Recently, Sapient put out their annual Interactive Marketing Study, which surveyed senior level marketers to uncover problems they face.

The answers in this survey reminded me of a reoccurring segment in the GI Joe cartoons from the 1980’s, where a GI Joe member would encounter a kid engaged in risky behavior and point out the risks. The kid would always say, “Now I know and knowing is half the battle.”Based on their responses, these senior level marketers sound like the kids from GI Joe in the sense that they know what problems exist, but knowing is only half the battle.

The good news about the challenges mentioned in the survey is that they’re solvable. We chose to highlight three of the bigger problems discussed in this survey and followed each problem with a solution.

Cross Channel Management -

Nearly half the respondents said they do not believe campaign data provided to them evenly measures and compares performance across all digital channels, but difficulty in comparing metrics across channels is the most common hurdle to accuracy in this area, cited by 28 percent of respondents.

In order to compare anything, a common key is needed. In the world of marketing, that key should be profit. All of the marketers we have ever spoken with agree that their ultimate goal is to directly or indirectly increase the profitability of their company. Working backwards from their goal, it makes perfect sense to use profit as that common key, as it directly aligns with the goal they hope to achieve.

Now that the common key has been identified, a system needs to be devised to apply this common key across all forms of advertising, no matter where they appear in the buying cycle. Advertising can affectively be classified into 3 buckets: Introducers, Influencers and Closers. In today’s world, all of the credit erroneously goes to the Closers, which means the very last ad that was clicked on prior to the conversion gets all the credit. By doing this, you give no credit to those ads that introduce people to your business and influence their buying decision. There are several technologies in the market place today that offer the ability to track and allocate profit in this manner.

Shifting Spend in 24 Hours & Not an Easy Task -

Only 19 percent of respondents said they could make changes in campaign spend in less than 24 hours: the rest would need a couple of days or more.

This response can be interpreted in two ways:

1. It takes my organization more than 24 hours to capture data, merge data, analyze data, create actions and implement actions.
2. They work in organizations with a lot of red tape and getting additional budget takes days or weeks.

There could be time delays in any of the following stages involved in online advertising management:

Capture Data & Merge Data – Analyze Data & Create Actions & Implement Actions

If you find that your delays are mainly due to your organization’s inability to capture or merge data, then there really is no excuse because there are technologies that exist that can provide you with this data. You have to realize that something is important and you need to do something about it.

If your delay is in analyzing data or creating action items stage, then that ties into the solution from cross channel management. The analysis becomes much easier when you track down to profit. Focusing on the ultimate goal will allow you to make the right decisions for these stages.

If your delay is taking too long to implement the action, then you need to hire an agency to take care of these changes or have the right in-house team that is capable of handling these tasks.

Another advantage of implementing a system like the one just discussed is that it will produce key performance indicators (KPIs) that you should be able to leverage throughout your organization to cut through the red tape and get the budgets you need to capitalize on marketing activity in real time.

As we all know, the world of marketing today is far different than it was prior to the Internet. Effective marketing departments can no longer be constrained by rigid budgets that are set at the beginning of each year. Instead, budgets should be dynamic and made available to marketers when agreed upon KPIs are reached, so that organizations do not miss out on short term opportunities to increase profit when the market conditions present themselves.

Recent Acquisitions Cause Concern -

Marketers are concerned about the wave of acquisitions involving Microsoft, aQuantive, Google, Double Click and others. 41 percent of survey respondents fear being lost in the shuffle with thousands of other clients as a result of consolidation in the online advertising industry.

Consolidation occurs in all industries, so it should be no surprise it is occuring in the world of search engines and marketing firms. It is also inevitable when consolidation occurs in a particular industry, many customers serviced by that industry face the risk of getting “lost in the shuffle”. To mitigate that risk, you either need to be the size of an Amazon.com or you need to be self-sufficient.

No matter how much consolidation occurs, one thing won’t change; there will be more advertising to buy. Your organizations ability to understand the value of each ad in terms of profit will ensure sure you make the best decisions on the use of your advertising dollars to produce as much profit as possible, despite all the consolidation that takes place today or may occur in the future. Let your competition be concerned about being lost in the shuffle. With technology as your compass and profit as your destination, being lost in the shuffle doesn’t need to be a fear of yours.

It is unacceptable for a marketing organization in today’s world to not take advantage of the data available to them. I hope when this survey is taken a year from now, the participants will have realized there are technologies available that do solve these issues.

What this survey makes evidently clear is that in the world of online marketing, there is a growing divide between the haves and have-nots. The haves have moved beyond the “Now I know and knowing is half the battle”stage, and have harnessed the power of technology to solve these issues. As the result, they have realized a significant competitive advantage over their competition. The have-nots have made it evidently clear that they would rather be playing with GI Joe.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 1:24 pm and is filed under All Blogs, Optimization, PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.