Marketo-DG2DA
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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS<br />
ALISON ENGEL<br />
Vice President, Global Marketing, LinkedIn<br />
@ALangeEngel<br />
MKTO: How do you see the role of<br />
digital advertising changing as a<br />
part of the overall marketing mix?<br />
AE: When it comes to digital<br />
advertising, it’s no longer a question<br />
of if you’re going to use online<br />
channels in your marketing mix, but<br />
to what extent you’re going to use<br />
and explore the available<br />
opportunities. Marketers will<br />
continue to invest in online channels<br />
because that is where their target<br />
audiences are. The beauty of digital<br />
advertising is that it is evolving into a<br />
channel that offers relevancy at<br />
scale—you no longer need massive<br />
budgets to get your brand in front of<br />
the right people at the right time, and<br />
across multiple channels.<br />
What’s more, we’re now able to<br />
measure and track the impact of our<br />
digital advertising efforts at any stage<br />
along the buying process like never<br />
before. Because of this, more<br />
marketers will gravitate towards all<br />
the benefits that digital advertising<br />
provides—from brand awareness to<br />
engagement to conversion—and will<br />
increasingly be able to obtain an<br />
accurate picture of their ROI every<br />
step of the way.<br />
MKTO: What is one mistake you see<br />
marketers often make when it<br />
comes to digital advertising?<br />
AE: Many marketers fall into the trap<br />
of applying the same success metrics<br />
to every tactic or channel they’re<br />
utilizing, when the truth is that every<br />
marketing program has its own<br />
specific role to play and should be<br />
measured accordingly. For example,<br />
in the B2B world, demand generation<br />
marketers may be tempted to focus<br />
solely on bottom-funnel conversions<br />
such as leads or cost per lead (CPL)<br />
as their primary success metrics.<br />
However, in doing so, they risk<br />
undervaluing any top-funnel<br />
activities that were responsible for<br />
driving prospects into the funnel in<br />
the first place.<br />
Remember that just because<br />
something is easy to measure<br />
doesn’t mean it’s the right success<br />
metric. Instead, first consider your<br />
marketing objectives, the channels<br />
you’re using to achieve these goals,<br />
and the impact you’re looking to<br />
make on the marketing funnel. For<br />
example, if you’re using display<br />
advertising to increase brand<br />
awareness, you would use topfunnel<br />
metrics such as brand recall,<br />
share of voice, or increase in<br />
targeted website traffic to measure<br />
success—not bottom-funnel<br />
metrics such as leads or cost per