Recently, a wave of health consciousness has swept over consumers who are now looking to improve the way they look and feel, including devoting more time to workouts, drinking and eating more organic products, and even reducing sugar intake. However, sugar still makes up a third of our caloric intake – reason being, it is highly addictive. While marketers can almost always benefit from thinking like consumers, in the case of marketing measurement and attribution, they need to start focusing on what’s effective as opposed to what’s addictive.
For marketers – clicks are the sugar to the health of your measurement program. While they might provide instant gratification, clicks aren’t necessarily the most effective means of judging the success of your program. When you optimize your campaigns solely based on clicks, chances are strong you are leaving money on the table.
ComScore says 85 percent of clicks are generated by only 8 percent of the population. Most people see between 2000 and 4000 ads per month, but only click on a few, if any. However, it doesn’t mean they weren’t affected by a media message online. Attribution of marketing efforts is changing, and clicks alone don’t tell the whole story. Your end goal most likely it isn’t driving clicks, but it’s changing purchase behavior and generating additional revenue.
Moreover, clicks can easily be misinterpreted for success or failure. While high click through rates indicate a high interaction with a campaign, it doesn’t mean a consumer made a purchase. And while low click through rates can be interpreted as a campaign being ineffective, those clicks could have led directly to a purchase or lead to an offline purchase.
In fact, an Experian sponsored report “Attribution and the Empowered Marketer” by Winterberry Group in partnership with the DMA found that even though 39% of marketers are still using the “last click” method for determining marketing attribution, it has begun to draw widespread criticism for assigning too much credit for touchpoints closest to final consumer interaction.
This report outlines that attribution strategy within marketing firms has been disjointed and confusing, and companies are becoming more interested in reforming their attribution approach away from the “last click” method, into something more measurable and accurate. Of the marketers surveyed for the report, 63 percent have identified attribution strategy as a growing priority in their company, and 55 percent said it has become a top priority for investment.
There are three ways to break the click addiction and start looking at a more impactful messaging strategy:
- Add more measurement tools to your promotions and website: There are many other tools you can incorporate into your campaigns for more accurate measurement including coupons, QR codes, landing pages, and pixels that enable the cross tracking of campaign impressions data with websites data to measure user interaction with your brand.
- Understand your customer beyond the click: You can gain knowledge of your audience by tying campaign and transaction data to consumer demographics, geographic and psychographics. This will let you deliver more personalized ads and messaging that will more likely lead towards a purchase.
- Look at actual sales and tie it to your campaign data: By bringing offline and online transaction data together and measuring against campaign audience and impression data you can identify real sales impact.
By curbing the habit and eliminating clicks from your campaign optimization decisions, you will be in a better position to improve your brand’s revenue – the actual bottom line. An effective attribution strategy can significantly increase your ROI, and can also help you better reach your consumer. While the allure of receiving a high number of clicks is appealing, ensuring that clicks are leading to actual interaction with your product or service is going to be vital to future success.
Click here to read the entire whitepaper “Attribution and the Empowered Marketer”, by Winterberry Group and Data & Marketing Association(DMA), sponsored by Experian.
For more information on measurement, visit experian.com/marketing-services or email experianmarketingsolutions@experian.com.