Connect with us

MARKETING

What is marketing performance management and how can it help you?

Published

on

One of marketing’s greatest challenges is proving its value to the business. Without demonstrable proof that marketing initiatives are driving business results, marketers’ budgets are easy pickings for leaders seeking to improve profitability or just keep the business afloat during challenging times.

And it’s not just marketing department jobs and media budgets that are at stake. Cutbacks in marketing investments often backfire. They can retard the velocity of sales, stunt the company’s brand development, jeopardize relations with customers and create opportunities for competitors to gain market share.

Though it’s been a perennial issue for CMOs, the pressure to justify their budgets to C-suite colleagues has never been more intense. Seventy-one percent of B2C marketing executives expected that demonstrating the value of marketing to the CEO, CFO and the board would be “very challenging” or “extremely challenging” in 2022, a Forrester survey found.

Gauging the relative success of each of your marketing tactics is important no matter which way the economic winds are blowing. But when budgets are tight, as they are now with the current economic uncertainty, the prospect of eliminating waste is especially resonant.

The dawn of digital media promised a brighter future. One in which we could look at every sale and determine which touchpoints were effective at delivering ROI and which represented wasted spend. It’s not simple or straightforward, but we’re getting closer to realizing the promise, despite the headwinds, which include the pending deprecation of cookies and the need for compliance with restrictive, and often contradictory, privacy regulations.

Attribution — the practice of assigning weight to every touchpoint in a marketing campaign based upon its contribution to revenues — is not new. But the breadth and scope of available marketing attribution tools today exceed what we could have imagined just a few years ago.

Advertisement

The proliferation of APIs and integrations now enables marketers to pull together data of a wide range of types from myriad sources, applying machine learning and sophisticated algorithms to compare and make sense of the information.

These advances, along with business analytics technologies, let marketers get a more holistic view of their programs, regardless of channel, platform or silo. Even better, many tools now glean insights from data to model different scenarios and predict possible future outcomes, empowering marketers to confidently make budget allocation decisions.

Download the MarTech Intelligence Report: Enterprise Marketing Performance Management Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Together, these technologies enable marketing performance management (MPM). There is no consensus on the moniker for this type of solution. Some refer to it as “marketing performance measurement” or “marketing resource management” (MRM). We prefer “marketing performance management,” which encapsulates both the attribution aspect (performance measurement) as well as the bigger picture function of using data and technology to assess bottom-line results and make decisions about future spend (performance management).

Like other marketing software solutions, marketing performance management can be achieved with an integrated platform or by assembling a “stack” of point solutions to do the job. 

An MPM platform employs statistical modeling and machine learning to holistically evaluate the performance of a company’s marketing initiatives on bottom-line impact. Its purpose is to help marketers allocate future spend and bring it in line with business goals.

Advertisement

These tools feature attribution models that gauge the impact of each marketing touch a buyer encounters on a purchase journey and beyond. Additionally, MPM platforms use data, algorithms and machine learning models to predict future outcomes based on historical data and scenario building.

Integrated platforms have several advantages, including:

  • Seamless sharing of data between modules.
  • Built-in functionality for reconciling data from disparate sources.
  • A consistent user interface.
  • One vendor to contact for assistance with the implementation and support should they be necessary.

Point solution stacks also have advantages. Marketers select best-of-breed applications and have the flexibility of swapping out those applications should another with better features become available.

Stacks have challenges, too. Sharing data between applications can present issues, although connecting applications via APIs has gotten much easier in recent years. Interfaces are unique to each solution, meaning users must learn multiple navigation schemes and means of accomplishing their tasks. And terminology used by vendors may be different, creating a Tower of Babel within your marketing department.

Even measuring just digital media is complicated because data from many sources must be combined and normalized and normalized for an apples-to-apples comparison. The task is even more difficult when you include data from walled gardens like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple that target ads to logged-in users, limiting the data advertisers get about their campaigns and the users that interact with them.

Because of these phenomena, marketers are turning to third-party tools that aren’t tied to any particular medium or channel. These solutions ingest data from every channel and aggregate it to give marketers insights and predictions to apply to future campaigns.

Privacy and the deprecation of cookies

Advertisers and marketers, along with the martech vendors that serve them, must also cope with regulatory and technological efforts to safeguard people’s privacy. Consumers’ growing awareness about how their personal information is collected and used has resulted in a backlash against some of the ways online marketers gather data.

Advertisement

Governments enacted privacy regulations like the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation and California’s Consumer Privacy Act both of which govern the collection and use of customer data.

Apple, Google and Firefox have or will significantly curtail others from tracking customer behavior by eliminating third-party cookies, i.e. tracking files put on a user’s computer by companies other than the one operating the site they’re browsing.


Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Advertisement


Online advertising, since its inception, has used cookies to enable analytics, ad targeting and tracking. Transitioning to another methodology for accomplishing those tasks is a vexing challenge for the ad tech business and those that need to prove the performance of their marketing efforts.

For this reason, companies offering MPM have been hard at work developing solutions to facilitate measurement without relying on third-party cookies, personally-identifiable information or other information that might run afoul of privacy-oriented changes.

Marketers recognize the need for MPM

Last year, 38% of B2C marketing decision-makers said “they will focus on the implementation of new systems and technologies to support their organization’s business strategy” over the next two years, according to a Forrester survey. The company’s analysts note that “technology becomes even more important when you need to measure how marketing drives business value and distribute insights across the entire organization.”

Marketing performance management tools aim to address this need. They provide visibility into performance across online and offline channels and promise to enable marketers to drive more revenue from the same spend or reduce budget while obtaining the same results.

Read next: How marketing ops improves ROI through campaign performance and budget management

Advertisement

About The Author

20 questions to ask digital asset management platform vendors during

Pamela Parker is Research Director at Third Door Media’s Content Studio, where she produces MarTech Intelligence Reports and other in-depth content for digital marketers in conjunction with Search Engine Land and MarTech. Prior to taking on this role at TDM, she served as Content Manager, Senior Editor and Executive Features Editor. Parker is a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since its beginning. She’s a former managing editor of ClickZ and has also worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing. Parker earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Advertisement

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS