John Wanamaker once said "Half my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half." Mr. Wanamaker is speaking to the difficulty of measuring the R.O.I. of traditional advertisement which leaves business leaders questioning the value of their marketing efforts.
How can you blame Wanamaker? If I’m scouting a basketball player, I want to see statistics, not just a highlight tape. Stats show a body of work where the numbers don’t lie. A highlight tape only goes so far. The marketing industry has been undergoing a significant transition where marketers and their clients are now able to more precisely examine how effective their marketing campaigns are by analyzing vast quantities of useful data.
Marketing is not about pretty pictures, it’s about making and saving money. Marketing agencies have the tools to prove their value to clients. This is a key differentiator that shaped much of Sherpa’s success. We are passionate about measurable marketing, our campaigns focus on bringing clients real, tangible results.
One may ask how you can possibly quantify marketing as it is inherently qualitative in nature. The answer rests with the growth of digital marketing and analytical feedback that has given marketers the ability to incorporate and track elements within on and offline marketing campaigns. Most if not all digital marketing can be tracked through analytical tools. Basic analytics is just a start, marketers should implement event tracking to measure performance goals on the way to the final goal which is of course growing sales.
At Sherpa we frequently use event tracking to record user interactions with website elements. Event tracking is used to monitor user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen load. Downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays are all examples of actions worth tracking.
Think of event tracking as your check-points - and conversion tracking as counting customers as they cross the finish line by fulfilling a valuable customer action. A purchase, app download, website visit or filling out an online form are all examples of conversions. Businesses are able to place a unique monetary value on each conversion type enabling marketers and business leaders alike to examine the true financial value of digital marketing campaigns.
How Google-friendly is your website? Ranking high on search results is now necessary to survive in today’s competitive business environment. One of the new and upcoming technologies Sherpa has been integrating into its digital marketing campaigns is SERP (Search Engine Results Page) reporting. Through Sherpa’s innovative Just in Time Advanced Web Analytics Suite (JAWAS) businesses have access to data to ensure a company’s website is optimized to lead search engine rankings. Companies are able to examine how they and their competitors rank based on selected keyword searches in any geographic location. The JAWAS crawler function automatically examines your website’s pages to target problems that are hurting your search ranking results giving you the data necessary to boost your SEO rankings.
Another branch of marketing that has been revolutionized by analytics is sentiment tracking. Sentiment describes the views, opinions and attitudes of consumers toward a brand. More than ever consumers are looking to each other for advice on what products to purchase. Traditional corporate advertisement has its shortcomings as 70% of consumers prefer brand recommendations from friends (Forester 2013). Why? Because friends are trustworthy! Using resources such as MavenSocial and Google News Alerts it’s easier than ever to track the buzz of your brand. Influencer marketing and social media have changed the marketing landscape so it’s important to have the appropriate data to effectively tap into this channel.
Traditional advertisement is still an effective way of raising awareness and communicating marketing messages, however it’s up to marketing agencies to figure out how to implement measurability into traditional campaigns. In the past Sherpa has tracked the R.O.I of traditional advertisement by advertising a unique twitter handle or hashtag, custom URL or distinct contact information such as an email address or phone number .
Modern marketers should be thought of as problem-solvers as opposed to just providers of artwork and copy. As problem solvers it’s crucial to have accurate and timely data to make the most informed decisions possible. It’s for this reason that marketing must be measurable! Sherpa Marketing provides technology-driven marketing solutions and along with that comes a passion for data and analytics.
Stewart Moffatt