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4 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From the Struggle With ROI Measurement

Katherine Buchholz Product Marketing Manager, DialogTech

Every marketer knows how important it is to measure ROI. What we don’t necessarily realize is that we’re all experiencing the same struggles in our ROI measurement. In fact, new research from Millward Brown Digital reveals that marketers ranked the inability to track ROI as their second most common pain point. And it makes sense: marketers need to prove their value to clients and executives.

Not to mention that nearly 50% of marketers indicate their ability to demonstrate ROI is a top criterion for determining media budget allocations. So what would happen if that pain were lessened? This research shines a light on a very important issue: marketers still struggle with digital measurement, and while they want to spend more (and would spend more), they simply don’t have the right insight to know how. So what can we learn from this research? Here are four lessons:

1. We Need The Right Tools To Help Us Plan

Marketers sometimes lose sight of the importance of planning for ROI measurement in advance. It shouldn’t be an afterthought – plan how you are going to measure the ROI of your campaigns from the onset, and make sure you have the proper research tools in place to do so. It’s especially important in a mobile-first world where consumer research spans online, offline, and mobile touch points. The study shows that 67% of marketers are currently using consumer behavior insights when making marketing decisions, insights that will be increasingly important to understanding the full customer journey. Having the right tools (such as behavioral insights) in place will be essential to marketers’ ability to properly optimize their campaigns across all touch points – and continuously throughout the customer journey.

2. We Need to Focus on the Right KPIs

In tandem with planning for the right tools, we need to know what we’re using those tools to measure. What insights are purely interesting, as opposed to a true key performance indicator that will move business forward? This also means a shift away from relying solely on last-click attribution. While last-click can still be a good indicator of why a customer may have pulled the trigger on their purchase, using multi-touch attribution may help us uncover stronger KPIs. Marketers will have a better understanding of their customers’ behavior and what additional advertising, content, web pages, and more were influential to them before making a purchase.

3. We Need to Track Every Conversion

Marketers understand the potential that big data holds: 42% cite it as the most important opportunity in 2015. Part of this is the internal data gleaned from tracking conversions and customer behavior. Yet only 39% of marketers are confident in their organization’s use of big data. There’s room for improvement. One such area is mobile attribution. We recently released research that highlights a 49% ROI mistake many marketers are making due to the absence of call attribution. Mobile is an integral part of the customer journey, and it’s driving calls. Including call attribution in ROI measurement helps marketers recoup previously missed or misattributed conversions.

4. We Need to Allocate More to What Works

The Millward Brown study indicated that over 70% of marketers would increase their budget in digital, mobile, and social channels if ROI measurement was improved. So, if marketers take the three lessons above into consideration when planning, measuring, and tracking campaigns, they will then be better able to optimize said campaigns. Once marketing can be optimized using the information gathered from better ROI measurement, they’ll be able to cut back spend on what isn’t working and allocate more of it to what is working.

Interested in learning more about mobile and cross platform conversion optimization and digital ROI measurement? Check out the free on-demand webinar, “The Role of Mobile Conversion Optimization in 2015.”