Digital Marketing & Analytics: Five Deadly Myths De-mythified!
Here are the digital myths that are leading us down a profoundly sub-optimal path:
1. Programmatic platforms are a panacea.
2. A data-first strategy is a winning formula.
3. All we need is Facebook, forget our website.
4. The web is dead. Mobile web is dead. Apps are the past, present, future.
5. Cookies! Cookies are all we need!
You're welcome to jump to the one that is most pressing for your organization, though I recommend reading them sequentially as I've grafted connective tissue from one story to the next which will help you see how each of the five is a part of a grand story. You'll understand better how it all comes together into one piece at the end.
Ready? Let's go!
1. Programmatic platforms are a panacea.
Programmatic advertising is all the rage. Per our friends at Wikipedia, Programmatic encompasses an array of technologies that automate the buying, placement and optimization of media inventory. Instead of ads being placed by human-based methods, machines can do it so much better at scale.
Google's Adwords is perhaps the simplest example of programmatic advertising. You input your keywords, text ads, bids and other elements, and the platform intelligently assesses the best fit user intent and delivers your ad.
Today's primary use of the word programmatic refers to the use of ad exchanges, real-time bidding (RTB), Demand-side Platforms (DSPs) etc. to deliver display ads. Yes, the banner kind (in many ad formats, sizes, and dynamism).
I love this programmatic trend, it is undeniably the future. I love it because of the technological coolness and scale it brings. I love it because of the slow death of demographic and psychographic targeting it is delivering. I love the shift to intent-based targeting (I cannot stress how massively important to the future of advertising and marketing).
But, I'm distressed that programmatic is thought about as panacea by CMOs and other CxOs. "Just buy a programmatic stack, and all our problems will be gone! Our advertising will rain down massive revenues! !"
There is one important, hugely important, foundational element they are not accounting for.
Like you, when I went to MBA school I was told my marketing class that the ultimate nirvana state for a Marketer was to be able to deliver the right message (RM) to the right person (RP) at the right time (RT).
While it made a ton of sense, no sane person would say that we could do anything close to that using the media platforms of the time. Can you do RM+RP+RT using TV? How about magazines? Yes, you can get some weak demographic or, a bit better, psychographic signals from surveys TV channels or magazines did. Then you would just spray and pray (a strategy the continues to date and reduces the glory of TV!). The best we could think about RM+RP+RT is what Direct Marketers (people who sent you all those letters in postal mail!). For their existing customers they could mine the CRM/ERP systems and the letter would switch from Dear Sir/Madam to Dear Stephanie Byrd. The content of the letter could be customized to Stephanie's data/behavior.
The internet today is a fundamental paradigm shift. RM+RP+RT is finally possible. In large measure that is because of the rise of programmatic buying. Fewer guesses. More technology. Leveraging consumer behavior and intent signals.
Fly in the ointment?
Programmatic simply solves for the ability to find the right person (RP) at the right time (RT).
It does not solve the RM problem!
You still have to come up with the right message.
If the platform identifies See intent, do you have the capability to deliver a See message? Or, are you counting on your Do message to do the job? What if the platform tells you that this is the right time to deliver a Care message to the right person, have your fed that into your programmatic system so that the right person can be delighted?
[Bonus read: See-Think-Do-Care: An Audience Intent Centric Business Framework.]
Programmatic platforms are (sadly) sold by vendors with nary a word about RM. Programmatic platforms are bought with nary a thought given by companies to the RM challenge.
Do you know then what happens when these platforms are implemented?
Today you suck at delivering relevant messages to your desirable audiences with our current platform. Tomorrow your programmatic platform's technical savvy just helps you suck at scale, faster.
And, make no mistake. You, your boss's boss, and the boss's boss's boss will blame the platform. But, of course it was not the platform. It was your oversight of the importance of the RM all along.
So, if you want to win with programmatic (and, you SHOULD want to!)… Figure out how to also re-imagine your RM strategy.
Here's a head-start with the questions you'll have to answer to create a fabulous RM strategy: Who is going to create all the See-Think-Do-Care content for your desktop website, mobile website and mobile apps and deliver it on your owned and rented platforms (more on this below)? Is it going to be in-house or out-sourced? [In the long run it has to be all in-house.] Who is going to be responsible for all the creative assets that need to go into your programmatic platform to power your advertising to bring people to all this magnificent See-Think-Do-Care content? How often is it going to be refreshed? Who is going to ensure that the company moves away from years and years of legacy demographic and psychographic limited thinking and move to using your programmatic platform to leverage the hundreds of intent signals thrown off by your See-Think-Do-Care audiences? Who is then going to ensure that S-T-D-C thinking drives content, which drives ads, which are delivered to audiences who, because now you don't stink, deliver brand love and company revenue?
These are non-trivial questions to answer. But, answering them with immense thought and care is absolutely critical.
Programmatic comes down to RM. All that technology and real-time bidding and trading desks and brilliant algorithms and ad exchanges, everything comes down to… right message.
If you don't believe me, go to www.yahoo.com right now. Look at the ads and their massive irrelevance to you right now. This despite the fact that Yahoo! (even if you've never visited the site) has access to tons of intent signals from you right now, tons of third-party cookies that litter your browser right now, and immense Big Data and algorithms. Does Yahoo! suck? A little bit, yes. Most of the blame rests on the advertiser whose ad you are seeing right now. [Scratchers lottery for me. For someone who has never played lottery, has no intention of doing so, and has never visited any site that could remotely signal any interest in partaking in something even slight math savvy would warn against! :)]
Go visit any major website right now (and, please turn off Ad-Block if you are using it). You'll see the same irrelevance and shouting. [Farming tractor on foxnews.com! Cisco UCS Servers on theguardian.com!!]
The RM problem.
Don't let this be you. But programmatic. Create an awesome S-T-D-C RM strategy first.
2. A data-first strategy is a winning formula.
This has to be bizarre coming from an author who's only minor claim to fame is data. Look at the right nav on this blog, two best selling books in 13 languages! As all of my proceeds from the books go to charity, this passion for data has allowed me to donate $350,000 to charity since the first book was published.
All of that to simply say that I think data is really important, and I'm a passionate believer in a data-driven product development, marketing, employee hiring, stocking the pantry at your office, and so much more.
Data. Is. Magnificent.
Yet, I believe that if your company has a "data-first" strategy you are likely doomed. I was heart broken at the number of companies I've met recently that are executing this strategy.
A data-first strategy is defined as data before everything else.
It is the quest to implement systems (usually massive) to collect data of all shapes and manner before all else. It is an investment in numerous report writers or data (puking) automation or hiring a small army in India or Philippines to do that, before investing in any smart Analyst. It is being hyper-conservative when it comes to creativity and experimentation because of quant-issues. It is represented by 90% of the data budget invested in Agencies and Consultants driving implementation and re-implementation and hyper-customization of the code. It is represented by the act of creating crazy data thresholds for any initiative to get off the ground. As in, "You have to prove store sales from a See or a Think strategy before we invest in smart marketing." Put another way, it is the constant judging of fish by their ability to climb trees!
Data is important. I believe it can help drive your business strategy smartly. But, a data-first strategy, defined as above, is nuts. It will only slow down your progress and allow your competitors to crush you like a bug (even if you are a top player in your market today!).
You should reject data-first.
You should accept data-with strategies.
Assuming you have a great product and/or service first, in our context the most important thing to do is to focus on content next. That will quickly be followed by amazing, incredible marketing (owned first, earned next and paid as the final piece of the puzzle). Along the way, rather than over-indexing on a data obsession before everything, use data as an aid to keep getting smarter. For how to go about this, use the wonderful Analytics Ladder of Awesomeness.
From a tools/data collection strategy perspective, you'll invest in a free tool first (and there is a free tool for pretty much everything, and free data is everywhere – for example you don't need any tool to tell you that Esurance's Facebook strategy is a dud, just scroll through their public posts, the average amplification rate is a tiny 20, two and a zero!). Exhaust the free tool, take the initial steps in the ladder of awesomeness, make the organization smarter. Then, move to a paid one as you deal with more complex challenges. Make sure this comes with a commensurate 10/90 investment in smart, really smart analysts (and not report writers). Climb up the ladder some more. Rinse. Repeat.
You are going to drive your organization to use data to make smart quantitative and qualitative decisions along the way. You'll execute a data-with strategy. Perhaps it is best to think of it as a data-with business success first strategy.
Please don't have a data-first strategy. It is the kiss of death. And innovation. And people. And anything amazing.
Oh, and before I forget. Definitely buy my data books! :)
[Bonus: If you want to know the three phases that help you create a great digital strategy: The Complete Digital Analytics Ecosystem: How To Win Big .]
3. All we need is Facebook, forget our website.
Of all of the things on this list, this one is the hardest to understand. It is so wrong, on such a colossal scale, it is hard to believe that it could be real. But, it is.
There are, broadly speaking, two types of digital existences. Those that you own, and those that you rent.
Own existences are usually your desktop and mobile websites and your mobile apps. You own everything about them. You own the domains. You own the content and you can present it exactly the way you want (you can be as weird as you want). You own the relationships with the customers (or, just the visitors to your sites/apps). You own the macro-outcome, you can have as many micro-outcomes as you want. You own the data. You own privacy. You own everything!
Rent existences are usually your Facebook page, your YouTube brand channel, your Twitter presence. You own very little about them. You own the content – you are limited in the creativity you can express, it has to be in the bounds set by the platform. You don't really own the relationships with the customers. You have lots of freedom with Subscribers to your YouTube channels, on Facebook you are limited to what Edgerank determines it will expose to your Like'ers, on Twitter everything's in the timeline – you just have to make sure you are still there when your followers read their timeline. You own very little, if any, of the data about your customers. You don't control the privacy (it is up to each platform). And, you are dependent on the strategy executed at the moment by the companies who own these rented channels – if they zig and you've always zagged, tough beans.
The best digital strategy in the world is an Own + Rent strategy. Own because it is the best destination for Do and Think audiences (it would be silly to dump them on rented channels). Rent because it is where your See, and often Care, audiences already are (YouTube and Facebook each have over a billion active humans on them!). It is very smart to use each, own and rent, for what they are respectively good at.
But.
If you only have money for one, do own.
Why?
Scroll back up slowly. Read the paragraph that starts with "Own existences are usually…"
Convinced about how bizarre it is to invest in rent rather than own?
You have no freedom on creativity, content, data, privacy, relationships, post-platform engagement (email!), ability to execute Think and Do strategies that actually make you money (!), and so much more.
Yet.
There are companies actually executing just rent. They have no own strategy. In fact if you search for the brand by name on Google.com or Bing.com, you'll see links to their site in the first couple organic search results, and if you click on them you get to their site and auto-redirected to their Facebook page!
Where, for these big companies, the average Amplification Rate is under 25. They are taking thousands and thousands of people looking for their brand (easy to check with Google Trends/Keyword Tool) and dumping them on a See channel where on average 25 human beings engage with their limited outcome existence!
Many, many companies are doing this. In the last few weeks for me it has been a massive beverages company, it has been a couple of consumer goods companies, it has been an entertainment company, and it has even been a non-profit. I had to cry myself to sleep every single time.
I implore you. Own first. Then rent. Rock both. If you can only do one. Do own. For the sake of your business, your employees and the almighty (/Jesus/Krishna/Allah/Sun God/your favourite).
First Bonus Recommendation: Your New Facebook Strategy: Facebook's organic reach for brands is now broadly under 5%. If you actually stink, as is the case for most brands because they are executing a Do strategy on a See media channel, it is even lower. You don't have to believe me, just look at the little number at the bottom of your Facebook posts. It is a profound waste of opportunity give your Agency gobs and gobs of money to create non-engaging, not-being-viewed content. Save that money immediately. Facebook does have a massive audience, and you should want it. But, it is important to realize that you'll need to have a paid strategy and not an organic one. That is where Facebook shifted when it comes to brands a year ago, you should just catch up. Invest money first in a See right messages strategy for Facebook, because it is a See channel. Then, pay Facebook money, lots of it, to deliver that content, via their advertising options, to audiences in the See intent-cluster. Oh, and don't be silly and replicate your offline demographic and psychographic targeting on Facebook.. If you do that you'll still lose, even with a paid strategy. Use the intent signals Facebook's ad platform provides. The opportunity is there, you get to decide if you want to win big or keep wasting time and money on Facebook.
Source : www.kaushik.net , Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics, Digital Marketing
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