Creating An Effectiveness Ecosystem Fit For The Future

Creating an effectiveness ecosystem fit for the future 

Creating the right effectiveness ecosystem for your brand or agency which is future proofed is based on three principles: 

1. The right measurement approach 

2. Having the right data to measure the right outcomes 

3. Adopting the right blend of tools and analytical approaches to provide foresight and prove cause and effect 

How these principles are applied will be dependent on your organisation (brand or agency), the level of effectiveness maturity already present, access to data, and the levels of investment available to adopt new or evolve existing tools and approaches. 

However, the principles do act as a rough and practical ‘how to’ guide, so let’s go through those in turn. 

The Right Measurement Approach 

We recommend 5 simple questions to set out a best-in-class measurement approach: 

By looking to evidence the change in how consumers think, engage and purchase is the equivalent of measuring across the traditional sales funnel. The difficulty will come when getting into the cause and effect view of how marketing activity positively contributed to these changes, and how competitors and/or market influences negatively impacted performance. 

However, the beauty of this approach is it’s simplicity;  we are asking ‘normal’ questions which are easy to understand and can be used to provide clarity around what any marketing activity is trying to achieve and whether it has achieved it, or not. 

Questions for you: What questions are you using for your measurement approach, and do they allow for clarity on what your marketing activity should be achieving and whether it achieved it, or not. 

The Right Data 

If the beauty of this 5 question measurement approach is it’s simplicity, then it should be relatively straightforward to understand what data is needed to help answer each question. Whether that data exists or not, is a different question. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list of what data should be used to answer each question but is designed to provide directional help in understanding what could be used. 

It also can be used to flesh out where there are any data gaps, which can then be linked to an organisation’s data strategy to understand how and when those gaps can be plugged. 

If you are an agency working on a particular client, then can set the template for any data sharing between the client and your agency, and/or between agencies also working on the same client.  

Questions for you: does the right data exist for you to measure the right changes in behaviour, and to prove the long and short term value of any marketing activity? If not, how are you going to get it? 

Adopting the right blend of tools and analytical approaches 

This can be the more complicated part of the effectiveness ecosystem and may require significant levels of investment to build out. However, the diagram below is designed to show a total view of what tools and approaches could be included and not designed to say this is what the approach must be!  

There are two parts: 

1. The data inputs which provide timely, relevant and accurate data into the effectiveness capabilities ecosystem 

2. The capabilities ecosystem which provides different levels of insight which are designed to feed into any marketing planning process at the right time. 

The 5 main ‘buckets’ of insight are: 

1. Strategic Insight: this should allow you to identify the contribution of marketing to business outcomes, and how future levels of marketing investment should impact the business. 

2. Category Insight: the broader category trends which help understand the challenges and opportunities for a brand. 

3. Real Time Insight: helping understand the immediate impact of any marketing activity, and the optimisation opportunities. 

4. Customer Understanding & Analytics: identifying the individual and customer base level opportunities to increase relevance of marketing on a 1-2-1 level 

5. Business Intelligence Platform: making marketing performance reporting accessible to the right audiences, and visualising it in a clear and engaging format  

Questions for you: where are your capabilities gaps and how could you plug them? For existing capabilities, do they act in isolation of each other or do they provide an integrated view of performance? 

This is a fairly whistle-stop tour through our approach to how Go Ignite would help build out a marketing effectiveness ecosystem.  We will be talking through this in more detail within our Ignition Room Huddle on the 15^th November @ 7pm as we host a conversation about how to set up a future proofed effectiveness ecosystem.