Red Door Interactive's president explains why creative testing will take on a whole new meaning in 2006 with even more varieties of online advertising vehicles to test.
With online advertising budgets rising and the variety of online opportunities expanding, marketing and media strategies are becoming more diverse. Consumers, simultaneously, are consuming more varieties of media (often times multiple forms at once) on their own schedules with DVR/TiVo, podcasts, RSS and the web adding to the complexity. As a result, marketers must decide to either focus on one critical channel or spread resources across multiple channels to ensure appropriate coverage.
Increased campaign diversity will add to marketers' challenge of measuring the success of each campaign fragment. The success of banners, for example, might somewhat reflect the success of search placements. Or, a podcast product placement might influence future banner clickthroughs.
Most companies' marketing strategies involve a variety of media and tactics, which often raises a question about whether or not positive campaign results come from one placement versus a combination. So, in the past, manipulating the media mix, then tracking the conversions in their entirety, has been one of the only ways to evaluate the composition of the mix.
Specialized agencies working for the client haven't made this challenge any easier. The search engine optimization firm, for example, wants to take credit for successful search tactics while the PR agency wants to note its keyword-rich press releases rising to the top. And the interactive agency wants kudos for the rise in clickthroughs on search terms because their ads are present in the engine. It is generally left up to the client to decipher what is really working and to maintain the view that the mix is more important than any single tactic.
Reviewing campaign timing can be of great importance in helping to decode and identify the ideal media mix. Flighting media together and tracking success in campaign blocks enables marketers to make bigger discoveries as to what composition best works for them. Granted, there are some things that are outside of marketers' control -- such as search engine results page rankings -- but looking at conversions from search engine clickthroughs during the same month there was a spike in conversions from banners, email, et cetera, will help in drawing conclusions about what tactics best influence others.
Throw in measuring sales transactions over a long sales cycle and measuring marketing mix and specific campaign success becomes even more difficult. Increased hovers, clickthroughs and lead form submissions show only that the campaign may be driving traffic and interest; however, if the leads are not of the quality that the sales force needs to close deals, the campaign may not be considered a success.
Luckily, sales force automation and customer relationship management software can now integrate with marketing and site tracking tools. Salesforce.com and HBX, for example, have near-seamless integration with many marketing tools to provide views from a banner ad, per se, all the way to a resulting sale six months after the customer's first interaction with the company. Unfortunately, the tool won't be able to tell you that the closed deal really was a result of a tradeshow presence and the banner was simply at the right place at the right time, but this is what advertising is all about after all.
It is important to note that there is only so much that marketing can do to close deals when third parties become involved or when factors about the product must be addressed. Marketing can provide the right leads to sales, but it is up to sales to close the deals, for instance.
Conclusion
This year, marketing is going to have its hands full when allocating and re-allocating budgets to arrive at the perfect mix. While companies may be doling out more money to work with, none of it can be wasted. Management is going to expect greater visibility and to know where its money is going, particularly where service providers/agencies are involved, and at the end of 2006, it is going to be important to provide a clear story that proves that the right mix is yielding the best results.
Reid Carr is president of Red Door Interactive, helping clients -- such as the San Diego Convention Center, SkinMedica, Leap Wireless, Intuit and Sharp Systems of America -- to lay out business-oriented strategies for improving the success of their internet presence.