If ever there was a year to throw the rulebook out the window, 2020 is that year. But smart marketers have found that they don’t need to start from scratch to succeed – they just need to make the right decisions and be agile when it comes to marketing measurement. So, what does it take to find success in 2020? We recently took the MAD//Fest stage at DMEXCO to discuss just that.
Watch our 180-seconds video including a short Q&A session via the link below or read the insights further down to find out how to emerge from crisis stronger, and raise the bar on your marketing strategy.
If the year 2020 has taught us one thing it is that knowing how to cook a proper meal is a must if you wish to survive and keep your loved ones happy in a world where your favourite restaurant and the company canteen might be closed tomorrow. You had to adapt almost overnight to new behaviours, keep shopping lists up to date, fit out your kitchen and, most likely, take your cooking skills to the next level.
Incredibly popular books like “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat probably saved tens of thousands of dinners across the world. By focusing on and explaining the key elements of good cooking, she brought the right level of scientific insight to raise the bar of cooking.
As it happens, improving and mastering your cooking skills is not that far off from mastering marketing measurement. For example, your data is the ingredients, the analysis is the cooking, and the insights that you receive in the end are the hopefully delicious meal.
What you need to ask yourself after all the 2020 disruption is: How are you going to use your data/ingredients? Do you keep with the same old approach and that was created in the 70s, like a prawn cocktail, or do you raise the bar to create prawn tacos?
Taste and taste again
One of the key messages of the Nosrat’s book is to taste and taste again while you are preparing your dish. This helps to all identify the true flavour of all ingredients and achieve the exact and truly tasteful final product you are looking for.
In measurement we have seen brands updating analysis every year and realizing too late that platforms, creatives, and context have changed hugely. We advise to increase the frequency of reads to get a pulse check on what is happening.
Moreover, knowing that your Return on Investment is increasing and being able to share these facts back with your leadership team and stakeholders is key to sustainable, long-term success. If you realize the data you are getting back is not reaching the bar, then change track.
Experiments keep it real
Would you invite over your best friends for dinner and serve them something you have never cooked before? No, you would probably test and learn with different approaches and ingredients before committing to anything. It is as easy as cooking green beans with salt and without and tasting the huge difference it makes to flavour.
Here is a simple example for measurement: do you roll out a national campaign with millions of investments to learn afterwards that the promo message was off? Or do you test it before and adjust if needed?
With changes in consumer behaviour, habits and buying patterns, we advise setting up test and learns on variables such as service time, delivery and offers by geo locations. This has allowed our clients in 2020 already to pinpoint what works while controlling for all the other drivers and helped them plan for future success.
Use the right tools
There is an endless array of cooking and measurement tools available, from millions of brands promising you the best outcomes. But if it’s not the right tool for you, or the quality isn’t living up to your needs, you might end up with grated fingers on your spaghetti and more plasters on your hands than peas on your plate. Choose the right tools for the right task.
Sifting through piles of PowerPoint reports to get to insights is not the best way to be nimble and adaptive. We believe technology and insights at your fingertips are key to best understand the range of outcomes possible and plan for success.
The prawn tacos of marketing measurement
The right tools also imply that you know what the right tasks are, which brings us back to the first mantra of taste and taste again. Your KPIs from the beginning of 2020 are most likely not the KPIs you should be looking at the end of 2020. You have to stay agile and respond to the constant changes in consumer behaviour. A partner at your side that can help you in any situation, like a good cookbook that focuses on the key elements of any recipe, can make all the difference.
