The hierarchy of measurement maturity begins with baseline capabilities—single-channel measurement, tracking one channel’s performance often within the platform. Advancing to cross-channel measurement involves implementing platforms like Google Analytics, offering a unified source for assessing channels’ collaborative performance.
Progressing further, full-funnel measurement adds complexity, requiring integration of upper- and mid-funnel channels for an accurate reflection of strategy. At the pinnacle is understanding marketing’s true impact on the business, enhancing accuracy across all tracked performance metrics with richer contextual insights.
Commencing with single-channel measurement, the fundamental step involves obtaining an in-platform overview of how effectively a specific channel influences conversions. Success in even this basic measurement requires meticulous setup, especially ensuring clean tracking for accurate and comprehensive data feeding into platforms for optimization.
Conduct an audit of platform pixels and site tags, confirming the correct capture of events and associated parameters for conversion events. Beyond tracking sales and revenue, it’s crucial to capture essential fields like location or customer ID for detailed analysis, distinguishing between new and returning sales, or identifying promo code usage.
It’s essential to recognize that effective data capture not only enhances reporting accuracy but also yields more valuable insights, ultimately driving informed and intelligent business decisions.
Cross-Channel Measurement: Taking an Integrated Approach
Ascending to the next level involves adopting integrated cross-channel measurement, typically utilizing a blend of analytics tools like web analytics, CRM systems, CDPs, data clean rooms, and DMPs. This approach provides a more comprehensive perspective of your media mix, revealing how channels collaborate and influence one another, and illustrating customer progression through the funnel before conversion.
Cross-channel measurement not only generates holistic insights but also guides media strategy optimization. Recognizing which channels contribute to user conversions aids in strategic budget allocation for achieving objectives.
Ultimately, cross-channel insights empower marketers to refine their spending, enhance customer experiences, and achieve superior business outcomes. However, it necessitates having the appropriate toolkit in place.
When feasible, harness deterministic datasets for cross-channel measurement, offering a direct observation of the customer journey and media overlap to comprehend holistic acquisition impact. In scenarios where walled gardens limit direct observation, a probabilistic approach becomes essential. This involves understanding channel impact through cross-correlation and modeled channel spending.
Given significant data loss, many brands have shifted to a statistical or modeled measurement approach, favoring probabilistic methods over deterministic tracking. The effectiveness of this approach relies heavily on your martech infrastructure, necessitating alignment with campaign needs, activated marketing channels, and serving as a reliable source for tracking and conversion attribution.
An ideal solution encompasses impression and view-through conversion tracking, essential for expanding into mid- and upper-funnel media and tactics.
