Advanced ROI Measurement Tactics, Part IV: Monetizing Cross-Channel Marketing Efforts

This is the fourth in a series of SEM tac­tics you can use to gen­er­ate greater ROI from search cam­paigns. (The first focused on online/offline data inte­gra­tion, the sec­ond on key­word assist or cross visit par­tic­i­pa­tion, and the third on cost of goods sold.)

A dis­con­nect seems to exist among mar­keters about the process of mea­sur­ing ROI as cus­tomers move through mul­ti­ple touch­points. Most mar­keters are famil­iar with the con­ver­sion fun­nel — begin­ning with cre­at­ing aware­ness, then on to con­sid­er­a­tion and from there to the con­ver­sion and the remar­ket­ing cycle — but they often strug­gle to prop­erly attribute the dol­lars brought in from each step of the process. Because of the chal­lenge, ad dol­lars may end up being dis­trib­uted unevenly, with too much money spent on one chan­nel and not enough on oth­ers, caus­ing mar­keters to miss some big returns. When ad dol­lars are spent more effi­ciently, ROI increases.

Let me give you an exam­ple of what I mean: imag­ine an elec­tron­ics com­pany that is launch­ing what’s cer­tain to be the “next big thing.” If the com­pany doesn’t have much brand aware­ness, they may prep the launch with dis­play adver­tis­ing, along with offline media such as radio, TV or print.

Once aware­ness begins to build, the com­pany may begin a search cam­paign to cap­i­tal­ize on peo­ple who are search­ing by brand name. They might also cre­ate a mar­ket­ing effort around the blo­gos­phere to con­tinue to build aware­ness of the prod­uct. As browsers become ready to buy, a search cam­paign focus­ing on the spe­cific item name or model num­ber, along with mar­ket­ing on the company’s Web site, can help push con­sumers to make the pur­chase. After the pur­chase, the com­pany remar­kets to them via email.

In other words, buy­ers make a pur­chase after first being made aware, then click­ing through to the site from dis­play adver­tis­ing (and per­haps other online efforts), end­ing up at the Web site through nat­ural search Key­word A and then finally mak­ing the pur­chase after click­ing on paid search Key­word B. If the com­pany does not tie together all ele­ments of the mar­ket­ing cam­paign — if, in other words, it gives credit for the sale only to the last touch­point, or Key­word B — they’re not prop­erly mon­e­tiz­ing the ear­lier cam­paigns. Dis­play, for exam­ple, may be given less money in future bud­gets, despite the fact that it had a great hand in rais­ing aware­ness for the product.

Omni­ture can help keep this from hap­pen­ing via its com­plete and accu­rate cross-channel mea­sure­ment avail­able through a Gen­e­sis inte­gra­tion of Site­Cat­a­lyst, Search­Cen­ter and other Omni­ture prod­ucts with Dart, iBlaster, and other ad servers. With such a cross-channel plug-in, mar­keters can tell what per­cent­age of the sale should be attrib­uted to the dif­fer­ent touch­points in the con­ver­sion fun­nel, allow­ing them to make more accu­rate deci­sions about their online ad spend and thus improve ROI.