“According to Forrester Research, about 87% of marketers and 85% of agencies misattribute credit for their marketing results: They either attribute all credit to the last touch point or have no way of attributing the credit in a meaningful manner,” says Anto Chittilappilly, president, founder, and chief technology officer of Visual IQ Inc., a marketing business-intelligence company. “Marketers and their agencies make five common mistakes that can be avoided by deploying cross-channel attribution techniques.” Cross-channel attribution, he explains, “is about attributing the credit for marketing results to where credit is due.” Here are the five common mistakes marketers and their agencies make, according to Chittilappilly, that can be avoided by using cross-channel attribution:

1. Nonexistent or Nonusable Data. “Odds are that you are not collecting marketing data, or you have lots of data that you are not using to make the right marketing decisions,” says Chittilappilly. “Most data collected is in aggregate form, which is not useful for finding insights. Moreover, it is often spread over different entities such as agencies, publishers, media planners, and business units, and it is fragmented across several Excel and PowerPoint files, Access databases, and relational systems.” An integrated data warehouse for all marketing data and results — which is part of any cross-channel attribution strategy — is crucial for being able to act on the data you have, he says.

2. Silos and Nonstandardized Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Unfortunately, says Chittilappilly, most marketers are forced into the long-held practice of tracking marketing performance in silos — that is, each channel is measured using different metrics. “Online search has KPIs such as clicks, conversions, and cost per action, whereas television has KPIs such as impressions and gross rating points,” he notes. “Branding and direct response are measured in silos, too. Even smart marketers who employ best-of-breed agencies often track their agencies’ performance in silos.” There is no standard measurement practice that goes across channels, agencies, and marketing initiatives, but an integrated and holistic approach to measurement and optimization is critical for your marketing organization because it can serve as a surrogate for a standard set of yardsticks with which to measure program success against KPIs and other goals, says Chittilappilly.

3. Lack of Synergy and Lack of Timing. “We all know that different marketing channels influence one another, yet many marketers struggle putting that anecdotal evidence to work,” says Chittilappilly. “Too often, the same advertiser will run several campaigns at once, with no tie among them to help boost overall success, or the advertiser will not align timing among those programs. That is unfortunate, because if one channel is good in giving a lift to another, another may be good at receiving the lift and producing conversions.”

4. Going With Your Gut. Admitting that your decisions are based on gut feelings is difficult, especially when you’re spending time and resources producing detailed reports that should be able to guide you objectively, notes Chittilappilly. But, he says, decision-making can often be subjective and based on gut feelings at the executive and execution levels. “That’s because the Excel reports and PowerPoint decks many of us regularly consume are at high levels, don’t offer insights, and are not segmented — and, therefore, are not usable,” he asserts. “An objective and fact-based decision-support system, such as those provided by some of the attribution solutions now available, should be helping your organization make the right decisions.”

5. Relying on tradition. Most marketers and agencies are comfortable with their traditional ways of decision-making, Chittilappilly observes. “Sometimes good ideas take time to get implemented,” he says. “Sometimes, though, tradition limits the speed of execution. At the end of the day, the marketer who has the better process and technology to make better decisions and who acts quickly wins over others.”

Source: MarketingProfs

Posted March 9th, 2010 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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