3 Bold Moves That Will Propel Your Brand and Increase Your Return on Ad Spend

We’re all too familiar with the old Wanamaker adage: ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half’. But it no longer has to be that way.

The proliferation of touchpoints throughout the path to purchase has created more opportunities for consumers to evaluate your brand and has drastically raised their expectations. On the other end, these touchpoints are also excellent opportunities to measure and optimize the performance of your marketing efforts. 

Here are 3 ways to achieve a lot more, a lot better with your marketing dollars.

Move from customer loyalty to customer intimacy

No, consumers are not completely burnt out by your marketing gimmicks. They just expect you to care for them.

Caring means going well beyond your standard loyalty program and delivering an outstanding experience at each and every touchpoint. Amazon, Apple, Netlfix and the likes are successful because they leverage data to deliver an experience that’s user-centric. Don’t try to sell me sheepskin lined boots if I live in Southern California (true story). But your email about a new documentary on chef’s tables (I love restaurants) got my attention.

That’s what digital agency Wunderman calls “Wantedness” or “the degree to which a brand proves their commitment to earning a customer’s business across every touch point and throughout the entire path to purchase.”

Client satisfaction studies conducted at the store level or web-intercept surveys (those annoying pop-ups) only tell part of the story. You need to unify these programs by combining store visits with online purchases, advertising exposure, search history and other behavioral information, at the user level.

Measure the impact of your campaign across all touchpoints and optimize in real time.

For too long, silo-based point-in-time analytics have led marketers to sub-optimal decisions and resulted in wasted advertising spend. Who cares if people download your app if they don’t use it and end up deleting it after a few weeks.  Also, who cares that your customers buy online if they don’t visit your stores. Home depot’s sales are up because clients buy its products online and pick them up in-store, where the store associates then upsell companion items.

Most CFOs now see marketing as an investment, rather than an expense (finally). Whatever silo you operate in, be bold and urge your senior management to implement a holistic measurement and optimization program.

That is, a program that measures your marketing efforts across all channels and enables you to optimize your campaign in near real-time. I won’t get into the nitty-gritty details here (contact me to discuss), but we combine data, technology and advanced research methods, to predict what your consumers are likely to buy, target these specific prospects based on their need-states and reach them with the most impactful creatives across the most effective media channels.

Create, test, correct, repeat

Comscore research shows that creative execution is four times as impactful as media placement at driving results.

The good news is that testing ads has become fast, easy and cost-effective. Most importantly, you can now test your ads in-market before your campaign goes live. First, a small-scale campaign is deployed towards your specific segments. Based on the learnings, you can then evaluate how the segments, creatives and media performed and optimize accordingly.

The same goes once your campaign is live. Leverage these high-frequency, granular insights to tweak your creatives while in market, increase investment with publishers that drive results and pull the plug on the ones that don’t.