Marketing Tactegy

Measuring direct and indirect effects comes to the web

Comscore recently announced a new Internet metrics concept called View-Through.  I’m sure I won’t do it justice in explaining it, but through cookies it measures the indirect visits generated by banner ads.  Quoting their own data, “For example, a substantial lift in visitation to the advertiser's Web sites can be observed in the weeks following an exposure to a display ad, even though click rates are less than 0.1 percent. Specifically, there was a 65 percent increase in lift in the week following the first ad exposure and a 46-percent increase over the four weeks following the first exposure, underscoring the latent branding effect.”  In addition, search traffic is enhanced and now finally measured based on the placement of a banner ad.

This is now finally getting to measure the complete impact of web marketing.  The measurement of Marketing ROI for web marketing is now close at hand.   Now we need to add the impact (direct and indirect) of traditional marketing and we will finally have the true marketing impact across the entire marketing mix.

The article can be found at:  ComScore Weighs In On View-Through Proof.

Let me know what you think.  I would love to know. 

Critical path marketing

Just about every marketer I know is in fear of their budgets being cut and their jobs being at risk.  Whenever I ask the question why, the answer is that, if we could just prove that our results are delivering revenue, we could do a much better job at protecting our budgets, our ideas and our jobs. 

If marketers can’t connect the dots between their marketing activities and revenue then the rest of the company sees them as an expense that can be cut.  If they can prove their value in both good and bad times; that a dollar invested in marketing is just as valuable (if not more so) as elsewhere, then they have moved into the critical path to corporate success.

What does this require?  Here are a couple of bullets (there are lots more):

1. Marketers must start to track their activities.  They need the right infrastructure, not just to track their activities from one campaign or one media, but all media.
2. Marketers must accurately track costs.  This includes internal and external costs (agencies) as well as distribution and insertion costs.  These must be applicable against the specific campaign or media.  In this way, the rest of the company will know where the money went that they invested in marketing.
3. Marketers must track results at all levels across the purchase funnel.  Whether it’s visits, downloads or leads, or whether it is awareness, revenue or profit, marketers must begin to track results across the entire purchase funnel.
4. Marketers must embrace accountability.  This is a scary thought to many marketers.  Those marketers that wave their hands and say it can’t be tracked are the ones most concerned about losing their creativity.  Tracking results isn’t about stifling creativity.  It is about rewarding good creativity and weeding out the bad.

If you’d like to learn more, please let me know.  Or take a look at my new book.  It is an inexpensive way to get started in measuring marketing’s effectiveness.

Marketing Calculator (http://www.Marketing-Calculator.com)