Brands can be forgiven to be feeling perplexed in how they navigate the intricacy of the marketing technology landscape. I feel the pain for marketers as it can feel disheartening as the dream is sold with every martech they acquire it can solve all their problems. Reality is they are moving further away from an all singing and dancing martech ecosystem.
To put into context in 2022 there are 9,932 martech solutions available. In a 11 year period where chiefmartech has been reporting there has been a 6,521% growth from 150 in 2011 to 9,932 in 2022. On average a brand would have 120 martech solutions in their stack.
Which is why marketing measurement should be driving your martech strategy.
The holistic view
Brands need to think of the bigger picture and stop falling into the trap of siloed thinking. Many marketers are still looking at their campaigns and thinking it’s driving all the sales. Marketing is there to be the growth driver for business; marketers need to connect the dots and look at marketing more holistically. It’s become all too easy for marketers relying on the data outputs from martech it still needs human intuition to make sense of the numbers and provide true context.
Bringing clarity to the chaos:
KPI Selection
Focus on marketing KPI’s that deliver the business goals and objectives. The primary marketing KPI needs to be aligned to the business KPI that is critically important. The role of secondary marketing KPI’s is crucial as they need to ladder upto the primary KPI and in most cases the secondary KPI’s should be pivotal when it comes to planning, optimising, and measuring campaign success.
Selecting the right measurement
Getting a good understanding of how the marketing plan is impacting the business is key, as the platforms are in essence telling lies. This is where you need to select the right measurement technique to answer the business and marketing question.
With the selection of the right KPI’s and measurement technique it should help understand the different dynamics of the marketing plan and business model.
This should help in two ways:
Marketing Effectiveness
Having the right measurement framework in place is key to driving towards marketing effectiveness. There is no silver bullet but having the right framework to measure brand v performance is one step in the right direction. The balance between short and long term view is important, the focus should be on KPI’s and measurement that can help drive the long term growth.
Peter Field & I recommend that marketers use a mix of “brand building” & “activation” comms. Our research suggests the optimum split is usually ~60% brand, ~40% activation, but varies by context.
But why split brand & activation at all? Why not do both at once?
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— Les Binet (@BinetLes) April 30, 2022
Selection of your Martech
With the right measurement framework in place, it becomes the focal point in developing your martech ecosystem.
- For any martech vendors to come on board they must align to the KPI selection and the measurement approach
- Get buy-in from the CFO by showing the value the martech vendor will bring as they will be aligned to the measurement strategy.
Data Strategy
By 2025 there will be 175 zettabytes of data, that’s boundless of data. The rate at which data is getting created it has become daunting for brands and marketers as they get sucked into thinking they need to collect all data that is available so it can be measured.
The brands who will be winning are the ones who are selective about the data they need which align to the KPI selection and measurement approach. Any other data can be dropped kicked into row Z.
Data Collection
Based on the objectives and KPI’s it should drive the data requirements. Good way to think about the data sources it should be split it into 3 categories:
- Owned data
- Free data
- Paid data
Brands own a lot more data than they realise that is good data that can help them answer their core business questions. Paid data will provide the richness. Free data is under-rated, there is so much free data available that can be immensely valuable and insightful when tied in with owned and paid data.
Data Training
Getting alignment with key stakeholders, internal and external teams become a critical component to understand:
- How the data is sourced
- How the data will be used for analysis
- The data impact on results
Data training should be on-going as it allows ideas to be shared, makes it a collaborative approach, and most importantly collate constant feedback to tweak the models, process etc. It’s the small gains that drive the big wins.
Marketing Data Warehouse
The brands who value data as a strategic asset will understand the complexity in accessing, managing, and analysing data in a privacy centric world will invest in a marketing data warehouse. The previous steps taken guarantees the right data is being collected and processed to build the business and marketing base while ensuring there’s absolute trust in the data.
Winning with Measurement and Martech
Once the measurement requirements have been finalised, this is where a measurement canvas can help set the strategy going forward. The canvas becomes a strategic play and ensures that everyone is working towards the same goal and marketers don’t get sucked into the hype of what a new tech solution or data sources can provide.
The measurement canvas will help build out the martech requirements which can be mapped out in the data & tech canvas. Giving brands and marketers full control of their measurement and martech strategy.
