As a result, marketers have begun to adapt their marketing strategies toward omnichannel marketing measurement. Brands looking to compete in this day and age must leverage this form of measurement and attribution in order to unify analytics from individual channels across the marketing mix. From there, marketers can get a holistic view of their marketing efforts and better understand how and when consumers are engaging across channels throughout their day.
The process behind unifying marketing measurements into one cohesive view isn’t easy. Every business is unique and markets their products and services differently. Therefore, there is no “one size fits all” approach to successful omnichannel attribution and measurement. The good news, however, is that there are several key steps every business can apply to their omnichannel strategy to better understand the success of their omnichannel marketing campaigns.
As the number of media channels available to consumers increases, the amount of advertising exposure increases in tandem. In order to understand how marketing efforts across online and offline channels impact each other and engage consumers, marketers need access to data that sheds light on the areas of ad exposure that indicate person-level movement.
To do this, marketers need to invest the time and money it takes to collect consumer data across digital, print, and broadcast channels. Today, marketers need access to the big data from media service providers (MSPs) like cable companies, subscriber lists from print advertising, zip code information from radio broadcasting stations, and geotagging data from digital devices.
By getting data directly from these sources, or investing in third-party vendors that have already developed relationships with these various data sources, marketers have access to the information needed to unify insights into effective omnichannel attribution.
When it comes to omnichannel attribution efforts, having the capability to properly value the data collected is just as important as collecting the data itself. In order to accurately unify marketing measurements into an omnichannel attribution strategy, marketers need a data analytics platform capable of organizing the big data they have collected.
For example: say you’re marketing a product across TV ads, print ads, radio, digital display, and retargeting ads. A successful measurement model will be able to identify the consumers that are being targeted by all four channels, while separating the scores of other potential consumer groups that don't receive enough advertising to provide insights into accurate attribution.
Once marketers have found an analytics platform that can effectively distill big data down to actionable insights, they need to focus on developing the measurement models that can track engagement across online and offline channels, and compare those engagements with long-term and short-term sales data. With these capabilities, marketers gain a holistic view into the relationship between engagement and sales generation.
From there, measurement models can match unique engagements with ad exposure data that indicates locations (geotagging via app and computer usage, zip code data from broadcast media, in-store purchases within a certain geography, etc.) to identify the collection of engagements specific to individual consumers.
After measurement models have identified where engagement is taking place and properly attributed that engagement to specific consumer groups, marketers can then prioritize the channels they leverage in their campaigns to best reach audiences. For example, if the measurement model for a given campaign shows consumers purchase more through digital channels after they’ve been exposed to TV and print ads, marketers can update their marketing strategy to target these consumers.
After marketers have optimized their campaigns to target audiences on the channels they engage with most, it’s crucial they continue to measure omnichannel performance. Given how quickly today’s consumer landscape shifts, it’s important marketers actively measure omnichannel efforts and have the capability to optimize their efforts in-campaign.