Sales and Marketing Analytics: Encouraging Data Driven Success

There’s a lot of data out there, and it’s only growing in size. Whether you’re an SMB seeking expansion, a startup business keen on driving conversions, or an established brand owner—data matters. More important, however, is the way it’s applied. Between boosting visibility, enhancing your cross-market potential, or need to expand upon your current consumer segment, your sales team will be behind the steering wheel.

Today’s leading sales analytics strategies are backed by years of innovation: Assessing your brand’s performance while forecasting your major pathways to purchase isn’t necessarily easy. As any master salesperson will say: The best route to success is one not taken alone. Determining your campaign’s direction is tough when data isn’t applied diligently—and diligent data application, understandably, takes plenty of resources.

Balancing Sales and Marketing Analytics

The balancing act needn’t be undertaken alone, and today’s providers are great at leading while also keeping brand leaders informed, optimized, and well-equipped. Even though sales data analysis requires a lot of long-term and short-term goal-planning, the process is much easier when there’s an expert or expert team to take ownership over the technical details that make an analytics solutions successful.

But what are these technical details, anyway?

Let’s check them out for ourselves: Sales and marketing analytics go hand in hand, but knowing the why’s and how’s of their partnership can set you up for success, from the get-go. Listed below are the top data-centric, result-driven strategies that today’s innovative analytics teams can tackle—and which no sales team should pursue alone.

One: CRM Prospect Management

Customer relationship management is pretty approachable, but in-depth analytics are needed to stay afloat in todays’ digital markets. When a sales team is backed by data-driven help, they make the most out of their CRM database. CRM databases are incredibly valuable, in any event, but many sales teams tend to struggle with proper application. Fortunately, a team dedicated to the ins and outs of your CRM can streamline otherwise disjointed tools.

The result of this form of approach is an important one: Actionable sales reports.

Because a CRM is capable of tracking many prospects, your next strategy’s effectiveness will only increase as your CRM’s potential does. After all, a CRM put to good use can run itself: Between automated customer support services to real-time email follow-ups, a professionally handled CRM can transform a business—aligning its sales team with instant, seamless access to data.

Two: Lead Engagement

Not just any form of lead engagement, either. Sales teams backed by cutting-edge data analytics tools, as well as specialized data management support, save a lot of time—as well as precious energy. When applied effectively, sales data can identify leads instantly. This is a major benefit, as even your most valuable, reliable, and actionable customers can change direction, suddenly. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to drive sales based upon outdated data. Even more unfortunate is the wide array of sales teams who fall into this pitfall: Without highly relevant data insights driven from immediate prospect analysis, a sales team can fall behind their competitors.

We’re in luck, though, because the teams specialized in managing sales and marketing analytics free up plenty of room. As such, your team can define the best leads—and the best way to reach them. Even better: You’ll be able to establish monthly revenue goals much easier, as the sheer reliability of predictive analytics is powerful enough to create financing frameworks with confidence.

Three: Cross-Channel Experiences

Today’s shopping brings customers online, and there are plenty of e-commerce locations to choose from. Getting the most out of a branded website, however, often requires strategies geared towards physical locations. In the past, determining the customer’s path was simpler. Some of today’s storefronts have taken form as email lists, social media pages, live media updates, however, making cross-channel strategies not only important—but vital.

Keeping track of every customer interaction isn’t possible, of course, which has driven a number of data-driven innovations. Even if your customers are wide-ranging in terms of shopping behavior, however, you can still create powerful cross-channel strategies to connect with them. Sales and marketing analytics, when streamlined together, can identify key performance indicators—and more.

When it comes to identifying these indicators, your team can also gain diagnostic pictures of each marketing effort’s overall performance on a per-lead basis. By tracking revenue, acquisition costs, and leads, you’ll be well-equipped to create a sales strategy that is both proactive and reactive. This is where sales and marketing analytics, when effectively paired, shine the most.

Supported by tech-rollouts, industry knowledge, and more, your specialized data analysis partner can help you boost your lead-to-customer ratio. Because every sales framework is different, your analytics-driven strategy can be custom-tailored to your needs.

Four: Self-Sustaining Analytics

Whether targeting landing page conversions, inbound marketing ROI or social media traffic, numerous opportunities exist for your sales team. At the same time, pursuing long-term goals via metrics possible: While short-term data can help boost your bottom line, long-term approaches can steadily grow your online presence.  Identifying your inbound strategy’s likely ROI, for example, will establish a firm data reference foundation.

Before long, the lead-to-customer ratios you’ve come to rely upon can be used to achieve new heights. Today’s digital world might be bustling with social media traffic, search engine exploration, and e-commerce checkouts—but it’s definitely possible to create a memorable impact.

Your Next Strategy: Designed for Success

Every sales team starts somewhere, and today’s leading analytics experts love combining forces with them. Start building your strategy with the powerful tools, instant industry snapshots, and data-driven prospects designed for maximum impact. Digilant is here to help—empowering today’s strategies with the tech tools of tomorrow. We help our clients craft the campaigns they’ve always wanted, and we’re always ready to provide deep, core-industry insights to make pre-existing strategies even better.  

Leading the way with comprehensive, flexible, and self-sustaining sales approaches, Digilant provides the marketing services which matter the most: Those built to last. Contact us today!

 

Digital Marketing Competitor Analysis: Guide to Evaluating Competition

Have you ever wondered how some companies keep their position in the market? It takes time and dedication to acquire the information needed to successfully navigate and make your mark on the competition. There are a few solutions to getting the information you need. One of the best ways to evaluate your competition is by conducting a competitive analysis. This helps learn how the competition does things and aids in identifying opportunities, keeping up with current trends, and positioning your products and services to surpass industry standards.

Pros of conducting a competitive analysis

There are benefits to conducting a competitive analysis that not only helps identify strengths and weaknesses to reinforcing your brand, content strategy, and more. Consider these:

Fine-tuning and developing your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

What makes your “why?” When you compare a competitor’s product description, partnerships, mission statements, and other things they do, it helps shed light on your brand to create distinction.

Improving the products and services you own

Focusing on customer expectations and needs is key. Analyze your customer reviews and the customer reviews of your competitors to gain insight on market gaps and what the competition is doing.

Create a brand benchmark

One of the best things you can do is have a gauge for measuring the growth of your brand. Reviewing your historical data can provide a deeper understanding of how you and your competitors are viewed in the marketplace. This helps show where you can improve your brand.

Identify gaps

You want to understand who your competitors are hiring. Study the job sites, job review sites, and press releases. Research and development also play a role in determining how your competitors move.

Uncover threats

A SWOT analysis of your brand and your competitors helps see what’s going on in the market. Check social media accounts and any other press going on with you and other brands.

Conducting a competitive analysis

It’s important to conduct a competitive analysis correctly. These steps will point you in the right direction:

1. Determine the competition.

Who are your competitors? There are two competitors: direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors are those that are in the same business with products, services, and geographically. Indirect competitors provide products that are not the same but can solve the same problems.

2. Look at the products your competitors offer.

You must take inventory of the competition, their product line, and the quality of the products or services they offer. You should take note of their pricing and discounts as well.

3. Do research on the competitor’s sales tactics and results.

You should take note of your competitor’s sales process, their sales channels, whether they have multiple locations, revenues, expansion plans, and more.

4. Look at how the competition prices their offerings and any other incentives they offer to the customers.

The goal is to remain competitive in the marketplace. This may mean pricing your products higher or lower than the competition.

5. Make sure you meet the shipping costs of your competition.

Making sure your customers don’t abandon their carts is key. Free shipping is a great option to offer customers to keep them in your corner.

6. Analyze how the competition is marketing their products.

What tools are your competitors using to get to their audience? Do they use videos? A blog? FAQ section? Case studies?

7. Analyze the content strategy of the competition.

Look at the different content of the competition to determine what they are doing. Look for their spelling and grammar, tone of voice, how they frame their content and whether they use different writers for their content.

8. Analyze the technology the competition uses.

What types of customer service software does the competition use? What types of technology does the marketing team use?

9. Analyze how much engagement your competitors have.

Take a look at the social media engagement of your competitors. What about their comments? Their topics? Which ones get the most response?

10. Analyze how the competition promotes their marketing content.

What types of keywords does the competition use? What type of content do they link to? Is anyone linking back to their content?

11. Analyze how the competition uses their social media, their strategies, and the platforms they use the most.

Do your competitors use social media to engage with their audiences? Look at the platform, the number of followers, the frequency and consistency of when they post, and what goes viral. What kind of content do they post?

12. Conduct a SWOT analysis to learn the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the competition.

Take note of what the competition is really doing. What can they do better? What areas would this competitor as a threat? Are there additional opportunities in the market? Take a good look at their location, their equipment, and their facilities. Do they have trademarks? Copyrights? Patents? What about their profitability?

It’s no secret your competitors are hungry. That makes things more difficult as you’re navigating your brand. A competitive analysis takes planning, research, and a deep look into what you’re doing. You should continuously conduct a competitive analysis because the marketplace is always changing. As a brand, if you don’t have a good assessment of what’s out there, you will set your brand up to fail. Using these steps, you will be able to align yourself with goals and outcomes to rival your competition with a bulletproof marketing strategy.

Working with a partner like Diligant can make a difference in conducting a strong and clear Digital Marketing competitor analysis. For more information on how to correctly frame and successfully implement a competitive analysis that gets results, contact the team at Diligant today.

Structuring Marketing Attribution Analysis for Success

The customer journey is constantly changing, and conversion hotspots are more important than ever. Determining your campaign’s most powerful steppingstones can be tough, however. Between geo-location apps driving local business traffic, social media, QR codes and one-stop-shop e-commerce portals, plenty of digital marketers are left with the same question, time and time again:

Where is the traffic coming from, anyway?

Marketing Attribution Analysis in 2021

When reaching out to new audiences, old consumer segments and current, expanding fan-bases, it’s important to understand your marketing mix’s most effective conversion approaches. Marketing attribution analysis isn’t necessarily new, but today’s tools have completely redefined it. By making the most out of your brand’s outreach channels, you can supercharge the data derived from it. Naturally, this works the other way around, too! Optimizing the customer’s experience, channel to channel, is the full-circle achievement most marketers strive for—and endlessly so.

Your marketing mix attribution is unique to your brand. Because of this, it’s important to hone in on your brand’s unique channel access points, right off the bat. Not only will this give your marketing attribution analysis approach a boost from the beginning—but it’ll help paint a bigger picture of your all-around advertising performance:

With more knowledge comes increasingly effective marketing approaches. As your leads grow in number, and as your ROI begins to expand, those beginning ‘reference points’ will be amazing, broad-scope reference points.

The Nitty Gritty: Top Tips for Optimized Attribution

So, what’re the best ways to achieve impactful insights? We know that data-driven, cross-channel analytics fuels marketing attribution, but how can we leverage a marketing budget with new directions? The attribution process can get a little complicated, and several obstacles face fledgling campaigns. Fortunately, knowing the right approaches to take, ahead of time, can make a big difference.

Check out these top attribution tips, and optimize your analytics approaches for the best results possible.

Tip One: Expand Beyond Last-Click Models

First-click and last-click attribution models are the bread and butter of cross-channel analysis: They show us where the customer’s journey begins—as well as where it ends. We can’t abandon these essential metrics, of course, but it’s wise to target the lesser-approached metrics between the two.

The last-click attribution model, here, is a great place to rethink, redefine and empower our strategy further. This attribution model assigns ‘conversion points’ to the last-known click location our customers visited. This said, it doesn’t always paint a full picture. Here’s where non-direct click attribution analysis comes in.

Last non-direct click attribution assigns conversion credit to the final source which wasn’t direct traffic. If a potential shopper arrives at your website, for example—and if they click your display ad without converting—we should still keep an eye out for a return visit. If they do arrive the following day, making a purchase, we can safely credit our display ad. This may not be a conversion driven by direct traffic, but it’s a vital metric to consider: Conversions driven from direct traffic tend to stem from shoppers who’ve already seen our campaign. As such, measuring this bulk of direct traffic isn’t always the best for identifying the triggers behind them—as new triggers, more often than not, get mixed in with the old.

Tip Two: Give Linear Attribution a Shot

One of the reasons marketing attribution analysis can be overwhelming, regardless of a pre-existing campaign’s size, is the sheer number of channels to analyze. Consumers will follow paths of purchase through multiple avenues—both digital and physical. Keeping track of each one, and assigning different ‘relevancy’ weighs to each, can quickly become expensive.

But what if we weighed each channel equally?

This is where linear attribution comes in: Depending on your campaign design, you may not want to weigh too heavily on your primary channel. A lot of channels contribute to your customer’s eventual destination, whether the touch points they encounter span across targeted ads, SEO-powered Google results, shared LinkedIn content or real-time offers.

The linear attribution model serves to weigh each channel equally, so as to pin down exactly where the customer’s journey begins, ends, changes direction or hops across channels. If a customer finds your website via a Facebook ad, for example, they may not visit it right away. But let’s say, a few days later, organic search results direct them to your blog. From here, they begin exploring your content. Then, eventually, they convert.

In such a case, using the linear attribution method can help you analyze which channels have the biggest impact. While metrics like time and conversion rates are certainly useful, this type of attribution model goes hand-in-hand with PPC campaigns—as display ads, more often than not, contribute to the customer’s journey in some way, shape or form.

Tip Three: Keep Your Ad Spend In Mind

Speaking of PPC campaigns, it’s important to consider your ad spend. It’s one of the best ‘overall’ indicators of your current approach’s effectiveness, but it’s also one which has an incredibly long reach.

To make the most out of this metric, be sure to record your campaign on a day-to-day basis. Attribute your ad spend to different channels, primarily, with each ad’s source. By knowing whether your biggest opportunities exist alongside Facebook’s Ad Library, Google Ads or Instagram, for example, you’ll know where to allocate your funds for better attribution.

You’ll also glean deeper insights into your channels as a whole, assisting any linear attribution and non-direct click analysis methods along the way.

Making the Most of Marking Attribution Analysis

Understandably, effective marketing attribution analysis requires powerful data tools. It also requires a good bit of upkeep, which can be a little cumbersome while managing campaigns as a whole. Fortunately, it’s still possible to set up your own attribution analysis strategy with some professional aid. Digilant can help you create powerful attribution frameworks for growth, scaling and success via today’s leading analytics tools and strategies. A well-established, empowered campaign is right around the corner—and we’re here to help, every step of the way. Contact us here.

Strategies for Aligning eCommerce and Digital Marketing

eCommerce success requires the alignment of your eCommerce and marketing strategies. This can help drive brand awareness through website marketing and other cost-effective channels. To understand how to use effective strategies, the key is in knowing how eCommerce and digital marketing can help your brand. This form of marketing helps generate brand awareness, sales, and loyalty.

Ecommerce sales happen any time of day or night and requires an always-on approach that’s different from a  brick-and-mortar store. You can remarket your products to those who have been to your site and add targeted recommendations, coupons, and specials. An eCommerce and digital marketing strategy enhances the effectiveness of your website with a broader customer base and more ways to reach and engage. If you’re wondering how to align the two, here are a few strategies that can help:

1. Landing pages

These aren’t just landing pages, they are personalized to attract and engage the buyers in your audience. Your demographics should be clear – if they are men, what types of men? What do they like? What makes them click? Each demographic group should have a personalized landing page with specific copy that speaks to them. This helps increase the effectiveness of your eCommerce digital marketing efforts.

2. Email

You may have heard it before, but it’s still a fact. Email reigns supreme in getting close to the people who’ve already engaged or made a purchase. They know your brand and don’t mind getting more information. These are the types of customers you want. Creating a newsletter is a great idea, as well as sending out coupons or “insider” incentives as part of your strategy. Once your email database has grown, you can segment audiences as you did with the landing pages to make sales more targeted.

Another great way to engage customers is to have an email funnel in place to nurture your audience and reach out to those customers who have abandoned their carts. This keeps them engaged and your brand at the top of their minds which may result in them going back to make the purchase.

3. Mobile-friendly sites

Most customers use the internet to make purchases on their mobile devices. Creating a responsive design site gives your customers the flexibility to browse and purchase from anywhere. This also helps with ranking and being able to locate your brand in the search engines. You can’t successfully partner eCommerce and digital marketing without one.

4. Social media

You should be using social media as part of your eCommerce digital marketing strategy for engagement and sales. Most social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter offer brands the opportunity to advertise to their customers. Facebook and Instagram also allow customers to purchase directly from the feed when they see items they like. Maintaining an active presence on social media is key, so you can share content, specials, photos, and more. This is an effective eCommerce digital marketing strategy to reach current and potential customers.

5. Share what you know

Ecommerce sites aren’t just about selling something, they can also serve as a great way to showcase your brand’s expertise. Use articles, blogs, videos and other information on the site as part of your digital marketing strategy. Customers love how-to videos showcasing how they can use the product. This also helps garner additional interest in your brand. It’s also helpful to publish articles on other sites that can link back to your eCommerce site. Make your site more than just a product listing. Create a hub that keeps consumers interested and engaged using relevant keywords and information.

6. Use Pinterest

While most people think about Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, brands who use the power of Pinterest are winning. Ecommerce sites do well when using this platform as part of the digital marketing strategy. Use the right product image and your product can instantaneously drive traffic to your site.

7. Let the site push your sales

Use your site as the go-to for recommendations. If someone is looking at pants, you should have suggestions on the different types of pants and styles you carry. Product suggestions work well, especially when the customer doesn’t really know what they want.

8. Reviews

An eCommerce and digital marketing strategy wouldn’t be complete without a strategy to generate and manage reviews. Reviews help you show up in searches, create trust among current and potential customers, and drive purchasing decisions. Make sure your team pays attention to all reviews and is quick about responding to negative reviews. Quick responses show how important customer opinion is and can turn a disgruntled shopper into a happy one.

9. Test

Your eCommerce digital marketing strategy is more than just driving traffic to your website – it’s about customer experience. Site design is key in ensuring your customers are pleasantly surprised, engaged, and want to see more. This means you must test different elements of your eCommerce site to ensure you’re delivering the best representation of your brand. There are a few tools on the market that can help understand where customers are clicking, which pages get the most traffic and traction, and what makes people abandon their carts.

Next Steps to Align Your eCommerce and Digital Marketing Strategy

Using an eCommerce and digital marketing strategy is a crucial part of your brand’s online success. While this may seem like a lot of work (it is), nothing beats getting close to the customers that want and need your products. Having a great marketing team behind your efforts is the first step in creating an eCommerce digital marketing strategy that gets results. Digilant’s marketing services help brands identify their target audiences, creating tactics that attract, engage and convert time and time again.

Having an eCommerce site is just the beginning. Having a team to successfully implement your strategy is the final piece of the puzzle. For more information on how Digilant can assist you, contact a team member today!

How to Align Digital Marketing and Analytics

The process of analyzing digital data results is an important factor in today’s marketing arena. You have to initiate data-driven responses i.e., perfectly align your digital marketing and real-time analytics in order to keep your potential customers from simply clicking away from your site or choosing another brand. Thanks to digital channels, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or displays like affiliate marketing sites, emails, search ads and more, it is now more important than ever before to properly react to data-driven responses by aligning these two marketing tools. This is a must because anything less than a combination of analytics and digital marketing will likely leave you looking for answers to your marketing problems while your competitors are stealing your customers, who are just a quick click away. Thankfully, by educating yourself on the process of digital analysis, you can improve their alignment within your overall marketing strategy.

Define Your Business Objective For Your Digital Presence

Before syncing analytics, or data, and digital marketing, you should first set a clear direction or objective for your business. In other words, what does digital success look like for your brand? Even the best point of sales tool or customer relationship management systems will only lead to success if these line up with your overall business goal. Setting a clear and concise business goal or growth goal is the first step in leveraging digital analytics as your personal goals for your brand might not be that of any other business.

Create a Metric For Success

The second step of utilizing analytics and digital marketing is creating a measurement strategy, a metric for success, knowing which metrics matter. In years past, many businesses focused only on specific metrics to define a successful digital marketing campaign. Metrics like session duration, bounce rates or page views were given a great deal of value. While these are all performance indicators, they are not the most valuable in terms of turning the digital activity into sales or aligning analytics and digital marketing. For example, the number of leads your website generates has a greater impact on your overall customer retention and profit than merely the number of people who happened to make their way onto your page. Create a way to evaluate marketing success by crafting a measurement strategy.

Use Segmentation to Drive Action

If you really want to get the most out of your digital data, you need to begin segmentation. This means you will compartmentalize customers based on what they have in common. This will help you better understand how your customers behave and what you can do to reach them more effectively. Admittedly, this can be a bit difficult without the right tools and/or expertise, which is why it’s sometimes best to reach out to an expert to help you with this aspect of data analysis.

Optimize your Digital Marketing Strategy

The following acronym is helpful to remember when trying to optimize data into your digital marketing strategy.

  • Define: What is the problem you are wanting to solve? How can you go about fixing it with digital data information?
  • Measure: Look for anomalies, track relevant data, pay attention to the data you are getting.
  • Analyze: Understanding what you are looking at is vital in terms of data is important. Look for patterns, correlations, purchasing habits, etc. Create a target persona.
  • Improvement: Now that you have looked at the data, how can you improve your strategy to put it to use?
  • Control: Monitor your key performance indicators (which were mentioned above) to determine what you need to do to change your current strategy.
  • Optimizing a digital strategy at its root simply means taking the information you gathered through data gathering and putting it into action.

What Are Digital Marketing Analytics?

Now that we have considered how to initiate an alliance between analytics and digital marketing, it’s a good idea to look deeper at the process of digital marketing analytics. In most cases, digital analytics consists of two main factors. They are:

  • Marketing Analytics: This information helps you understand your customers’ journey, even perhaps help you create a target customer persona
  • Marketing Strategy: This factor comes into play when you use the information you obtained from marketing analytics to formulate a marketing strategy to meet that need.

Types of Digital Marketing Analytics

It was once the thought that a customer would have to interact with your brand multiple times before they would purchase your product or service. Now, thanks to modern digital marketing tools and the internet in general, that is no longer the case. That is why digital analytics are so important. You need to learn what your customers want and meet their needs to build brand awareness and initiate action. There are four basic types of digital analytics. Understanding a bit about each will help you better align your current marketing strategy based on analytics.

  1. Performance Analytics: This type of digital analytics looks at how your brand is doing in vital locations like Google Instagram and more. It is also tracking key performance indicators (KPI) like average order value, revenues, sales, and more.
  2. Competitive Landscape Analytics: This helps you track how your competitors retain, convert and attract customers. The adage, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” applies here. It’s wise to learn what is working for others within your industry, so you know what will and will not build brand awareness and success. Don’t look at it as cheating, it is simply working smarter not harder to get the results you want.
  3. Predictive Analytics: This type of digital analysis actually predicts the customer’s next move. It identifies what they want or need and then meets that need with the right message.
  4. Customer Behavior Analytics: This value data will tell you everything you need to know about your average customer’s online behavior. It will answer the question of what, where, when and how in terms of how your customers behave online.

Why Bother With Digital Analytics?

To answer the question of why it’s important to make digital analytics a vital aspect of your digital marketing strategy, consider the benefits of digital analytics listed below:

  • Increases customers’ lifetime value.
  • Retains customers.
  • Delivers the right message at the right time.
  • Proactive relates to customers.
  • Identifies who your customers are, so you can market to them more effectively.
  • In other words, it helps you optimize the data and put it to good use.

Tools For Digital Analytics

It’s worth noting that even the best digital analytics tools are pretty much worthless if you don’t put the data to use. Don’t be like some 73% of businesses and simply don’t analyze the data you have. After all, what good is knowing what you need to do or what will work if you don’t intend to put it into action? The following are some free tools you can use to obtain important digital data.

  • Basic social media analytics, like those offered by Facebook, will give you somewhat of an idea of who is considering your brand.
  • Google Analytics, which will gain data that can be valuable if applied properly to your marketing strategy.

Bottom Line: It’s Vital to Create an Alliance Between Digital Marketing and Analytics

Creating an alliance between analytics and digital marketing is vitally important to having success in today’s ultra-competitive digital market. Too often digital analytics is simply set aside by marketing teams and not utilized properly. Thankfully, you can begin to align your data and your digital marketing strategies today. While you can put some information listed above into use on your own, your brand will have more success overall if you partner with a company that knows this business inside and out.

Digilan helps by aligning your digital marketing and your analytics to get the most out of each aspect. Contact us today to learn more and to begin creating a strategy to form a strong alliance between digital marketing and analytics.

Using Managed Digital Agency Advertising Services: Pros and Cons

Over the last five years, we’ve been hearing and reading a lot about the in-housing of media services at brands and advertising agencies. In-housing media services can look a bit different at brands than they do agencies, but ultimately the goals are the same for both parties. The goals are to cut costs and gain greater control of media budgets and buys. For organizations with the right team and technology providers in place, in-housing can and often achieve both of these goals. However, we’ve found that the vast majority of brands and agencies struggle to staff a team of biddable media experts, requiring both institutional knowledge and hands-on-keyboard expertise. For organizations lacking the resources to build a robust in-house practice, outsourcing your managed digital agency advertising services can be the best answer. And for companies offering outsourcing services or “managed-services” for advertisers, the expectations have never been higher. 

We’ve arrived at a crossroads of traditional digital media channels like display and video and emerging media channels like programmatic audio and CTV. Advertisers working with managed service providers, like Digilant, expect to be staffed with a team that is not only well-versed in the newest advertising platforms and formats but a team that uses performance data to point to success drivers and inhibitors. Advertisers can then pass knowledge and insights on to their teams, management, and for agencies – their clients. 

As the media landscape becomes more complex – more ad formats, content platforms, data providers, DSP technologies, etc., it’s become more difficult than ever for advertisers to successfully in-house media services. You could call it the “media-buying paradox” – as omnichannel advertising rises in importance, advertisers are struggling to keep up with the technologies that make omnichannel possible. Until this paradox is solved, the demand for managed-service providers will remain, and in many instances, grow to support the needs of both brands and agencies. If you are considering using managed digital agency advertising services, here’s a list of pros and cons to make your decision-making process a bit easier. 

Pros

Hand-off Vendor Vetting

Advanced media-buying technology has provided performance and reporting improvements for advertisers, but it has not simplified the vendor landscape. The vendor landscape continues to grow, especially as we see new players in identity resolution, contextual data, CTV, and audio. The vetting process is time-intensive, and technology stack development can be costly. Working with a managed-service provider, you gain an extension to your current team. An ideal managed-service provider will be platform-agnostic and will vet technology, data, and inventory providers on behalf of its clients and through the lens of an advertiser’s specific goal(s). 

They consider client wins their own wins. 

Greater Operational Efficiency

Manage-service providers own the heavy lifting required to get a campaign in-market. Those steps—from channel mix to determining deals, providers, and tactics to building and executing campaigns have become increasingly less burdensome as programmatic technology has continued to automate advertising. Several critical activities and challenges still exist, including buying power, subject matter expertise, and platform know-how.

Access to Expert Teams

When you work with a managed service provider, you get access to a fully staffed team. Media-buying can be risky without the right people and processes to operate technology platforms and optimize performance. You also get the benefit of a team that is well versed in looking at the media mix holistically if you are only taking a sliver of your overall media buying in-house.

Cons

Loss of (Some) Control

When you work with a managed digital agency advertising partner, you give up a portion of your control in exchange for delegating day-to-day management of your media executions. Your team will not be “hands-on-keyboard,” and targeting and optimizations will be made by a team that sits outside the walls of your organization. Adjustments to campaign targeting and media strategy can’t be made on a whim and will need to be discussed with your provider and queued up to go live based on a pre-approved turnaround time. 

Less Transparency

When you work with a managed service provider, you lose the transparency of self-service solutions. The level of transparency on media cost and performance may vary by provider, but ultimately the team managing your media buys will be responsible for invoicing and delivering campaign performance reporting. If you have concerns about your provider measuring their own performance, then a self-service solution may be a better fit.

Higher Media Costs

Managed-service providers often come with higher rates for media inventory and data. Higher rates can chip away at an advertising budget and inhibit you from hitting goals like ROI and ROAS. The larger your advertising budget, the better you are positioned to negotiate fees with managed-service providers and the vendors they work with. Advertisers with smaller budgets may be forced to accept fees and readjust performance expectations as needed. Another factor that may result in greater costs for advertisers is minimum spend, so it’s important to ensure minimums are within your reach before signing on the dotted line. 

Getting Started With A Managed Digital Agency Advertising Partner

While having more control and transparency of your media buys may sound tempting, it’s important to remember that there are also significant costs to building out your own in-house operation. From staffing to technology stack development, in-housing is better looked at as a longer-term goal versus something that can be achieved overnight.

If, for now you are looking to extend your team’s capabilities and bring on a managed digital agency advertising services provider Digilant has you covered. Additionally, if you have interest in exploring next steps in bringing your media buying in-house, we have solutions for that too. Contact us to learn more about how Digilant set your team, however small or big, up for success! 

How to Revise an Unsuccessful Omnichannel Marketing Approach

During London Fashion Week in 2015, TopShop, a UK-based Fashion Retailer, launched digital billboards displayed across the United Kingdom. Each billboard was synced to the company’s Twitter data. When a follower tweeted using “#LWF,” the billboard would display the tweet alongside a relevant item from Topshop’s catalog. This allowed fashion week fans to shop the latest trends that were trending online. The icing on top of the cake? Each billboard was placed within a 10-minute walk to a TopShop store front. So with the brand top of mind, shoppers were within walking distance to browse and buy.

TopShop reaped the rewards in this case, experiencing a 75% boost in sales for all items related to the “LFW” hashtag. Although this example dates back more than five years ago, it is still almost always included in lists of top or best-executed omnichannel marketing campaigns. 

TopShop, along with countless other brands, has recognized the power of an omnichannel marketing approach. OmniSend has found that marketers who use three or more channels witness an 18.96% engagement rate (5.4% for those using a single channel) and a 250% higher purchase frequency.  

Despite the clear benefits omnichannel marketing campaigns can provide advertisers, marketers still face channels when it comes to these marketing solutions. So, what happens when a campaign doesn’t yield the results you hoped for? Below we’ve outlined a guide for how to combat some of the most common challenges marketers face. 

What are Omnichannel Marketing Challenges Advertisers Face?

Before we jump in, let’s look at some of the most common challenges that prevent marketers from carrying out successful omnichannel marketing campaigns. 

Marketing Sherpa asked marketers to weigh issues they face with an omnichannel strategy on a scale from (1) not very challenging to (5) extremely challenging. The top five most significant challenges the survey uncovered are: 

  1. Lack of budget
  2. Lack of personnel with skills and know-how to enact omnichannel strategies
  3. Accessing data across channels
  4. Recognizing a customer on various channels or devices
  5. Communicating omnichannel capabilities to customers and prospects

The challenges advertisers face in implementing an omnichannel marketing strategy transcend throughout the entire campaign and result in an unsuccessful strategy. So, let’s dive into some solutions to combat these challenges and prevent an unsuccessful omnichannel approach. 

Revising an Unsuccessful Omnichannel Marketing Approach

Eliminate Data Gaps

Two of the top five challenges marketers face when implementing omnichannel marketing (per our results above) involve cross-channel data gaps. Consumers are using more devices, and more channels than ever before – the average US household has 11 connected devices. So, it comes as no surprise that marketers are having difficulty tracking data across various devices, and in turn, unifying the customer journey as they move between these devices. 

However, both of these tactics are essential to a successful omnichannel marketing journey. Consumers want a streamlined experience as they move from their laptop to their mobile device, for example. 

How do you fix it?

The solution to this challenge is two-fold. First, you need to establish a data-management solution within your organization. Data analytics tools give you the ability to track, manage and analyze data across channels and devices. 

Ensure with thorough research which tool is right for your brand. RedPoint Global found that 42% of marketers install ten or more marketing data analytics solutions, but only 3% feel that they are fully connected and aligned. As you research analytics tools, ensure that you find holistic, automated solutions that will fit your brand’s needs. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how to pick the best analytics solution for your needs, check out our blog post Leveraging Marketing Analytics Benefits for Strategic Ad Spend.

The second half of the solution to combating data gaps across solutions is tactic-driven. You need to establish or invest in a cross-device identification tool for your omnichannel marketing approach. This solution will allow you to track customers as they move through different devices and implement better retargeting and sequential messaging strategies. 

An example of a cross-device solution is MediaMath’s Connected ID. This solution uses deterministic data to link users across browsers and devices and build a proprietary cross-device graph. Advertisers pass back a deterministic identifier so that associations can be built out for the advertiser’s customer base. 

A cross-device solution will not only improve your customer’s journey and experience with your brand, but it also has cost-saving benefits. You will avoid wasted media impressions on consumers who you’ve already reached on different devices. You know where the customer is in their journey, so you’ll be able to reach them with more targeted ads. 

So, although these solutions primarily help solve data gaps within an omnichannel marketing approach, as you implement these solutions, you’ll see better use of your budget to solve the #1 challenge marketers face: lack of budget.

Understand the Intricacies Required for Success

If a product or service is not meeting your expectations, you don’t think twice about buying from the competitor the next time you purchase the product. This same attitude is now reflected as consumers browse and interact with brands online. If a website or shopping experience doesn’t meet consumers’ needs, they‘ll switch to different sites or brands. 

If consumers can’t figure out where to choose in-store pick-up during check-out, they might abandon their cart altogether. If the Instagram ad they clicked on doesn’t take them to the page they intended it to, they may be wary of clicking on your ad again. Marketers need to think like consumers so that they are able to communicate their omnichannel solutions effectively. If you’ve found holes in certain aspects of your omnichannel marketing approach that have led to unsuccessful campaigns, it’s time to revisit your strategy.  

How do you fix it?

Omnichannel marketing requires expertise across varying channels. Email marketing has a different purpose than SEM and social, display marketing, audio, CTV, etc. So, in turn, they require different skills and potentially, personnel. 

To ensure you are using the best strategies and tools across your omnichannel campaign, you’ll need to choose one of the following solutions:

All of these solutions will require more significant investments, but their long-term benefits will improve your omnichannel marketing, and in turn, your bottom line. 

If you are thinking about bringing your omnichannel marketing in-house, check out our blog post: 7 Things Brands Need to Know Before In-Housing Programmatic Media Buying. And, if you’re considering outsourcing some or all of your media with an omnichannel marketing partner, keep reading! 

Ensure Successful Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns with a Strategic Partner

As mentioned previously, omnichannel marketing requires unique intricacies and expertise across various channels, formats, and tactics. Many of the biggest challenges advertisers face with their strategies boil down to a lack of in-house personnel or resources to cover all the bases. 

If you’ve recognized that the lack of success you’re finding in your omnichannel campaigns is a resource problem, consider onboarding a digital marketing partner. There are many solutions on the market to meet your digital advertising needs – whether you are looking to outsource a few of your services or you’re ready to hand over the keys altogether, there are great benefits gained from partnering with a digital marketing agency.

Digilant’s Approach to Omnichannel Digilant Marketing

No two brands have the same omnichannel solution, so omnichannel marketing services need to be tailor-made to fit your needs. Digilant operates on three different service models to ensure we met the needs of all our clients. 

Our self-service programmatic platform access puts the power in the hands of in-house teams with full access to Media Math’s programmatic media buying platform. 

Managed service media buying solutions give brands, and agencies access to our unmatched biddable media knowledge base, supported across programmatic, search, and social. 

And, if you decide you want a one-stop shop for your entire omnichannel marketing journey, our full-service marketing agency solutions provide brands with fully-integrated marketing strategies. 

Are you ready to revisit your omnichannel marketing approach with a strategic partner on your side? Digilant is eager to take your campaigns from now to next. Let’s talk.

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