Personalization has been the gold standard for data-driven digital marketing for many years. But the role of personalization is changing as consumer expectations shift and technologies evolve. Personalization is no longer a value-add, but rather a need-to-have.
Failing to tailor your advertising to your highest-value customers will result in a lack of engagement and handing over the opportunity to convert to your competition. However, being personalized requires an element of restraint and nuance that is sometimes a difficult balance to strike without careful research and reflection on your marketing strategy.
Some methods of personalization are more impactful than others – and the best rule of thumb is to remember to treat your audiences as you would like to be treated. Losing sight of this golden rule can turn your ads from customized to creepy. So, here are three steps for staying on the right side of personalization…
MediaPost – Stop Running Campaigns, Start Creating Ecosystems
The vernacular of the marketing campaign — implying that consumers and brands are at war against each other — is antiquated.
Advertising shouldn’t exist if its goal is to simply influence and manipulate consumers into short-term purchases. Most people are too smart to fall for that anymore, but more importantly, it only serves the brand’s short-term interests.
Instead, modern marketing must exist to benefit the brand, the customers, and the world at large. Very rarely does one message, one piece of content, one execution, do that.
The Impact of Inflation on Advertising | Whitepaper
Businesses are facing a familiar problem: economic uncertainty. This time, the coalescing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, record-low unemployment rate, and a newsworthy-high inflation rate have created a unique challenge for businesses and their marketing teams. What do we do when the population theoretically has money to spend, but the high cost of basic necessities makes them cautious to buy?
In this whitepaper, Coegi researchers provide an overview of the recent North American economy as of Q1 2023 and the corresponding consumer behavior changes, acknowledging the current challenges and opportunities for businesses and marketers.
Importantly, we acknowledge that each business’s target audience is made up of real, living people, and thus there is no one-size fits all approach to marketing during times of economic volatility.
However, using a data-driven approach to understanding outcomes of previous economic strife, we provide evidence-supported recommendations. In short: fully pausing your marketing communications rarely yields future dividends.
Download Coegi’s whitepaper covering:
How brands should react to the inflation in 2023
- The impact of inflation on consumer behavior
- Finding the upside of marketing in a down economy
- Pivoting with resilience: creating a future fueled by marketing efficiency
Key ways to recession-proof your marketing
The impact of inflation on advertising in key industries
- CPG and retail
- Financial services
- Healthcare and pharma
- Real estate and home buying
How to Build a Content Amplification Strategy Using Publisher and Influencer Partnerships
Custom content marketing is key to achieving long-term brand success. But, content creation can be expensive and time-consuming. A content amplification strategy allows brands to do more with less, maximizing the return on investment.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create an impactful content amplification strategy that expands reach and extends content shelf life.
Why You Need a Content Amplification Strategy
Content amplification can build an authoritative voice for brands in any industry, from CPG to finance to B2B. For more complex industries, it is an opportunity to establish thought leadership and position a brand as a trustworthy educational resource.
Alternatively, content can be all about entertaining the consumer – driving brand affinity and engagement. Whether you’re amplifying successful content, refreshing pre-existing content or partnering with a trusted third party to leverage their resources and authority – it all comes down to finding the ideal intersection between brand goals and consumer value
Building a Holistic Content Marketing Plan
To begin crafting a strategic content marketing plan that satisfies both the brand and its consumers, follow these four steps.
#1 – Establish strategic alignment on content goals and production strategy
Begin by putting together a comprehensive brief with the client that addresses:
- The brand’s core business and marketing objectives
- The brand’s content creation plans for the year to support these goals
Once you understand the upcoming content pipeline, find ways to incorporate major initiatives, such as custom research studies, company highlight videos, or downloadable white papers, into the paid content marketing strategy.
#2 – Analyze the existing content library
Next, look at the brand’s current content arsenal. What assets can be easily refreshed and repurposed? This decreases net new creative production needs, while making the most of high-value assets. To identify the best content pieces without bias, start by analyzing pre-existing organic metrics.
- What content formats are driving the highest reach and engagement on social media?
- What long-form content pieces are generating the most downloads, backlinks, or shares on your website?
After understanding what great pieces already exist, you can refresh, amplify, and distribute them to more people within their audience groups.
#3 – Partner with publishers for net new content opportunities
After understanding what content is currently at your disposal, identify gaps to fill by tapping into strategic publisher partnerships.
- Where is there competitive white space for the brand to own their message?
- Which channels are the brand’s competitors underutilizing?
- Where is the target audience most active and reachable?
Leverage publishers to help create the most engaging and interactive assets possible. Some creative content formats we have explored include immersive articles, Instagram ‘meme’ Reels, podcast segments, animated videos, recipe blogs, co-branded national polls, and e-newsletter sponsorships – just to name a few.
#4 – Ensure content provides authentic value
Identify the key messages, whether content families or thematic pillars, to find a valuable brand story. Also consider what content formats best communicate different types of information, as well as different target audience segments. For instance, a research survey with heavy statistical data may be best suited for an infographic, whereas a webinar may be better suited for a sizzle reel video.
Remember these four guiding principles to create authentic marketing content:
- Provide a consumer-centric, not product-focused experience
- Set out to earn trust; not create an immediate sale
- Focus on storytelling and tapping into human emotions
- Build connection through consistency across channels
As you are creating a custom content plan, you should also be formulating your content amplification strategy. Approaching these in tandem will help you determine what types of assets are needed for both owned and amplified channels and streamline creative production.
Identifying Optimal Publisher Partnerships
To level up content production and audience reach, connect with reputable publishers to create and amplify custom marketing content. Our teams work closely to streamline communication and access the best added-value opportunities for clients by leveraging relationships with editorial partners.
These publishers could be vertical-specific sites, high-authority news organizations, or relevant internet content and entertainment communities. It’s beneficial to align with their editorial calendars to get greater engagement and stronger placements, while also considering factors like seasonality for the brand.
In the publisher vetting and RFI process, we look at four key areas to determine the best partnerships:
- Audience: Does our audience have a high index and contextual relevance with this publisher’s content?
- Content Quality: Are the publisher’s creative chops high quality, engaging, and suitable for repurposing across multiple channels?
- Message Alignment: Does this publication’s mission and historical content align with the brand’s key messages and themes?
- Distribution: Will this publisher provide adequate reach? Are there paid promotion and distribution opportunities across high-touch and owned channels?
Typically, it’s best practice to diversify across a few different publishers to ensure you have adequate reach across your target audience. However, there are some instances where it makes sense to go all-in with one publisher if it strongly aligns with brand goals, or if your budget is limited.
Repurposing Custom Content Across Channels
Content marketing is typically a pay-to-play space, at least in the initial stages of your brand partnership. Nearly every publisher has minimum spend requirements. Strategically repurposing content across channels (without simply copy and pasting) is critical to maximize that investment.
For example, a publisher can help transform an in-depth white paper with proprietary content into an infographic or animated stat video. By making complex content more digestible, you can reach users earlier in the consumer journey, while still translating the key value proposition.
After commissioning custom content, there are two highly effective ways to repurpose it: using derivative assets and tapping into influencer marketing. Let’s dive into each of these in more detail.
Using Derivative Assets to Extend Value and Reach
What are derivative assets? Derivative assets are micro content, such as ad units derived from the main “anchor content” and used to drive to the main “anchor content”. Examples of derivative assets include:
- Creating a native display unit that links to an organic blog post or sponsored article
- Boosting an organic social media post on a brand’s page
- Using paid search engine marketing to promote a white paper
- Building organic and paid social media drivers that link to a branded e-book
- Producing a sizzle reel from a long-form webinar
Derivative assets extend your anchor pieces, tailoring them to different audiences, placements, and stages in the consumer journey. This approach creates a more comprehensive content strategy and supports creative efficiency. A good best practice is to sponsor pre-existing organic content, allowing you to test the content before dedicating advertising dollars. This way, you already know which content is likely to drive the greatest paid media results.
Amplifying Content with Influencer Marketing Partnerships
Influencer marketing is gaining more and more attention in the realm of content amplification. However, you HAVE to ensure the content is authentic to the creator’s individual brand and unique followership. An influencer simply pushing out your brand’s ad is not always going to feel organic.
Publishers often have in-house influencer talent which brands can tap to gain additional reach outside of the publication’s readership. Take PopSugar for example. They have networks of highly-vetted influencers in the food, lifestyle, beauty, and fashion spaces which brands can leverage. Coegi also has an in-house influencer marketing team to help brands identify and partner with creators to create and promote branded content.
Read our 5 Essential Influencer Marketing Tips article for more.
Key Takeaways for a Successful Content Amplification Strategy
Custom content and sponsored publisher placements have a myriad of positive effects – visibility, credibility, reach, engagement, and more. To reap these benefits, remember to focus on creating and amplifying content that provides true value to the consumer.
Save and use this quick checklist to audit the quality of your content marketing assets:
- Supports core business goals
- Translates key brand message through storytelling
- Offers authentic consumer value
- Aligns with publisher editorial calendar or your brand’s seasonality
- Is able to be reused in multiple formats and across a variety of channels
Ready to leverage Coegi’s expert media team to create your brand’s content amplification strategy?
Contact us today for a discovery call.
Building a Brand Performance Strategy for Bread & Butter Wines
Brief
Coegi partnered with a high-growth wine brand to launch a full-funnel digital campaign to quantify the impact on both brand and performance goals using advanced measurement studies.
Highlights
10.6%
Ad Recall Lift
9.1%
Purchase Intent Lift
621%
Site Traffic Lift
Challenge
Bread & Butter Wines came to Coegi in 2020 seeking a stronger marketing strategy to stand apart from the crowd of wine brands. Coegi was asked to provide a holistic, integrated marketing strategy that could reach their full-funnel goals:
- Drive brand awareness in the US and Canada through emotional connection
- Via increased brand awareness, drive trial and move brand into selection set within target consumers
Solution
Our targeting strategy reached consumers based on multiple data signals such as demographics, interests, and competitor affinity. This data indicated what was going to drive brand trial. Initially, we created six audience personas to focus on niche competitive opportunities and product use cases. Going into 2023, this was narrowed down to two core personas using purchase behavior data.
We also used advanced research to understand wine buyers aged 25-54 and living in their top 8 sales states. Using an omni-channel digital strategy, our initial goal was to increase reach and frequency against key audiences. We selected channels offering efficiency and effectiveness, while also balancing lower-funnel ROAS goals.
Key channels we are prioritizing include:
- Influencer and content partnerships to build trust and authenticity
- Connected TV, display, and Facebook/Instagram to drive reach/frequency and website traffic
- Instacart, Citrus Ads, and paid search to drive ROAS
Additionally, we used advanced measurement through Upwave, Facebook, and Nielsen Catalina to understand the full-funnel impact on the brand – from ad recall to purchase intent.
Throughout our multi-year partnership, we have served billions of cross-channel impressions. In the first three months, we saw a 621% increase in website visitors period over period and 27,000 site actions.
The first Instacart campaign was especially successful in driving trial, with a nearly 3X ROAS, increasing attributable sales across all varietals. Instacart has continued to have a strong impact. The most recent campaign touts a 4X ROAS, 32% increase in YoY Instacart sales, and an average cost of conversion of $3.73.
Our campaigns run with Nielsen Catalina were successful at driving incremental value for the brand. The display campaigns helped reclaim former customers with especially strong performance from lost/lapsed customers. The CTV campaign boosted exposure among key audiences and generated $230,101 in sales value of products transferred to their e-commerce cart after seeing an ad.
The Bread & Butter team continues to be pleased with the Coegi partnership.
Top Consumer Trends for 2023: What They Mean For Digital Marketing
Consumer behavior trends are constantly evolving. This is especially true for shopping preferences in 2023 as 90% of consumers are noticing price increases. Consumers are switching brands more than ever before. Brands must be highly adaptive to consumer trends to keep up with these changes and fend off the competition.
So, brands, it’s time to meet (and reintroduce yourselves to) your consumers.
Here are our top six key consumer trends for 2023, and the insights you need to capitalize on these trends for your brand:
- Customer-first approach
- Brand loyalty risk
- Omni-channel shopping
- Social commerce proliferation
- Connected device adoption
- Influencer growth
Apply these 2023 consumer trends to your brand’s marketing
#1 – Taking a Customer-First Approach
Putting customers first is no longer an added value proposition – it’s an expectation. 19% of marketing executives report ‘fostering relationships with customers and increasing brand loyalty’ is their top priority for 2023. To do so, brands need to find unique ways to engage consumers and authentically insert themselves into their story. As a Netscribes article quotes, brands must, “go beyond the commodity to fuel engagement and advocacy by delivering context-specific interactions at the right junctures of the consumer journey.”
Key takeaway: Brands must build a relationship with consumers in order to break through the clutter. Prioritize first-party data collection to understand your customers and provide a more personalized experience based on their interests and needs.
#2 – Preventing Brand Loyalty Risk
In the face of an economic downturn, consumers display less brand loyalty. Surveys found nearly 60% of US consumers are less brand loyal due to increasing costs of goods. Household names are losing their power as curious and price-conscious consumers shift towards value, price, and convenience. However, loyalty programs can help. 78% of consumers report that strong loyalty programs make them more likely to purchase from a brand or retailer.
Key takeaway: Create ways to incentivize customer loyalty, either financially or with exclusivity. Remember – it’s more expensive to win over new customers than invest in your existing ones!
#3 – Optimizing Omni-Channel Shopping
Consumers are split between online and brick-and-mortar shopping. 75% of consumers report purchasing and researching products on both in-store and online channels, per McKinsey’s 2022 Consumer Pulse Survey. So, brands must give both channels attention to ensure they work together seamlessly and enhance the consumer experience. Integrations such as click-and-collect shopping help bridge this gap.
Key takeaway: Blend traditional and digital channels to be present at every key customer touchpoint. Then, ensure the shopping process is seamless from exposure to check out to shorten the path to conversion.
#4 – Taking Advantage of Social Commerce’s Proliferation
Social commerce is on the rise with platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest adding new in-app shopping features and shoppable ad formats. Through these integrations, brands can engage customers in the moment without disrupting their social experience. E-Marketer forecasts over 50% of US users will make a social commerce purchase in 2023. When done well, social commerce promotes quick product discovery, a simplified shopping experience, and less friction in driving purchase.
For more on social commerce, view our full 2023 Social Media Advertising Trends article here.
Key takeaway: Explore different tools to utilize social commerce, making it as easy as possible for a customer to add your product to their cart. Consider retargeting audiences from paid social media or influencer campaigns with shoppable ads to build trust and drive ROI.
#5 – Understanding Connected Device Adoption
Expect greater adoption of smart technologies in 2023, including connected cars, connected TVs, and smart speakers. More responsive technology advances, such as click-to-buy CTV ads or seamless re-purchasing through smart home devices, will pave the way for IoT-driven commerce. As these technologies continue to develop, test ways to use these devices to enhance your customer experience and drive e-commerce.
Key takeaway: Do the research to understand if your consumers are taking advantage of these advanced technologies. If they are, test interactive ad formats on connected devices and explore other IoT integrations such as voice shopping applications with smart speakers.
#6 – Lean Into the Growth of Influencer
Influencer is the new word-of-mouth marketing. Authentic and relatable content from social creators drives full-funnel results for brands who do it well. Social media platforms are making it easier for influencers to monetize content and collaborate with brands, further paving the way for the social commerce boom. In 2023, the influencer market is projected to reach $6.16B, with TikTok on pace to gain the largest share of influencer ad spend by 2024.
Key takeaway: Blend influencer marketing into your paid social media strategy to build authenticity, grow trust, and boost e-commerce. Adopt an omnichannel influencer strategy across multiple platforms and lean into useful, entertaining short-form video content to maximize exposure and engagement.
Use these 2023 consumer trends to analyze your current CPG marketing strategy. Take your advertising to the next level by leaning into high growth areas and being the first to adapt to changing consumer preferences in 2023.
For more marketing trends, view our 2023 Digital Marketing Trends and Predictions podcast episode.
Win Over Audiences with Effective Finance Content Marketing
Financial literacy is in short supply. Brands who lean into an education-first finance content marketing strategy can build lasting customer relationships, when done right.
Consumers are making a substantial investment when they choose to work with your financial institution. Outside of the financial commitment, the decision of which company to work with also requires a significant amount of time and research. This is true whether selecting an institution for banking, loans, or retirement funds.
As a marketer, it’s important to be proactive in answering key consumer questions to win their trust and business. Some questions our financial services clients are regularly addressing include:
- Which business offers the best rates?
- Can I solve all my financial needs in one place?
- What accounts and funds are best for me?
But, these questions are truly just scratching the surface. To win over audiences, you must build a robust, flexible finance content marketing strategy that:
- Simplifies communication between the business and consumers
- Delivers useful content in the most opportune areas
- Leans into innovation, fearlessly breaking the mold
Building a line of communication with finance content marketing
To persuade consumers to trust and invest in your financial services, you must understand their motivations, financial literacy and relationship with your brand. But don’t stop there.
Go more in-depth to find out what their research process looks like, understanding what and who impacts their financial decisions. Additionally, discover what channels they use to formulate an opinion about your financial brand. Are they watching financial channels on YouTube? Searching on Google to see if you’re on a list of top local banks? Reading brochures on the benefits of opening certain accounts?
47% of consumers worldwide turn to their wealth manager or investment adviser when making important financial decisions, followed by educational resources from financial institutions (41%), whereas friends and family as well as social media are only at 25%. Yet, when it comes to making overall financial decisions, Gen-Z is turning to video while Millennials and Gen-X continue to first turn to search engines.
Figure out which channels your target demographics are turning to, create a unique communications strategy by product, and meet them where they are. Formulate a financial customer journey with your marketing to help answer their questions and ultimately persuade them to call, email, or fill out a contact form.
Leading with quality content
Depending on the risk of the financial decision, consumers may need a lot of time in the consideration phase. They’re weighing their options, researching and consulting with trusted sources. Regardless of the product or service line, sharing high quality educational content is your opportunity to show up early in the consumer journey.
Even if you’re just trying to get a consumer to open a checking account, taking the time to produce a high quality digital brochure or a video ad explaining your value creates an opportunity to build high lifetime value. The average consumer retains the same checking account for an average of 17 years.
Establish yourself as a helpful guide throughout the financial decision-making process, featuring your organization’s subject matter experts as authorities in the financial industry. Also, use consumer intel as the foundation for your content marketing strategy. Then create informative, empowering content personalized for your target audiences that addresses those top of mind questions and helps them feel in control of their finances.
Educating financial advisors vs end users
The process of creating and distributing content becomes slightly more complicated in a B2B2C marketing model. If a third-party business or individual is responsible for the final sale, you must arm them with information to best represent your value. With B2B content, you can be more technical and include common industry jargon. However, your B2C consumers need different materials. Lean into high-level content, providing enough information where the consumer understands the benefits without being overwhelmed or intimidated.
Link these two paths by creating a series of content around the most important topics for explaining your product and service value. This allows the consumer to interact with multiple, digestible pieces of content that guide their research and discovery process.
Then, create a two-pronged advertising strategy to amplify content in key channels that make sense to each respective audience. With financial advisers, perhaps it’s serving amplified content alongside well-known financial journals, television programs, and LinkedIn, whereas content amplified for consumers could appear on YouTube, Google, or even TikTok. Either way, it’s critical to create an omnichannel experience with multiple touchpoints that keep your brand top of mind.
Identifying the greatest opportunities
Even though you should be implementing an omnichannel experience, that doesn’t mean your strategy should be throwing dollars at the wall hoping something sticks. That’s especially true in terms of marketing channels and tactics. Use measurement tools, such as media mix modeling, to understand the channels driving the highest return in your campaigns. Then, align your most valuable, informative content with highly trusted channels. And finally, determine unique KPIs to define success and keep your marketing accountable.
Breaking the mold
It’s easy to get into a rhythm of what’s comfortable and familiar in your marketing. But, it’s important to consistently keep a pulse on what’s happening across the finance spectrum.
- What trends are impacting marketing execution?
- What matters to your customers today?
Based on these learnings, test a variety of content marketing executions. This can vary from your standard display banners to custom articles, podcast placements, email marketing – you name it. Begin building reach with expanded target audiences (achieving sufficient scale is key!) by using adjacent topics to your typical content. This will position your brand as a helpful thought leader.
Financial literacy is still lacking across much of the population, especially younger generations. Brands have a major opportunity to drive finance consumer leads through education – a pivotal, but often overlooked, part of the consumer journey.
For tips on how to incorporate a financial content strategy into a full-funnel digital marketing, view our Ultimate Guide to Financial Marketing.
The Countdown to Zero-Party Data
The Countdown to Zero-Party Data
If you’ve been paying attention to marketing news lately, you have no doubt seen the terms first-party, second-party, third-party, and zero-party data. These terms are critical in almost every targeting strategy conversation.
With Google’s impending deprecation of third-party cookies, it is vital that you understand the differences between these data types. In this blog, you’ll learn how they can help or hurt your advertising strategies. Plus, we’ll outline how to collect and leverage each data source from third to zero-party data.
Third-Party Data
What is Third-Party Data?
Third-party data is any information collected on consumers from an entity with no relationship to that consumer. In marketing, data aggregators commonly gather data from web browsers that are bundled and sold to advertisers.
How to Collect Third-Party Data:
- To collect third-party data, marketers purchase curated data packages from aggregators. This data is the primary target of data and privacy protection laws because it is usually collected and shared without the explicit consent of consumers.
How to Use Third-Party Data:
- How do you use this data? The short answer: due to changes in privacy laws/policies and the cookieless future, you should use third-party data sparingly. Additionally, this data collection can be inaccurate and lead to budget waste by serving ads to the wrong audiences.
- Start shifting toward collecting more effective forms of consumer data, like first-, second-, and zero-party data, for your targeting needs.
Second-Party Data
What is Second-Party Data?
Second-party data is consumer information collected directly by another organization that your brand has purchased or gained access to through partnerships. Unlike third-party data, the collecting organization has a direct relationship with the consumer. This leads to more accurate and actionable information.
How to Collect Second-Party Data:
- One of the more common forms of second-party data collection is through walled gardens, such as social media and retail media platforms. For example, social media account users on each platform are required to login prior to the use of the app. You may also gain access to this type of data through quality publisher partnerships.
- Like third-party data, you have to purchase or negotiate access to this data from the collection source. Coegi partners with providers like OwnerIQ, US Farm Data, and other reputable sources to ensure our clients have access to quality second-party data.
How to Use Second-Party Data:
- As mentioned above, you will likely use this kind of data while running ads on walled garden platforms or when activating direct partnerships with publishers. If you partner with a company to access this data, they will typically send anonymized email lists or require you to serve ads through them to gain access to their audiences.
- It is important to thoroughly vet any partnership in this space. Be sure you are in accordance with any privacy laws or policies put in place.
First-Party Data
What is First-Party Data?
First-party data is information your brand collects directly from your audience. If you analyze it effectively, this will be one of the most important elements for digital advertising strategies in a cookieless future.
How to Collect First-Party Data:
- Place gated content on your website to collect emails and other information.
- Generate email newsletter sign-ups in exchange for discount codes or special offers.
- Store relevant information from customer purchases in your CRM platform for future segmentation and activation.
How to Use First-Party Data:
- After collecting first-party data, you can use it to reach individuals who have already engaged in your brand through features like email-match targeting.
- Develop modeled audiences to target people who have similar data points or behaviors to your existing customer base. Personalize advertising messages and other communications based on the most valuable and influential data points.
Zero-Party Data
What is Zero-Party Data?
Coined by Forrester, zero-party data is collected when “a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. It can include preference center data, purchase intentions, personal context, and how the individual wants the brand to recognize [them].” This data is technically a subcategory of first-party data. It is, however, worth giving this information its own terminology because it has the potential to go beyond first-party data snapshots and provide advanced profiles of your customer base.
How to Collect Zero-Party Data:
- Design and distribute short strategic surveys, quizzes, and polls for your audiences.
- Include interactive tools on your website that allow users to self-identify for a more personalized website experience.
- Require free or subscription-based website account set-ups and logins to view the most valuable content to create a value exchange.
- Build product or service ratings into your website listings.
Tip: Motivate the customer by offering them something of value from your brand. For example, you could offer a discount or special access to an event in exchange for providing the data.
How to Use Zero-Party Data:
- Add zero-party data to your CRM and use it to curate customized communications and offers that build brand loyalty.
- Act on user feedback to align your marketing strategy and customer touchpoints with the desires of your target audience.
- Deliver custom suggestions to your users’ account home page based on information collected in their account set-up.
Tip: Be conscientious about how often you are asking for this information and be sure to include variety between each ask. You don’t want to fatigue the customer and create a bad user experience.
Bringing it All Together
The key distinction to make between each data type is the source. As you move from third to zero-party data, you move closer to a more accurate understanding of your audience. These direct-from-the-source insights will help you make smarter strategy decisions and more effectively motivate your audience to convert.
To learn more about how to use this data, read our Cookieless Targeting and Identity Solutions blog by Coegi’s Director of Innovation, Savannah Westbrock.
Cookieless Attribution and Measurement Solutions
Cookieless Attribution and Measurement Solutions
Cookies have been the underpinning for most digital marketing performance measurement for over twenty years, which has allowed advertisers to measure post-click conversions and attribution for sales impact. As a result, channels like paid search and display retargeting typically stand out as ‘performance channels’. Simply put, cookie deprecation takes away the easy button of using off-the-self audiences and straightforward conversion tracking. However, without third-party pixels, determining clear return on ad spend will become more challenging, especially for marketers who continue to rely on click-based attribution models.
Without cookies, it is imperative that you develop more meaningful ways of understanding how customers make decisions and how it impacts business results, a topic we recently covered on The Loop Marketing Podcast.
How to calculate marketing ROI in the cookieless future
In this new paradigm, marketers will need to rely more heavily on strategy to get the greatest and most accurate ROI.
The ability to calculate marketing ROI starts with having a strong measurement strategy in place prior to campaign launch. Smart marketers know to look beyond online conversion data and search for correlations with business performance to determine true directional success. Advertising campaigns need to be set-up to achieve business goals rather than just vanity metrics. It’s important to know when to incorporate more robust analytical solutions to understand what’s impacting your bottom line.
Cookieless measurement solutions
Some methods for measuring media campaigns in the cookieless future include:
- Media mix modeling (MMM): MMM works by isolating one variable at a time to see the impact of removing or adding a tactic. It allows deeper understanding of how omnichannel campaigns work together and incrementally impact key outcomes.
- Advanced measurement studies: Exposed vs. control consumer studies track brand lift, sales lift or foot traffic lift to provide greater insights into the real impact of advertising on difficult-to-measure business goals.
- Overlaying multiple data sources: Brands can match up Google Analytics conversion data, or sales data, with paid media data. While more time and knowledge intensive in terms of the analysis needed, this is effective to look beyond media data alone and instead looking holistically at the brand to understand marketing’s impact.
Place less emphasis on media efficiency metrics and more emphasis on effectiveness. Look at correlations between business and media data to identify incremental conversions compared to your company baseline.
To achieve this, marketers will need to identify leading indicators of success by channel and tactic and optimize towards those metrics.
Will the cookieless future impact walled gardens?
Walled gardens, such as Facebook and Amazon, leverage their own first-party user data. As a result, cookie deprecation will affect them less in terms of targeting.
Within platform confines, advertisers will still be able to track individual users, though the windows of attribution can vary. Due to this, walled gardens allow for brands to conduct some closed-loop measurement. That being said, there will be limitations on attribution, and less deterministic targeting as privacy laws continue to become stricter.
Walled garden pixels will have limited ability to pass back data to the platform once cookies are gone. We can expect front end marketing performance metrics to decline, even if backend business performance remains the same. Plan for shifts in attribution, using strategies like those laid out above, as we get closer to cookie deprecation.
Cookieless attribution tips
Begin testing and learning today to proactively understand what will and will not be effective in the cookieless future.
- Begin benchmarking current performance ASAP: compare performance of cookie-based vs. cookieless tactics. Then, analyze backend data to determine the effect on business results and set expectations accordingly.
- Consolidate to fewer platforms, or find a way to ID map: Platforms are developing their own internal ID tracking frameworks. The more platforms you execute your media through, the more disparate measurement systems you have to consider. This will also minimize duplication across platforms.
The deprecation of third-party cookies will undoubtedly impact the way marketers approach digital media. But a data-driven media plan tied into a holistic cookieless attribution and measurement solution will ensure your business continues to grow by reaching the audience in the right place at the right time.
How to Uncover Insights in Marketing Research
The tools we use to conduct marketing research and understand our target audiences and industries are constantly evolving. Traditionally, syndicated research tools have been the go-to resources to understand media consumption and behaviors.
But brand challenges require much more than knowing how many hours a day consumers watch TV to put together a successful marketing strategy.
How to Find Meaningful Marketing Research Insights
Use both qualitative research and quantitative research to unveil unique marketing trends and audience learnings for brands. From social listening tools to focus groups to macro-level industry reports, you need multiple sources to achieve a 360 degree view with your marketing research. Instead of always turning to the same default tools and platforms, take on a journalistic mentality and get creative to discover unique insights that will differentiate your strategy from competitors.
Lean into your creative side. Use out of the box tactics to search for answers to questions such as:
- What’s the press coverage on this topic?
- What changes are happening in the vertical?
- What’s happening in adjacent industries?
From this type of information sourcing, you can then better contextualize the second or third party data embedded in syndicated research and build custom insights for your brand.
It’s also important to look at your own historical first party data, when available. Evaluate what’s been successful and not in order to provide a starting point to build baseline learnings.
Balancing the Art and Science of Market Research
Marketing research is both an art and a science. You need some specific numbers to justify assumptions and hypotheses. But there’s also an element of simply trusting your intuition. A lot of times it’s right and a lot cheaper than running complex, time consuming studies. Your team’s instinct and experience is going to become increasingly valuable in finding insights and closing the gaps.
Sometimes, simply putting yourself in your audience’s shoes and mimicking their behaviors reveals more than any survey could tell you. As an example, if your audience are heavy Twitter users and the data indicates they use certain hashtags – actually read through that content. Go to the subreddits they might frequent. Watch the Hulu shows they’re watching. Use this time of exploration to see if you can unveil something new about how your audience is living day to day.
Avoiding Research Pitfalls
With so much data available, you can use research to essentially prove any point you want. This makes it easy for bias to creep into statistics, intentional or not. If you think the audience is Millennial Moms, there will undoubtedly be evidence somewhere pointing to confirm this assumption.
To avoid this, be transparent when your data does not back up your hypothesis. This is one of the more powerful things you can do to form trusting relationships with your colleagues and clients. It’s okay to admit if the research is refuting your initial assumption. Use this as an opportunity to build a bridge with this learning and adjust your strategy to continue making your marketing smarter.
Additionally, when using third-party studies, it’s important to remember that people answering surveys aren’t always going to be completely truthful about their media consumption or lifestyle. Take a step back before blindly trusting what you’re reading and hearing.
Watch this video for more tips on avoiding common research mistakes:
Finding the Big Idea
Strategists are always digging for the ‘big idea’. The groundbreaking tactic, message, or plan the world has never seen before and will make you millions. If you have a predestined big idea in your head, don’t let that blind you from finding something even better. You need to ground yourself by exploring a variety of research sources without forcing anything. Allow the data to weave together a story rather than reverse engineering your predetermined story to create a successful path forward for your brand.
Key Takeaways
In the impending privacy-first marketing landscape, there will be more emphasis on planning and finding the right research. Decision making is coming back to the hands of marketers, rather than left to platform algorithms.
Take a balanced, creative approach to the market research process and unlock the most meaningful insights to improve your bottom line and build customer loyalty.
To hear more about Coegi’s approach to marketing research, contact us for a discovery call today.
