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Great insights are the start point for strong marketing plans and strategies. Insights (an unobvious truth about your consumer) are rare and a reward for combining robust data analytics with product usage observations, consumer experiences, deep domain knowledge and lateral linkages between consumer life motivations and brand intersects.
As a first step investing in the collection, analysis and modeling of big data is prudent. But data the journey to insights does not stop here. There is a need to dig deeper into consumer motivations, behaviors, product usage and experiences to reveal ‘actionable insights’ around which marketing strategies and plans can be built. How can we convert big data into action insights ?
Gleaning actionable insights requires one last step – actioning the insight. The ability and willingness to action the insight findings balancing the resource constraints of (time-money-opportunity cost) should be determined before you start the process of discovering the actionable insights. Amongst the list of resource constraints the one that tips the balance in more occasions than others is usually – time. Time taken for the analysis and decision making overflows into the time needed to start actioning the insights. So be sure of the ability to action the insight before searching for the action insights.
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Basic segmentation exercises like demographic segmentation have their usefulness in understanding large groups while psychographic segmentation helps in linking groups of people based on their mind-set and motivations.
But as we move deeper into building relevance and realising the potential of mass precision targeting, value exchange and enabling desired action segmenting based on common behaviours becomes a step towards building higher relevance and actionable marketing plans. Behavioral segmentation will help marketers ensure that their digital plans target the right consumers, engage with the right content that aids conversion – behavior change at scale. Behavioral segmentation promises ‘Mass Precision’. To achieve the mass precision promise of behavioral segmentation we need to do the following:
Behavioral segmentation is a dynamic exercise as consumer preferences change, actions change in response to context. In order to keep ahead of these changes the next step in behavioral segmentation becomes a serious investment in machine learning/ predictive analytics. Using big data modeling to discover new opportunity - new segments, new actions. In the attention economy brands are hungry for our attention.
There is a war for attention and success is benchmarked with proxy metrics like ‘seconds’ and 'views' and 'reach'. But in chasing these metrics brands are struggling to win - an average view time for digital ads is 1.7 seconds while only 20% of digital ads are viewed beyond 2 seconds. The low figures are worrisome given that the digital advertising investment is upwards of $220 billion in 2017. This results in a continuous downward spiral where brands are creating more ads targeting wider audiences for higher reach, consumers responding to spam by using ad blocking software, leading to less time spent and so on. Here's an alternative way to think - action not attention, relevance and not reach is the goal. It does not matter if you are seen for 2, 30 or 300 seconds or if you have a 80%+ reach amongst a broad demographic if there is no relevant value exchange offered and no significant action taken after. A blind race for reach as a substitute for relevance will not solve the problem. Building relevance is a long term exercise for a brand. It involves understanding the consumer, your brand, the context of the interaction and the context of conversion. a. Consumer : Segmenting consumers based on observed behaviors, their need states, understanding their consumer journeys and the ‘why’ within their journey, their core motivations based on life-stage/ geography and culture, their category involvement and interaction is step 1. Small + Deep Data is useful here. Know 10 consumers deeply Vs a faceless database of 1000 consumers. b. Brand : The brands values (purpose), its value proposition that’s scalable, its role within culture and how will it present itself to its different constituents (act, voice, image, text). c. Context of Interaction : For each consumer segment what are the ideal trigger moments, where and when do they occur ? Also, how do the segments want to be engaged in their consumer journey ? d. Context of Conversion : Breaking down conversion as the last mile to buy/ repurchase we can see that it involves acquisition-behaviors-outcomes all of which preceed purchase. Visiting your website (acquisition), viewing your video (behavior) or subscribing to your newsletter (outcome) are not purchases per se but meant to predict future purchase with differing probability. This 4 step exercise is the beginning of building brand relevance. Done with discipline you will spend less money in chasing ‘seconds’ and more time in developing relevant brand experiences that convert. There is too much attention being paid to the attention economy.
Alarming statistics abound about our shortened attention spans (12…8…6 seconds and dropping) and the mass of advertising messages (5,000 per day or 5 ads per waking minute – have you seen 5 in the last minute ?) without an equal and opposite insight on how long form content viewing (Netflix has 100 million + subscribers, 70% of whom binge watch, Hulu has 47 million subscribers and growing), reading (New York Times subscriptions grew 62% in 2016) seem to be on the uptick. But is attention the right metric in the first place ? While ‘attention’ has its limited usefulness when measuring for content, its at best a proxy for ‘action’. Scarcity of attention should be replaced by specificity of intention. An action economy approach correctly identifies and solves for the real scarcity – desirable consumers responses (outcomes). Measurable outcomes or conversion – these are valuable metrics that marketers need to build for, not attention. It’s the misplaced trust in ‘attention’ that sees us spend inordinate amount of time and money in creating-curating content, rolling out display advertising (ad nauseum), remarketing (annoyance ad infinitum) all of which are weak levers to deliver ROI. CMOs have begun to see the error in blindly praying to the digital god of attention – they want more accountability for their digital ad dollars, and by that they mean conversions. The ability to create traction within an action based economy and framework will require first a deep understanding of consumer segments-journeys-action decision trees-triggers and a brand that is purpose driven and authentic in bringing utility to its community. If ‘actions’ are what a brand wants to build towards how should they approach it ?
2. Build ‘Actions’ Decision Trees: For each of the key consumer segments create an ‘action’ decision tree highlighting the types of actions consumers take when moving to purchase and the related triggers that impact their decisions. Unlike a traditional purchase funnel that highlights the different phases of the purchase cycle a decision tree connects one action to another specific action and also maps the distance (in time) of the action to the final purchase while doing so. This allows the brand to create a contextual strategy for actions and plan marketing investments accordingly.
3. Create Trigger Maps: Map each of the segments by their ability to convert (skill, time and money), motivation to convert (need) and triggers required (call to action). 4. Content : created based on purchase decision tree analysis. This is meant to include content for utility, engagement and not limited to conversion alone. 5. Programmatic : Use post-trade programmatic + predictive modeling using machine learning to optimise spends that are more likely to convert. A few action driven digital investments to think about with an eye towards utility driven by context and a hint of intent :
While the action economy seems to overtly focus on the bottom of the funnel conversion, in reality the efforts is to make the consumer journey faster and smoother.  Brand building is seeing a resurgence in a digital age where marketers are struggling between justifying ROI on digital while continuing to learn/ optimize using the limited marketing budgets in an extensively competitive environment.
Two events significantly influence the resurgence of brand building: 1. Viewability and 2. Ad Blocking 1. Viewability Marc Pritchard (CMO – P&G) at Dmexco 2017 noted that average view times for digital ads is 1.7 seconds while only 20% of digital ads are viewed beyond 2 seconds. Viewability is amongst the Top 2 concerns of digital media planners in the US. 2. Ad Blocking Ad Blocking user penetration in the US is set to double in 4 years (15.7% in 2014 to 30.1% in 2018). The number for Millenials (age 25-34) is even higher at 40%. How can marketers create a long term strategy to respond to the marketplace challenges ? Build relevance. A brand that embodies values that resonate with its targetted consumers, a brand that builds interest Vs interrupts and is sensitive to build utility around every engagement with its consumers. Its interesting to see a successful company like AirBnB ($58 billion in market capitalisation) make an effort to build its brand. Nancy King (AirBnB) and Neil Barrie (TBWA/ Chiat/ Day) in an interview with FastCompany reviews the companys decision to actively build a brand. For a mega successful company in Silicon Valley to acknowledge that it needs to build its brand over the long term in a disciplined manner is in itself a remarkable break-through. Additionally, the logic for investing in brand building is sound and in many ways is applicable across categories for any brand. The need for marketers to build a brand continues to be a priority, inextricably linked with every digital investment journey they are making. To paraphrase their step-by-step method (which I find applicable for every brand) :
Brands are beginning to realise that the problems they face in combatting the challenges in digital marketing (Transparency, Attribution, Ad Blocking etc) are not going to go away soon. And that building their brand, being consumer centric is only Step 1 of winning in the long term. Performance marketing is often time seems as the bottom of the funnel activity. While a lot of the investments in performance marketing would make it seem like ‘bottom of funnel activity’ the reality is a little different. To clarify, its goals are realise at the bottom of the funnel (leads, conversions, sales) but its activation is across the entire customer journey.
The objective for performance marketing is conversion – leads, sign-ups, sales. Intermediate metrics like ‘clicks’ and ‘impressions’ are only milestones in building a more robust metric like CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and should not be treated as an end to themselves. Lets talk about 3 key metrics for Performance Marketing (for a full range on this topic please read Avinash Kaushiks blog on this topic – link given below) :
How can we improve these performance marketing metrics and how is it linked to top-medium funnel consumer engagement ?
The value of performance marketing when done right is strategic and goes beyond short-term results to optimising the entire user journey for widening the funnel at the top-middle while enabling an ease of conversion at the bottom. |
