2011 Planning: Three Concepts to Kick Start the New Year
It isn’t even quite November yet, but already many if not most brands are finishing up planning for 2011. Here’s three sometimes overlooked concepts that every CMO ought to consider:
1. Search as a PR play
As I have written before, the search engine results page (SERP) provides a critical piece of a brand’s e-real estate. It is a primary starting point for customers when they go online as well as a cross roads for information seekers, researchers and most importantly, buyers. In fact, Performics’ 2010 SERP Insights Study reaffirmed many of these long held truths about the SERP; a couple of the many relevant findings include:
• More than three-quarters of respondents search to learn more about a product or service after seeing an ad elsewhere.
• Before moving on to a different information source, searchers will modify their search and try again (89%), try a different search engine (89%), and go through multiple search results pages if necessary (79%).
Search engine results pages are comprised of paid content (PPC ads), owned content (native site SEO) and earned content (blog posts, videos, news articles from third parties) which means a brand will be able to control only part of the messaging that shows up.
To help build your brand and be prepared for any negative conversations that may arise, consider search as an extension of your corporate communications/public relations department. This requires having strategies in place to optimize all content (paid, owned, earned) for positive placement, as well as having contingency plans in place should communications challenges arise.
2. Moving Media Investments Quickly
In a digitally-driven and dynamic marketing/media world, marketers’ success hinges in large part on being able to shift dollars quickly in response to a number of factors including:
• Changing behaviors among your brand participants and customers that impact key performance indicators
• Shifting competitive pressures and actions
• External events such as government policy changes or consumer movements
• Internal events such as increased or decreased prioritization
• New prioritized product or service launches
Today’s marketplace has accelerated both in terms of speed to market as well as the speed required to successfully shift strategy and execution. To be both nimble and quick, marketers should create processes and rule sets for moving their media investments around fluidly and strategically to address market conditions that can change as fast as a click.
3. Assigning Attribution from the Ground Up
Speculation continues to swirl throughout the industry about the promise of emerging attribution models that will help marketers and agencies better assign credit for the role of specific marketing/media efforts in driving a desired action or outcome. Most of these conversations start with idealizing an über dashboard that assigns credit for all traditional and digital media investments and helps definitively address the question of where a marketer should invest their next dollar.
Unfortunately, attribution is an incredibly complicated topic and one where custom models need to be created for marketers within their categories. Instead of aiming for the Sistine Chapel, build attribution models more practically by looking at your media mix and analyzing the relationship between those vehicles that have the most symbiotic (closest) relationship.
This could be search and display or TV and direct mail. With proper attribution assigned between these channels, you can 1) identify and implement specific cross-channel strategies to drive the business and 2) build out your attribution model one channel at a time by addressing the next adjacent area of spend.
Marketers that make improving strategic attribution management a top priority for 2011 will likely see an immediate return on their efforts and investments.
Michael Kahn ( [email protected]) is senior vice president of client services at Performics and a monthly contributor to Chief Marketer.
