As part of a“CMO Insight Series,” I’ve interviewed several marketing leaders regarding their biggest challenges. Two topics consistently come up in my discussions: 1) the need to move faster, and 2) the importance of being able to convert data into better insight. The concept of “agile marketing” integrates these two topics. To better understand what agile marketing is, why CMOs should care, and what they can do to become more agile, I turned to Optimine's president, Matt Voda. What follows are his insights.
Kimberly Whitler: What is agile marketing?
Matt Voda: Derived from agile software development, agile marketing arrives from a marketer’s need to move quickly, iterate through a series of rapid “test and measure” sprints, and then adjust accordingly. Gone are the days of old school marketing, as traditional, fixed “annual marketing plans” are quickly dying out and replaced by more flexible, adaptable approaches that reflect today’s rapidly evolving marketing landscape.
Whitler: Why should CMOs care?
Voda: In a commissioned research study conducted by Forrester Research for OptiMine of more than 200 global marketing executives, an average of only 36% of companies are extremely confident in their ability to measure ROI of a given channel (37% among digital channels).
This is a huge problem given that every month, there are entirely new channels being created that challenge marketers with unknown, unmeasured opportunities. With this rate of change in the market and the explosion of new channels, CMOs need an agile approach for faster testing, measurement and ultimately an ROI-driven approach. Further, as users’ behaviors change, marketers are struggling to identify the right consumer engagement strategies because they cannot flex and adapt quickly enough to the myriad new connection points and channels.
To be successful, CMOs must iterate, test and measure as a foundation to strategy formulation – to know how different segments of consumers move through multi-channel experiences, and how each channel, platform and ad contribute uniquely to their overall goals and bottom line.
Whitler: How does agile marketing measurement work?
Voda: There are two foundational premises – that aren’t new to marketing – that underpin the concepts of “agile marketing measurement”:
1. All channels and ads, can contribute in some way, to a business outcome (like sales, new customer acquisition, lead generation, etc.)
2. And, ads can actually impact and contribute to the performance of other ads (for example, brand awareness ads help improve keyword search advertising)
The key with both of these two premises is to know and be able to measure each, because no improvement in performance can occur until the marketer knows, or can measure these principles.
But that isn’t enough. In thinking about our new market realities, the modern marketer is facing rapid change in the form of new devices (wearables, watches anyone?), new channels (social media channel du jour) and new consumer behaviors. As a result, agile marketing measurement needs to be:
1. Fast: If measurement takes months or years to implement or update, the marketer is toast. Likewise, agile measurement must be able to keep pace with much faster testing cycles.
2. Granular: With multiple channels and hundreds, if not thousands of ads running concurrently, agile marketing measurement requires the ability to read performance for each ad (keeping in mind premise No. 1 above)
3. Persistent: Like death and taxes, another certainty for marketers is that the market will change. Whether due to competitive factors, changes in consumer behavior, or even changes in approach brought on by the marketer, what holds true today will no longer hold true later this year. Agile marketing measurement allows the marketer to understand why performance changed, and also how the latest channel or test worked out, thereby enabling continuous improvement.
Whitler: Do you have any examples or case studies?
Voda: We have a case study with MediaVest, a large, leading agency, who applied these agile marketing measurement approaches on behalf of one of their large clients – a $100 million-plus media budget advertiser of consumer and business insurance plans. Using OptiMine, they measured their advertising ecosystem quickly to discover upper funnel advertising (awareness related spend) that was in fact, driving performance of lower funnel paid search performance. Using these analytics, they began to rapidly adjust, test and refine approaches to yield significant lift in new leads.
What was especially interesting is that the analytics highlighted the fact that consumers were confused about the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) plan requirements and using this knowledge, the agency was able to adjust their advertising approaches quickly to steer confused individuals to the right information and yield substantial growth in enrollments on behalf of their insurance client.
Whitler: Do you have some specific tips on how marketers can convert from traditional ad buying to the more contemporary approach?
Voda: The key to success in the programmatic ad buying space is to know the actual value of each ad. In shifting to a bid-based model, advertisers that do not properly measure the value of ads are at a significant competitive disadvantage. We saw this phenomena way back in the days when Google introduced auction-based buying and the fundamental principles are the same. In order to measure the value of each ad more accurately, marketers need to consider some important points:
1. Ditch the simplistic attribution schemes now – they will harm your marketing performance and will incorrectly value the power of your ads
2. Choose a more sophisticated cross-channel measurement approach to ensure you are capturing the full value of your entire marketing funnel (offline, online, mobile, social, video, etc.) regardless of “clicks”. An ad can contribute to an outcome even if the consumer didn’t do anything in response to the ad
3. Commit to an agile marketing measurement methodology – ensure that your new solution can deploy quickly, will keep pace with the market, and enables your ability to test and measure frequently and rapidly.
Interested in more CMO Insight? Check out the following: Deepak Advani (IBM); Duncan Aldred (Buick/GMC); Bill Campbell (CMO, Chatham University); Steve Cook (former CMO, Samsung); Rishi Dave (CMO, Dun & Bradstreet); Kristin Hambelton (CMO, Evariant); Jeff Jones (CMO, Target); Michele Kessler (CEO, thinkThin), Antonio Lucio (CMO, HP); Tim Mahoney (Global CMO, Global Chevrolet and Global Marketing Operations Leader, GM); Jim McGinnis (Intuit); Jim Melvin (former CEO and current CMO in Tech); C. David Minifie (CMO/EVP Corporate Strategy, Centene Corp); Anne Pritz (CMO, Sbarro); Martine Reardon (CMO, Macy’s); David Roman (CMO, Lenovo); Robin Saitz (CMO, Brainshark); Ajit Sivadasan (Lenovo); Ron Stoupa (CMO, Sports Authority); Ken Thewes (CMO, Regal Entertainment Group); Scott Vaughan (CMO, Integrate); Brent Walker (CMO/Co-Founder, C2B Solutions); and Barry Westrum (EVP, International Dairy Queen).
Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler
