Measuring ROI in Cross-Channel Marketing

Mobile, TV, mobile.

Newspaper, TV, tablet.

The combinations vary.

People these days aren’t just consuming digital media but juggling content across platforms. They do not want to miss out on anything while doing everything that they want to do.

Media multi-tasking has necessitated cross channel marketing and it is here to stay.

So, what is cross channel marketing?

Cross channel marketing is the integration of marketing campaigns across channels.

So, marketers now need to plan their content strategies in such a way that they can target users across different channels. However, the needs of people differ with every channel. You may be able to keep up with changing needs but:

• How do you measure campaign performance across channels with different parameters?
• Can you take the right decisions about budget allocations with measurement data on such different parameters?

A recent study by CMO Club and Visual IQ has revealed that only 1 in 5 CMOs are confident about their ability to quantify the impact of one channel on another and only 1 in 4 marketers think they can quantify the impact of offline and online channels. Due to the different ways in which people engage on different channels, marketers are finding it tough to collate and manage data.

Here are a few pointers that can aid you in measuring campaign performance across channels on different parameters:

• It is very important to know the parameters you can compare with each other and the ones you cannot. You need to predetermine the weightage of the various measurement parameters:

• • Should Facebook likes, Google+ ‘+1’, Pinterest re-pins and Instagram likes be categorized as a measure of basic interaction only? Do they have equal weightage?
  • Are LinkedIn shares and Twitter re-tweets to be rated as a superior level of engagement?
  • Are online video ad views and TV ads comparable because they both are ads in the same format?
  • Can you compare radio ads with other mainstream ads’ performance?

• Based on your measurement data, make adjustments to your channel-wise budget allocation.
• Invest more on channels that are better suited for you and so, yield more ROI. Pick out the best mix for your brand, keeping in mind your industry, budget, campaign aims and so forth. As per the above mentioned study, only 6.7% marketers think that they can determine the best touch point/channel mix for their brand.

Using attribution models helps take the right decisions about budget allocations even with measurement data on different parameters. Attribution models assign credit to each channel depending on the time the marketing communication happened. For example, if you are using the ‘First Interaction’ attribution model and TV is your first point of contact, TV is where you should focus the most. Choose the attribution model best suited for you.

• Do you think the first touch point/channel deserves all the credit?
• Or, is it the last channel that is most important?
• Check out these different attribution models:

• • First Interaction – This attribution model gives all credit to the first touch point/channel that started the marketing communication sequence.
  • Last Interaction – The last touch point before the conversion gets all the credit. According to the CMO Club and Visual IQ study, 47% marketers use this attribution model.
  • Linear – This model spreads the credit equally among all the channels irrespective of their position along the path to conversion.
  • Time Decay – The channel right before the conversion gets the most credit while the first touch point gets the least. As for the touch points in between, they get lower credits as the progression moves away from the conversion to the first channel.
  • Position Based – This model gives the first and last channels equal credit. The touch point in the middle gets the lowest credit. The other touch points get more credit as they get closer to the first and last touch points.

Do you think anything else is important when measuring ROI for cross channel marketing?

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