Marketing measurement isn’t everything.

It's something but can often miss the point.

I saw a job application recently for a marketing director that required a degree in mathematical analytics. For me, this marked a heavy blow to an industry that, although continually growing and improving, seems to have lost its direction somewhat.

Another ad read: “if you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen”. So, this is where we’re at now. Advertising metrics are King, and the person who can raise conversion rates by 0.02% is presumably Prince Regent.?

There’s been a lot written about this, but I want to explore the natural conclusion of where this is heading, and, as far as I can see, it’s not a good place.?

Take an example. Three companies all offer the same service. Their marketing focuses on social, conversion, and attribution; everything is about numbers. There are two concerns. One: what happens when they all hit ‘maximum’ optimisation? Where is the advantage for any of them if they all do precisely the same thing? Two: what happens when the customer no longer cares which of the three competing brands they use? Because they’ve all merged into one in the head of the consumer? What’s the point in spending more when you’re already front of mind as ‘one of three’??

My old Strategy Director (who was measuring marketing before it was cool and commonplace) once said to me: “What do you do when everything is completely optimised?” We had a client that was obsessed with optimisation. Our UX team constantly improved user journeys, tracking every step to conversion (or not); the social team A/B/C/D tested ad text and images to the point where they debated whether to show a hand holding a phone or just the phone with the app running (the hand won); landing pages were so numerous we knew exactly where a potential customer came from, but the returns on all of these investments started to slow. It became less cost-effective for the client as everything ran so smoothly; we reached the point where the measurement model had come to its natural conclusion. We literally couldn’t optimise anything more. What happened next? We optimised some more. The client only cared about the numbers. 0.000%s became the name of the game.?

Another more recent example was when I was selling in-room hotel advertising. Advertising would run every 30 or 15 minutes in between the latest movies in 3–5-star hotels. What a perfect medium, I thought. A massive, captive audience, targeted in the comfort of a hotel room with products befitting the occupants. I had data, too! Accurate occupancy rates and customer profiles built from on-the-ground research extensively conducted by a well-respected research company. We knew, from the horses’ mouths, that people saw and recalled the ads they saw, recall rates so high a social media firm would throw a party if they got even half as close (the next day recall rates of a specific ad were 92%). We even had case studies from clients showing increases in sales directly related to when they started using the service. Yet, it was more challenging to sell than anything I’d sold in the past. Why? Because we couldn’t track a specific ad view, to a particular person, to a specific click, to a conversion or a typical sale. The product's beauty was the environment in which the ad was viewed. The fact that it couldn’t be tracked should have been a bonus! However, many of our client's ad budgets were controlled by media agencies, who had bought space at a bulk discount. Who cares if marketing can help customers sell more products or services? Even the ad creative came from a media-buying agency.?

Everyone knows ad fraud exists on a massive scale, so a customer’s money is guaranteed to fund that somewhat, but that’s not the point. Metrics that have become meaningless are being used to drive almost the whole industry. Clients are held hostage by extensive, global agencies who no longer have their best interest at heart but will dazzle them with numbers here, there, and everywhere. Yet, no one stops to ask some basic human questions in all of this. After all, what is marketing if it isn’t about human connection??

The first one should always be: ‘have my sales gone up?’ If not, whatever you’re doing is pointless. Attributable to a click or not, you know if a campaign has worked because you can see a sales increase. People will say, ‘but?brand building?isn’t about immediate sales’; sure, it isn’t. Point me to a media-buying agency talking to their customer about genuine brand building. Jack Daniel’s has run the same ad campaign since 1954. Which agency in their right mind would advocate this in 2022? Jack Daniel’s is still the top-selling US Whiskey in the world, yet no one would ever tell you to do what they’ve done. It can’t be measured, but it has weathered sales spikes/drops, keeping Jack Daniel’s constantly top of mind. If your agency recommends a raft of things to measure to show success, make sure ‘sales increase’ is one of them. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.?

Second point, do people care what they’re seeing? The answer is yes. So why doesn’t your agency care? I’ve seen some companies who have pre-bought so much ‘space’ that they don’t have enough creative executions to cover them adequately. I’d love to see a study done on how quickly people can now scan a page when an ad appears to find the ‘x’ button and tap it. I couldn’t tell you anything about the last 100 pop-up ads I saw, but I know that the ‘x’ is never in the same place. I know clicking anywhere on the screen will mean I immediately need to swipe back to get to what I intended to see before the ad took my attention away for no gain. So, what’s the point in producing engaging ads if people click off an ad super quickly? Well, for one. Stop using pop-up ads; if you have any respect for your customer or potential customers, you’ll never ask an agency to use pop-ups. Secondly, people genuinely care about what they see. An engaging, polished, well-thought-through advertising campaign is becoming a rarity, even when multiple studies show that it does matter what you show people, not just that you’ve shown them?something. A HubSpot research report showed that 83% of people agree with the statement, "Not all ads are bad, but I want to filter out the really obnoxious ones." The same report showed that the main reason people actually clicked an ad was that “The ad just so happened to interest me”. Why, then, do companies spend next to nothing on good, targeted creative? Answers on a postcard, please; I can’t work it out.?

Finally, answer the burning question; ‘how do I connect with the people who will be my future customers?’ Digital is going to have to be part of that mix. There are too many significant and wonderful opportunities in the world of digital advertising to ignore them. But to ignore all other aspects of marketing purely to plough money into only digital marketing is to do your own company a disservice. We’ve all heard the stories of massive companies cutting their digital ad spend with no discernible effect on sales. Some of this is attributable to companies getting more competent at doing things themselves. Still, another is that the media-buying industry now is dominated by financial concerns or ‘mathematical analytics’ types treating your marketing as a source of APR.?

What’s the antidote? Creativity. Concern. Care. Think about your customer (use all that research you have to understand what they care about and will excite them!) Think about what they’d like to see that will interest them. It might seem simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Jump the shark and refocus your marketing on a creative idea that will engage your audience. Once you have that, the channel plan will come; just don’t make it the thing that drives your marketing. The idea will always win. There’s some fantastic creative out there, but it’s becoming niche. Just remember; they don’t hand out awards for a 0.002% increase in click-through rate (actually, I bet they do somewhere, but they shouldn’t).?

Thanks for reading, Find out more about what I do here:?www.wforty4.com

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