Advertising Response Accountability

Introduction

As markets have become tougher, the issue of marketing accountability has risen up the agenda. This rise in prominence has been driven by:

The need to be more targeted with media spend
An acceptance of the internet’s accountability and requirement that more traditional channels have similar levels of accountability.

Accountability will not go away (to some media owner’s regret!) and will only increase with the arrival of easy-to-use systems that help marketers understand their advertising response rates and return on investment. This article looks at why accountability is important and different ways of tracking response across different response methods.

Why increase accountability?

Pressure on marketing budgets increases the need to measure and analyse how successful each marketing campaign is at generating responses. However, creating measurement tools has historically been difficult because of the following key factors:

It takes time to gather the data

One of the basic building blocks in creating a marketing campaign is to plan, implement and then review its success. Whilst this is fine in theory, problems have always arisen at the review stage. The performance data usually arrives too late to make tactical changes to a campaign. Furthermore, by the time the data arrives a company has already moved onto the next stage of their marketing campaign and they are unable to act effectively on the information.

Using web-based technology, it is now possible to review response levels from most channels almost instantaneously. This allows marketers to make quick tactical changes to their campaigns and generate greater response.
Fracturing of channels

With the growth of new channels and response mechanisms, targeting consumers has become more complicated. As a result, it is becoming vital to quickly understand which channels are generating response and act accordingly. To use an analogy, marketing is like fishing. The more nets you have in the sea, the more likely you are to come across a shoal. The trick is in knowing which nets are catching the fish and quickly setting up more nets around them before the shoal moves on!
Response Vs Branding

It is very difficult to measure scientifically the brand effect of an advert especially those which are focused on generating response. Even an unsuccessful direct response driven marketing campaign can claim to have raised brand awareness. Companies need to understand where their advertising / marketing sits within the spectrum of pure direct response at one end (e.g. mail order catalogues) to pure brand at the other (e.g. brands such as Coca Cola).

Brand and Direct Response Spectrum

The more a company relies on pure direct response to drive its sales, the more important it is to put in place easy-to-use accountability tools that rapidly provide management with information on how a campaign is performing.

Benefits of creating accountability

By creating and using tools that provide accountability for response-driven campaigns, it is possible to create a virtuous circle of better targeting at a reduced cost. This improved targeting is instantaneous allowing for continual tactical changes to a campaign to maximise the response. Furthermore, after each campaign the data can be reviewed in depth to provide the basis for the objectives of the next campaign. Marketing may be an art, but accountability can put some science into the art!

A review of different accountability tolls for different response mechanisms:

Telephone

In our last brief (The Response Lifecycle) we argued that the telephone is currently the most established response channel. Traditionally it has been difficult to measure accurately where response comes from. Companies either ask callers to quote reference codes or ask them where they saw the advert. The problem with this is that the data tends to be unreliable, takes time to process and irritates the caller.

By using different non-geographic telephone numbers on each piece of media, reports can be generated to show:

a) Which media generates the best response

b) What time of day people respond to adverts

c) Where in the United Kingdom the responses come from

Mediahawk provides these services, providing significant benefits for its clients. For instance, one Mediahawk customer recently changed its marketing budget from around 70% in the trade press to just 15%, freeing much of its budget for other marketing activities. Despite reducing trade spend, the overall level of response has actually risen with better targeting through other channels.
SMS

Mediahawk's reports also show the percentage of respondents who reply by mobile per media channel. When mobile response is high, marketers should look to introduce SMS into their response generating mix. Targeted appropriately, SMS can generate significant response; especially for a product or service that has a product life decaying over time - eg for ticket sales or competitions.

SMS service providers can provide analytics similar to those provided by Mediahawk to show response rates to campaigns. It has only just become possible to get access to geographic information on where mobiles are calling from, however there are some data protection hurdles to overcome before marketers can access this information.
Email

As argued last month (The Response Lifecycle), emails are growing in importance in terms of their ability to create response. Measurement tools are widely available to show how email campaigns work and how this response is being received.

If email addresses are to be included in any media campaigns as a response method MEDIAHAWK recommends:

a) Use different email addresses in different media - this will show which media generates the best response;

b) All emails are responded to within one hour of receipt.
The Internet

There are a number of web tracking tools available to provide plenty of information on users and their habits. These tools vary from the simplistic to the extremely detailed and are charged accordingly. The problem with much of the data generated is that many marketers are still unsure what it all means! This is further confused by the jargon that the internet can throw up.

We would recommend that when a web site is used as part of a campaign, that the key site objectives and campaign objectives are kept simple and in a format that are easy to understand and compare against other response channels.
Response cards / letters / faxes

Response cards and letters are in decline as a method of generating response. They are being replaced either by online response cards or online form-to-mails on websites. Unlike snail-mail, these response methods are instantaneous and - like email - require instantaneous response from companies when requests come through. The reporting on amount of enquiries and where they come from can be instantaneous.

Implications

At present there are a number of companies who can provide rapid reporting on how different response methods work. At some expense, it is currently possible to link all these together to get an overall view of where response is coming from and which adverts are successful. Within the next five years we will see fully integrated analytical systems that will give marketers the ability to gain an instant overview of how accountable their campaigns are.

Agencies and marketers are facing new demands because campaigns will soon no longer be planned and executed over long periods. They will become increasingly tactical in their nature as companies respond to their customers' signals. This will lead to a change in how media is perceived. Creative work which can be changed quickly will become more valued. This will lead to an increase in the last-minute booking and placing of media. And then… with instantaneous reporting and accountability, companies will soon be looking to buy media on a per response basis. And who could blame them?

Conclusion

Accountability is essential. Response channels are fracturing with consumers increasingly used to instant response, be it by phone, email or the internet. Marketers that do not recognise this risk are squandering their budget while failing to gain any idea of what response channels are working in this rapidly changing environment.

Your comments on our views would be greatly received and if you want to discuss Accountability in more depth please call us on 0845 120 7440 or email hbott@mediahawk.co.uk