Who even said the famous "half of advertising" quote anyhow? Was it John Wanamaker or was it William Hesketh Lever as my UK colleagues insist? Regardless, it speaks to an era where we counted on simple models of paid or earned media effectiveness. With "digital" came the promise that because we could meausre everything, we might now know which half of advertising worked.
Instead, we ended up in a rut that Manu Mathew, CEO of Visual IQ, calls "last click metrics" in a recent article. That's when we put all our eggs on the last click that drives a user to some type of valuable "conversion" point. Its time to flex our measurement muscles harder to understand what he calls cross-channel attribution.
"By conducting research into data across our customer base, we used cross-channel attribution to determine that, in general, online display, direct mail, and email channels serve as the most effective touch points to introduce a consumer to a brand or product, while social media and mobile ads continue to influence users toward action. Normally, search or affiliate channels are the last point of contact prior to a customer taking action, and hence, drive the last-click-based credits. If we ignore the introductory and influencer channels and look only at the last clicks, we are ignoring more than 94 percent of all touch points -- proving, once again, why last-click metrics are ineffective in today's informed marketing world."
We have spent a lot of energy understanding the performance of social media programs. We have also developed a disciplined approach to designing and measuring marketing programs. Marrying Neo@Ogilvy's approach to "performance marketing" and our approach to social media measurement reveals the compound effect of social (earned) and complex paid media programs that may include social ad targeting, behavioral display media, search marketing, advertorial and more. We need to further.
Now, more than ever before, we need to understand the combined influence of all types of earned media and paid media to increasing consideration, preference and a key buying action. If I hear another crm marketer complain that social doesn't have better ROI metrics that a crm email campaign, I will vomit. That is too simplistic and a case of "last click metrics." It ignores the role that social and other communications can have on a conversion.
Most worthwhile social media is some form of earned media and it can be high highly influential to a sale (or a vote, or an opinion shift).
Consider this:
- Consumers exposed to “influenced social media” were:50% more likely to click on paid search
- 280% more likely to search for a brand’s products, compared to those exposed only to paid search
- 240% more likely to click on an organic search result
(GroupM study 10/09)
And this:
- Social networking saw a 10% increase in CTR from last year and makes up for the largest percentage of CTR in SocialTwist's 2010 "State of Sharing" report (admittedly, they use their own Tell A Friend feature for the data but I still find it directionally relevant)
- While Facebook is the preferred "sharing platform" (when people chosse to "Tell a Friend" they choose Faceook 78% of the time); Facebook has a 287% CTR and Twitter has a 1907% CTR!
(Socialtwist Sharing Trends 2010)
And this:
- Ninety percent or consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.
Combine the influence of more trusted third party sources for information, the compound effect of social media on the performance of highly measurable and targeted paid media and the increasing performance of social as a preferred referral engine, and the strengths of social to drive preference and action are irrefutable.
Lets design a series of studies that examine the complex ecosystem of content, user behaviors, earned, owned and paid media to give marketers a reliable weighting system for influence. I know, its a lot harder than that. But avoiding the issue - the power of social content - is an even bigger problem.
amazing post, a lot of stats to bear in mind.
Yes, the suppossed funnel that direct marketers use to work on is not as straighforward as it seems.
Studying the effect of each single touchpoint entail understand the factors that make them more or less influential ( I am thinking attributed expertise, relevance, closeness, unanimity of opinions, trust as factors that make communication messages more effective...)
thanks for sharing,
xavi
Posted by: Xavier Izaguirre | October 21, 2010 at 09:12 AM