
Invest time in setting up a strategic roadmap for the brand’s digital presence. Clearly define the “Role of Digital” for the brand.
Then, build synergies within the ecosystem by getting together data from Paid, Owned, Earned, Insights and Sales teams so that the data can talk to each other.
Change the KPIs for each activity across POE that applies to the brand, the industry and the stage of the brand on digital.
Finally, a unified view of what’s going on across the digital medium, with data across POE sources, talking to each other, tracking the KPIs, focusing on measurement, showcasing RoI and making sense for the brand’s presence on digital.
