Twenty years ago, traveling through Europe meant that you needed a pretty big change purse and a calculator. That’s because you had to use multiple currencies, depending on which countries you were visiting during your trip -- lira in Italy, francs in France -- all with their own individual exchange rate. But then the European Union introduced the euro, which not only provided a simple solution, but also saved everyone a lot of headaches when traveling across borders.
In this case, conversion rates made it easy to translate the value of each individual country’s currency to other currencies. But when it comes to marketing, building a single currency is much more complex. The individual currencies of different marketing silos within a company are often difficult to convert in order to understand relative values across marketing channels. Depending on the channel, the currently accepted currency could be conversions, clicks, CTR, visits or GRP’s, just to name a few.
But why do we need a single marketing currency in the first place?
The answer is simple. Though recently there has been criticism of the single-currency model, a single currency drives standardized measurement across your company. Standardized and accurate measurement drive more effective optimization. And effective optimization helps you buy the right media to give you the best returns for your marketing spend.
Best Practices for Building the Right Currency
Your single marketing currency should be a metric that is the most important to your company. Consider these best practices for selecting and using a single currency:
Once you have established your single currency for marketing, then you can finally throw away your currency exchange calculator and giant change purse. Instead, you can focus your time and effort on launching strategic, closed-loop marketing programs that drive business results across all of your marketing channels.