IQ-Magazine-Issue-14
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modern<br />
is<br />
m<br />
<strong>IQ</strong> marketing<br />
It goes without saying that understanding the return on<br />
your marketing investment has always been important, but<br />
when you really think about it…how many of us feel we’re<br />
effectively measuring the impact of our spend?<br />
Turns out, it’s less than half of us. According to a survey<br />
undertaken by digital marketing training provider,<br />
Econsultancy, 41% of marketers believe reporting accurate<br />
ROI of all marketing activity is the biggest challenge facing<br />
the business. Over 35% find it a huge challenge to understand<br />
how different marketing channels work together.<br />
Why is it important?<br />
If we’re spending money on marketing and sales are increasing,<br />
then why worry about the finer detail? Hopefully, this one’s<br />
obvious. If you don’t know what’s specifically attributing to<br />
an increase in sales, you won’t know what’s working well and<br />
what could be improved.<br />
Why is it so hard?<br />
With more digital channels in play than ever before, measuring<br />
ROI has become increasingly complex. Some profess that it’s<br />
made things simpler, and this is true to an extent, as we have<br />
access to data that doesn’t exist in the offline world (e.g. click<br />
through rates, social shares etc). However, it’s not a case of<br />
‘more data = better understanding of ROI’.<br />
The growth of digital has muddied the water when it comes to<br />
what channel is influencing what behaviour. There are more<br />
channels to market now, and they overlap all the time.<br />
“Most channels assist<br />
a conversion, rather<br />
than actually<br />
generate the sale.”<br />
It takes an average of 10 interactions with a brand before<br />
a consumer converts, meaning that most channels assist a<br />
conversion, rather than actually generate the sale. How we<br />
measure the ROI from an ‘assist’ becomes harder; again, we<br />
need to understand its value in the overall conversion path.<br />
Combine that with the fact that we can all get online using<br />
either a laptop or tablet at home, a desktop at work and then<br />
a smartphone whenever we like…and all of a sudden, we can<br />
look like three different people to a measurement system like<br />
Google Analytics.<br />
Effective measurement can soon become a mammoth task<br />
that requires a specialist skillset that is beyond many businesses.<br />
What’s the answer?<br />
If this all sounds like an unclimbable mountain, don’t despair.<br />
There is hope.<br />
To effectively measure your return on investment, firstly<br />
issue <strong>14</strong> | page 38
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