I've been working on updating the "Ladder of Insight" I published several years ago, to reflect some observations on levels of measurement sophistication with
respect to digital/social attribution. From what I see in the marketplace, companies seem to be at one of four levels in their pursuit of better insights:
Level 1 - Monitoring chat
boards; counting tweets and followers; measuring owned-media activity (site visits, sourcing pages, etc.); using last-click attribution. Seeing a very limited view of digital activity and hoping
to correlate outcomes with observed behaviors.
Level 2 - Above, plus tracking sentiment for self and competitors; monitoring Google query volume for a few dozen key terms; using syndicated
research to dissect online information searching and buying pathways; "allocated attribution" methods based on views/touches across digital exposures based on samples of cookie and clickstream
data.
Level 3 - Above, plus integrated view of digital and traditional tactics in a common analytical attribution model that establishes direct and indirect effects of digital, and social
(both online and offline WOM) within the context of ALL marketing/selling tactics.
Level 4 - Above, plus comprehensive online pathway monitoring based on full digital data sets from own site,
referring sites, and ad placement servers. Accurate digital attribution derived when sampling is no longer required.
As you move up in levels, you gain more accurate perspective and find
more ways to improve the effectiveness of marketing spend, which is increasingly measured in terms of both dollars and man-hours. But more importantly, you gain competitive advantages to exploit
your insights -- and you get refreshed insights faster.
But before concluding that this is the path to marketing excellence, it's worth remembering a few decades-old ground rules of marketing
that seem to be even more important in the digital era:
- Innovation brings buying attention to your product/service offering. Manufacturing or borrowing
interest (celebrities, discounting, etc.) is an expensive and short-lived way of drawing attention to yourself. If there's nothing substantive for people to talk about, all the social media
effort in the world won't amount to much more than a digitally collective yawn.
- Online chatter about your category/brand is usually just a
fraction of total chatter. Don't underestimate the impact of offline WOM, particularly for lower-interest categories where consumers aren't likely to want to tweet or blog.
- Given the increasingly fragmented battle for consumer attention, sound segmentation is more than ever the key to getting relevant value propositions in front of the
right customers. Just because you produced a "killer" online video doesn't mean millions will want to view it.
If you have thoughts or ideas on how to improve on this ladder, please
share your ideas below.