BrainTrust Query: Six 2013 New Year's Resolutions for Marketing and Insights
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of an article from the Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research blog.
This is the year to take action rather than talking about it. This is the year marketing teams need to move from empty narrative like "the ROI of social media is that you will be in business in five years" (Socialnomics) to data, like "the ROI of social media is ROI ... estimated from marketing mix modeling and experiments properly designed."
This is the year we turn to evidence as our light at the end of the tunnel.
Here is my suggested list of practical and high priority initiatives:
1) Integrate digital data with survey-based insights.
Why not harvest the ongoing digital data streams and turn them into metrics alongside brand tracking measures? If you are using surveys alone, you are not positioned to succeed in a digital age — pure and simple.
2) Convert one research method from backward looking, slow, and costly to real time, and at half the price.
Instead of using pop-up surveys to measure digital ad effectiveness, why not tag an ad so it serves a cookie that can be matched to downstream conversion? Why not systematically manipulate creative and ad serving elements for the first week so you can conduct a naturally occurring conjoint style study and then optimize?
3) Learn visual marketing.
Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook itself are making marketing increasingly visual with a reliance on photos. Marketers need to learn how to master visual marketing and convert picture sharing into insights data streams.
4) Make mobile your competitive advantage.
This is the year to commit to testing mobile marketing, inventing new vehicles (apps, mobile ad products), and the integration of mobile into shopping. And perhaps most of all, learning how to measure mobile marketing effectiveness.
5) Blur physical and virtual by creating interactivity.
In South Korea, Tesco's commuters can use their smartphones to shop for groceries in a virtual store projected onto the back wall of the train station and place their grocery order to be delivered to their home while they are waiting for their train. Increasingly, people are using their tablets and smartphones while they watch TV, so it is likely that you will be able to interact with a TV commercial via your second screen and perhaps even add the product to your shopping list on the device you take with you into the store.
6) Where's the beef?
Facebook has been around for too long for us to not know what the value of a Facebook fan is. Physical retailers are scared of showrooming but not measuring it properly. We pre-grieve for the death of TV advertising yet fail to properly compare the time people spend watching TV vs. being in social media. Yet TV still drives search, social media activity and other digital actions, so digital actually amplifies TV advertising effectiveness. Pick a couple of meaty and important areas, and dig in with learning goals.