Are you attributing your business impact correctly?
Digital marketing is the most dynamic and quick way to run campaigns and drive business objectives. Today, we put this on top of the action list because we can track every click and measure every penny spent.
But do we really do that?
We’ve been boasting about the advantages of being on the digital network and the expanse of it. Often, the fact that the medium can track every action and we can quantify it is just a sham.
Most of us are only looking at the data that is superficially available. It can make a lot of sense if you were to filter it.
Money vs. Impressions, so what?
You had millions to spend on an online campaign for a week & you generated about a thousand impressions; which exceed your estimate. So you think you’ve overachieved and this becomes your benchmark for all upcoming campaigns.
At this point you’ve not looked at anything else that might’ve happened beyond those impressions because you’ve overshot your target and nothing else matters.
This is a grave mistake and most digital marketers continue to make it.
The number that media agencies report is mostly just a third of what they end up achieving. There’s a lot of ripple effect that happens after someone sees your ad and clicks. Time spent, pages visited, exit pages, conversions, calls on your toll free number, enquiry form filling and a lot of other actions that are not accounted for.
If you’re running an online campaign without considering all the delivered elements (views, clicks, CTR, performing keyword. etc. etc) & ignoring analytics for that campaign then you’re not reporting the wonderful work you’ve done.
Are you correctly attributing to business?
You must be spending time in attributing business numbers back to online leads. But did you ever try to match revenue from awareness? There’s no definitive fact that brand awareness does not drive business. The real reason is that there is no primitive way to measure it.
Truth is that you don’t analyze the analytics of your page when you run a brand campaign. Common belief is that any campaign that drives engagement, or gives you likes shares and comments, does not add up to business.
Out of the 100% revenue that you make in a year; some will be attributed to your online paid campaigns (because you have tracked it), some part will be attributed to your offline activities, what about the unidentified business? Is it safe to say that it could’ve been through awareness?
Two possible methods to record brand awareness impact;
1) Make all offline & online campaigns (minus brand campaigns) measurable. Is it now safe to say remaining is through
awareness?
2) Measure the performance of your sales pages & call centers during a brand campaign
Once you start doing this, your data will make a lot more sense.
Don’t underestimate your SEO
At some given point of time we have all tried to look up brands on Google to validate their credibility. If a brand makes it to the top of the page it’s a win for them and if the first 2–3 results show your website, your brand’s social media profiles or maybe your official address then its ultimate victory.
The key is to be as relevant as you can & as up to date. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly and back it up by regular social media updates. It helps in bettering your position on SERP.
Most important, track your organic traffic. The traffic that comes organically has a stronger intention of converting. So, you may not be getting a lot of organic traffic, but it might be giving you the highest business. Measure the behavior of your organic traffic till the last bit.
Originally published at clicksdaily.in on February 26, 2018.
