MARKETING TRUTH OR MARKETING HYPE BECKON OPENS ITS DATA VAULT TO REVEAL WHICH HOT MARKETING TRENDS ACTUALLY WORK AND WHICH, WELL, NOT SO MUCH.

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1 MARKETING TRUTH OR MARKETING HYPE BECKON OPENS ITS DATA VAULT TO REVEAL WHICH HOT MARKETING TRENDS ACTUALLY WORK AND WHICH, WELL, NOT SO MUCH.

2 CONTENTS INTRO 3 FINDING NO. 1: PLANNING (AND PACING) MAKES PERFECT 4 FINDING NO. 2: CONTENT LESS IS MORE OR MORE IS MORE? 8 FINDING NO. 3: WHAT TO DO ABOUT VIEWABILITY 11 DRIVING FORWARD 14

3 It s been a year since we published our first Marketing Truth or Marketing Hype report, which put some of the buzziest marketing trends to the test to see if they actually delivered the results their proponents promised. The report was a big hit. We heard from tons of marketers who loved having cold, hard facts that cut through the noise and showed what worked and what didn t. And now we re back with a new report for As before, our report draws from the vast store of tagged, integrated and normalized marketing performance data in the Beckon system, representing more than $20 billion in spend across every channel imaginable. Holding so much clean, trusted data from the world s biggest brands makes Beckon uniquely positioned to provide an objective, industry-wide view of what s working best across it all. By measuring the real-world performance of marketing trends and assumptions, we clear away the hype so you can focus on what will produce the best results. Keep in mind, the numbers in this report are averages from across our sample. Still, it s a perfect opportunity to check your own data and benchmark your results. For instance, let s say you re unhappy because viewability of your online ads is only around 70% since our findings show an average of 54%, you can cheer up! Let s jump into this year s findings. 3

4 FINDING NO. 1 The buzz: Agencies aren t delivering the visibility they promise in the media plan. The truth: Planned vs. actual tends to match up in the end. It s the pacing that s a problem. Good pacing lets brands adjust spend, strategy and creative on the fly for maximum ROI. How often does this happen to you? You collaborate with your agency to map out the spend and impressions you expect for media buys. But then, during the campaign, the agency misses the weekly or monthly targets. Are you getting shortchanged? No. We find that by the end of the campaign, agencies generally deliver the visibility they promise Beckon data shows that, on average, campaigns wind up with just a one percent delta between planned and actual impressions. However, there s still a big problem. Agencies don t deliver those impressions when the business needs them. In some cases, we saw a budget-busting flood of impressions right out of the gate (because consumer interest was strong and spend wasn t capped). More typically, however, brands get noticeably fewer impressions than agreed on at the early milestones. Then, after a four- to five-week delay, total cumulative impressions catch up. In one 19-week campaign, impressions lagged for 10 weeks the campaign was half over before impressions caught up to (and eventually surpassed) the planned number. 4

5 WEEK 1 WEEK 10 WEEK 19 Both scenarios a flood at the start or a rush at the end create unnecessary challenges for brands. Getting all the hits up front in one big burst means we can t test, learn or optimize. Consequently, conversion rates will likely be lower than we hoped and we may miss sales targets. If we want to get back in the game to make up for these shortfalls, we have to allocate more spend. When impressions roll in later than planned, it s even more problematic. As above, it hamstrings our ability to test, learn and optimize because we have limited impressions to work with early on. (This is especially hard if your brand has strong seasonality or short campaign windows, because the optimization window is already condensed.) What s more, missed milestones for spend and impressions likely mean missed milestones for sales and conversions. We may get the conversions eventually, but telling the boss the sales numbers will probably hit a month late is never fun. So, why are delayed impressions a thing, and what can we do about it? 5 As you might expect, impressions are a function of spend. Beckon data shows a strong correlation between underspending and being short on impressions early in a campaign. That said, optimal spending out of the gates isn t

6 always straightforward. Sometimes, it can take weeks to test new audiences, messages and creative, and discover what market factors are helping or hurting performance. In these cases, to avoid the problems that arise when actual impressions lag behind planned impressions, it makes sense to plan for spend and impressions to ramp up as the campaign unfolds. Beckon data confirms this. We found that campaigns that ramped spend and impression goals, rather than hitting the ground running on day one, were more likely to hit milestones for impressions. When brands and agencies team up to create plans that help pacing stay close to targets, we re able to experiment, see what s resonating (and what s not) routinely over the course of the campaign, and reallocate spend accordingly. Paying close attention to planned spend and impressions versus actual is also a solid recipe for maximizing ROI. According to Beckon data, campaigns with close alignment between plan and actual throughout averaged 117% of planned impressions, and used only 73% of their planned spend. In contrast, campaigns that strayed further from plan fell short of their targets, hitting 87% of planned impressions, and spending 86% of their planned budget. 6 CLOSELY ALIGNED CAMPAIGNS CAMPAIGNS THAT STRAY FROM PLAN

7 RECOMMENDATIONS If your agency is not already doing so, request media plans at a weekly or daily granularity. That way you can not only track actuals, but the timing for actuals. Set up a cadence with your agency for reviewing how performance is tracking to plan. Use these calls to strategize how to right-size spend and impressions (or in the case of flooding, how to optimize your campaign going forward). None of this is possible without clear, constantly updated visibility into how a campaign is tracking against your media plan. You ll want a marketing intelligence platform that automates data management, delivers clean, trusted data and insight, integrates your media plans, and displays them side-by-side with actual performance. You can t afford to wait weeks or months to see how you re tracking. Before the campaign kicks off, build a dashboard with all your KPIs, including a chart for planned vs. actual tracking. Agree on planned targets with your agency you can even look into establishing a service level agreement on pacing. If your campaign involves new channels, audiences and/or messaging, build in a window to test and learn by planning modest targets for spend and impressions that ramp up later in the campaign. Can t afford a temporary drop in total impressions? Keep a high-performing campaign running a few weeks longer, overlapping it with the start of the new campaign. In many cases, Beckon data showed a steep decline in campaign performance once targets were reached. If you hit your goals and have spend left over, don t let it go to waste! Talk to your agency and make sure your dollars continue working as hard for you as they did earlier in the campaign, or ask to reallocate that remaining spend to a future campaign. 7

8 FINDING NO. 2 The buzz: Content is king! To drive engagement, pump out lots of content. The truth: Less content, managed for optimal impact, drives greater engagement at much lower cost. In our 2016 report, we noted that, compared to the previous year, brands created and posted three times as much content (images and video) in free social media channels and paid media channels. Yet total consumer engagement with that content (views, clicks, likes, forwards) remained flat. In short, more volume, higher spend, and no lift to show for it. Further, we found that, on average, a tiny 5% of branded content drove 90% of total engagement. Most generated next to nothing. We suggested that, to drive higher engagement at lower cost, brands prioritize performance instead of volume. We thought brands could benefit by examining the content pieces that dramatically outperformed the rest, while doubling down on brand standards and content quality in an effort to generate fewer, better content pieces. Judging by our findings this time around, brands took those lessons to heart. Beckon data shows that in 2017, 20% of content drove 90% of total engagement a huge improvement over the 2016 findings, because it shows consumers are engaging with roughly 4x the number of content pieces than they did in the previous period. Even better, brands did more with less, securing 15% higher overall engagement on roughly two-thirds the content volume. 20% OF CONTENT PIECES GARNER 90% OF ALL ENGAGEMENT 8

9 One global brand that refashioned its content strategy along these lines saw extraordinary success: Compared to the previous year, it garnered more than twice as many engagements per post while reducing cost per engagement by 64%! 9

10 RECOMMENDATIONS A quality-based, less is more approach to content is more effective and much less costly than throwing oodles of content against the wall in the hopes that some pieces stick. Track engagement closely to see what customers are responding to. Work with your agency to identify trends in high-performing posts. Are they a similar format? Is one channel more effective than others? Do certain designs or messages resonate best? Adjust course to make more hits and fewer misses, and allocate more spend toward top performers. Pay close attention to content with a high earned-to-paid ratio. This means your message is resonating well with customers, and their amplification (earned engagement) is helping your dollars go even further. Allocating more spend towards this content is a wise bet. Consider ramping up your commitment to user-generated content. Tuning into your audience and putting their stories in the driver s seat can spark a nice boost to engagement. We ve seen it work best for consumer brands, but managed well it can apply to all brands. 10

11 FINDING NO. 3 The buzz: Viewability is the new KPI. The truth: Yes, it is! But few brands are tracking it, much less acting on it. Improving viewability is an easy boost to ROI. Most brands have heard rumblings about the importance of viewability, but Beckon data shows only 8.5% of brands tracking it. Some context: Not all online ads are considered viewable. The generally agreed-on spec is that, for an ad to be considered viewable, 50% of its pixels must be visible to a viewer for at least one second. Ads that aren t viewable don t generate awareness, nor do they move consumers toward a sale. According to the data in Beckon, average viewability is around 54%. That means roughly 46 cents of every media dollar is wasted on ads that no one ever sees. ON AVERAGE 54% OF IMPRESSIONS ARE VIEWABLE Now, this number can vary depending on the factors at play programmatic or traditionally bought, ad size, country, ad vendor or channel, and so on. Still, given the billions of dollars spent on ads each year, everyone agrees it s a problem. 11

12 The good news is that improving the percentage of ads that consumers see is easier than you think. And it s a high-value proposition according to Beckon data, brands that track viewability alongside their other KPIs and make improvement a priority increased viewability of their ads by 27.5% over 12 months! RECOMMENDATIONS Partner with a respected third party like Moat that audits and tracks the viewability of your online display ads. If you want to integrate your new viewability data with the rest of your spend and performance data so you can see it all side by side, you ll need to bring it into a marketing intelligence solution like Beckon. Start talking to your agencies, asking the tough questions and challenging assumptions about your ads. Request viewability metrics from your agency many ad publishers report on viewability, but it s often left out of the reports shared with brands. Ask your agency to negotiate make-goods or credits where you see low viewability. You re on solid ground in doing so the IAB recommends that ad publishers establish performance benchmarks, and have a remediation plan in place to determine what happens should an ad placement miss its viewability benchmark by more than 10%. 12 Once you have viewability data that you can slice and dice in a marketing intelligence tool, look for trends around the ad sizes, placements, types of creative, and publishers that perform best. Industry reports show that

13 interactive ads, mobile ads, video ads, and non-programmatically bought ads generally yield higher viewability. Test to see if that holds true for your brand. Viewability is important, but it s not the only KPI. Be sure you re also looking at cost per viewed impression and metrics that measure outcomes, like click-through rates and conversion rates. You ll see the full impact of your media spend and get deeper insight into what s working and what to adjust. Lastly, remember that you can always move away from partners that are crimping viewability and making little effort to improve! 13

14 DRIVING FORWARD There you have it, a roadmap for navigating three of 2017 s buzzy marketing trends. A great place to start is to benchmark our findings against your brand s current results to see where you stand. We know every brand has unique audiences and challenges, so when in doubt listen closely to what your performance data is saying. At Beckon, we love using data to deconstruct marketing trends like these, cutting through the noise and uncovering opportunities for strategic advantage. We hope you find it useful and inspiring! We d love to hear how your efforts are going, and we look forward to connecting around ways Beckon can help. 14

15 ABOUT BECKON To grow your brand, you need integrated, unbiased data and insights you can trust. You need Beckon, The Source of Truth for Marketing. Beckon s rock-solid data management and real-time marketing intelligence power better, faster decisions that let you do more with every marketing dollar. LET S TALK Want to learn more? Get in touch at hello@beckon.com we d love to connect.