Marketing's True Impact by BECKON

EIGHT KEYS TO DOING CROSS-CHANNEL REPORTING RIGHT

MARKETING’S TRUE IMPACT

You simply can’t walk into the boardroom with

reports showing how many clicks an email

achieved. Single-channel reporting (what

search delivered, what TV did and so on)

is easy to do because it’s how we tend to be or-

ganized. It’s how we divide the labor amongst

our agencies, and it’s how our specialized

execution tools work, so typically it’s all we do.

But how does one channel compare to the oth-

ers? And how do digital channels compare to

other parts of the marketing mix—like events,

radio, PR and social? What’s the role of each?

What’s working best across it all? How is any

of it impacting business results? That is what

your executives want to know: The Big Picture.

There is no shortage of marketing data. In fact “data exhaust”

is flowing from everything we marketers touch. The paradox

is that your company’s leadership couldn’t care less about any

one of those channel-specific data points.

Cross-channel reporting may be harder, but it’s

vital if you want to understand and optimize

your marketing effectiveness in a world with

so many ways to spend your marketing dollars.

Marketing leaders must be able to synthesize

the data and tell the marketing story in terms

of business results. Rory Finlay, a marketing

executive recruiter for Egon Zehnder, agrees:

“… if you want to be a highly sought after market-

ing leader over the next five years … prepare

yourself to serve as the overall integrator of the

marketing function in all its modern complexity.”

[email protected]

[email protected]

Your integration story will be told through cross-channel

reporting. Here are eight keys to doing it right:

1. CONTROL YOUR MARKETING

SUCCESS STORY

Don’t leave the question, “Is my

marketing working?” to IT, finance

analysts or agencies to answer.

It’s an idea whose time has come: marketing

data for marketers. It no longer takes months

of research by a certified data analyst with

high-level security clearance to create a mar-

keting performance re-

port. Data is abundant,

and accessible to

all sorts of business

partners in the organi-

zation, from finance

to IT. Each group

thinks they can make

sense of your market-

ing data and report in-

sightfully on what you

are doing. However,

it’s now possible for

you to manage your

own reporting, track the effectiveness of your

own marketing plan, and control your own

performance story.

It’s a revolutionary opportunity. Imagine no lon-

ger having to go through (and wait for) those

other departments that traditionally curate

marketing metrics and who get to say, “Here’s

how marketing is performing.” Because what

they don’t have is a marketer’s insight—the syn-

thesis of knowledge and experience that offers

the deepest, most powerful understanding of

what the data reveals. If your marketing team

can’t easily view and use metrics that are in the

language of marketing and take appropriate

action, then what’s the point of tracking them?

Bringing ownership of your metrics and report-

ing in-house is the first step toward cultivating

the marketing-specific insights that lead to mar-

keting-specific action. Democratize marketing

data. Bring it home. Put it in the hands of your

people.

2. SEEK

ANSWERS TO

YOUR MOST

IMPORTANT

QUESTIONS

Don’t get distract-

ed by data visual-

ization tools or

the tactic du jour;

focus on what you need to know.

Everything you do is in service to larger goals.

Instead of thinking about beautiful pie charts

you’d like to create, list the essential and

enduring business questions for which you

need answers at your fingertips. These might

include:

If your marketing team can’t

easily view and use metrics

that are in the language of

marketing and take

appropriate action, then

what’s the point of tracking

them?

with the same objective based on how well

each delivers. For example, for driving net new

relationships, the channels that were the most

effective (and cost-effective) were X, Y and Z.

4. BE ABLE TO ARTICULATE

MARKETING’S IMPACT ON BUSINESS

OBJECTIVES

Align your reporting with the organiza-

tion’s overall strategy.

Put the big strategic objectives for the brand

and business front and center and report on

those. How much is marketing spending on

each business objective? What initiatives are

aligned against each objective, and which are

getting results? That's what leadership cares

about.

5. AGILE MARKETING REQUIRES

TIMELY DATA

If cross-channel marketing data isn’t

continuously flowing and populating

your reports, agile marketing will

remain an elusive dream.

The point of reporting is to know what’s

working and what’s not working so that you

can do more of the former (as fast as possible)

and less of the latter (as fast as possible). If

cross-channel reporting is difficult to come by,

it probably won’t get done very often. When

learning is left to the annual “year in review”

• How is marketing moving the needle on our top

brand objectives?

• Which channels, messages, offers and

campaigns are making the biggest impact?

• What are the key insights and most important

takeaways from our last big initiative?

• How much are we spending on each part of the

funnel and is that the right allocation?

• Of all the lead generation tactics we are

running, which are proving to be the most

cost-effective? The least cost-effective?

3. USE METRICS FOR THE BIG

PICTURE

Get out of the data weeds.

Don’t just report on single-channel metrics:

friends, fans, followers, GRPs, clicks, opens,

impressions, and on and on ad nauseam.

Assemble those metrics into categories and

contexts that are cross-channel, aggregated

and holistically meaningful. Here are three

examples:

• Track Paid media, Owned media, Earned media

and the ratios between them as indicators of

the health of a brand's paid efforts, and as

an early indicator of positive (or negative)

business outcomes.

• Report on your funnel (for instance, Awareness,

Engagement and Revenue), not the individual

metrics that aggregate up to it (but be sure

you know those as well).

• Force rank each channel against the others

firm? Where’s the API to your brand tracker

study? Where’s the API to your agencies?

Just because such APIs don’t exist doesn’t

mean the data is less valuable. If you’re not

analyzing all the data that matters—including

unstructured, hard-to-harness data—then

you’re treading water with your reporting and

limiting your insights.

8. “WHAT’S WORKING” IS MORE

THAN THE NUMBERS (AS EVERY

MARKETER KNOWS)

Assemble the complete picture.

If your boss asked you

whether a particular

campaign was

working, you would

never respond based

on the metrics alone.

You would consider the strategy, the primary

intent of the campaign, the creative, the

media placements… in other words, the full

picture. The same principle applies to your

ongoing reporting. Understanding what’s

working, what’s not, and what to do next

takes more than a dashboard of performance

indicators. Ideally, you’d have a marketing

“system of record”—the brief, budget and

spend, continuously updated performance

metrics, key documents, the creative, and

your team’s comments, insights and lessons

learned all together in one place. (The

collective email inboxes of everyone in the

marketing department doesn’t count.)

You might assume that your agencies hold all

hind-sighting deck, it means zero chance to

optimize in real time and, consequently, money

wasted on underperforming tactics.

6. BEWARE THE “GARBAGE IN,

GARBAGE OUT” DILEMMA

Normalize your data to make reporting

easy and reliable.

Marketing is messy. Marketing data is messier.

One tool measures clicks one way, another tool

measures them differently. The US spreadsheet

is labeled “direct mail pieces” while the UK’s

is labeled “door drops.” If your data isn’t

normalized on the way

in—cleaned up and

tagged per a sensible

taxonomy—then your

reporting will be errat-

ic and unreliable. Even

the most beautiful data visualization tool can’t

save you from the “garbage in” dilemma. No

matter how fabulous that color-coded donut

graph looks, if the data was messy on the way

in, then the donut is useless.

7. UTILIZE THE DATA THAT MATTERS,

NOT JUST WHAT’S EASY

Don’t overlook unstructured data

sources.

Typically, IT only captures the marketing data

that’s easily accessible: the stuff available via

nice, neat APIs. But where’s the API to your PR

that somewhere. But agencies come and go,

and if you’ve handed off your organizational

memory to them, it can mean starting from

square one. Your brand needs to own and

manage its marketing data or else suffer from

marketing “Groundhog Day” where you have

to learn it over and over again.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

With so many ways for marketers to reach

their audience and deliver their message,

tracking and analyzing channel performance

has never been more important. It may seem

daunting to get solid cross-channel reporting

up and running, especially if marketing has

never managed that function before. But being

intentional and strategic in your approach

is half the battle and there are partners and

platforms that can help. Once you’re set up

and the data is flowing automatically, the

benefits will flow as well. You’ll enjoy a clear

and continuous view of which channels and

initiatives are positively impacting the business

and which are simply draining the budget.

You’ll gain unprecedented insight into what

moves the needle. And you’ll finally control

your own success story.


SUCCESS STORY










and accessible to




to IT. Each group





are doing. However,


you to manage your



performance story.


















people.

2. SEEK

ANSWERS TO

YOUR MOST

IMPORTANT

QUESTIONS


ed by data visual-

ization tools or

the tactic du jour;







include:

[email protected]







OBJECTIVES









about.


TIMELY DATA













brand objectives?











PICTURE








examples:





business outcomes.
















MARKETER KNOWS)




campaign was

working, you would

never respond based
























easy and reliable.







in—cleaned up and













sources.































SUCCESS STORY










and accessible to




to IT. Each group





are doing. However,


you to manage your



performance story.


















people.

2. SEEK

ANSWERS TO

YOUR MOST

IMPORTANT

QUESTIONS


ed by data visual-

ization tools or

the tactic du jour;







include:







OBJECTIVES









about.


TIMELY DATA












[email protected]


brand objectives?











PICTURE








examples:





business outcomes.
















MARKETER KNOWS)




campaign was

working, you would

never respond based
























easy and reliable.







in—cleaned up and













sources.






























Your brand needs to own and

manage its marketing data.


SUCCESS STORY










and accessible to




to IT. Each group





are doing. However,


you to manage your



performance story.


















people.

2. SEEK

ANSWERS TO

YOUR MOST

IMPORTANT

QUESTIONS


ed by data visual-

ization tools or

the tactic du jour;







include:

[email protected]







OBJECTIVES









about.


TIMELY DATA













brand objectives?











PICTURE








examples:





business outcomes.
















MARKETER KNOWS)




campaign was

working, you would

never respond based
























easy and reliable.







in—cleaned up and













sources.






























ABOUT BECKON

Beckon is omni-channel analytics software for marketing in all its modern complexity. Our

software-as-a-service platform integrates messy marketing data and delivers rich dashboards for

cross-channel marketing intelligence. Built by marketers for marketers, Beckon is the dashboard

to the CMO—industry best-practice analytics and marketing-impact metrics right out of the box

for ultra-fast time to marketing value. Beckon serves marketers who want to bring order to chaos,

make data-informed optimization decisions, and tell the marketing story in terms of business

impact. Find your strength in numbers with Beckon.

LEARN MORE

Contact us for a complimentary consultation to find out how Beckon can help you better demonstrate

the marketing contribution at your organization.

[email protected]

107 SOUTH B STREET, SUITE 300

SAN MATEO, CA 94401

Marketing's True Impact by BECKON

Marketing

Transcript of Marketing's True Impact by BECKON