Although digital marketing have been called 'the most measurable ever' many times, the wealth of data we collect about our customers and visitors to our 'owned media' such as websites, mobile apps and social network pages, is not fully utilised in many businesses in my experience.
It's curious since we refer to optimisation of marketing channels frequently, so we have conversion rate optimisation to improve digital experiences, Search engine optimisation to gain better organic listings and even Social media optimisation.
Yet this is a narrow, channel or tactic view of optimisation. What about the bigger, more complex picture where visitors to our websites typically don't convert on a single visit to a single page from a single channel, but instead use multiple online and offline interactions and devices during a customer path to purchase?
Consider this visual example for the e-commerce sector showing the many opportunities for online and offline communications throughout the path to purchase defined here by the Smart Insights RACE planning customer lifecycle. Although some of the techniques here like Google Shopping or Merchandising are retail specific, businesses across different sectors can still potentially use all the techniques covered here.
For businesses to get the most from the rich opportunity of new digital marketing channels needs a change in mindset where optimisation across these many different channels is needed and it needs people with the right skills to deliver them. A vision for a future Optimized marketing approeach is that these touchpoints should be optimised by putting in place the right People, Processes and Marketing technology so that the touchpoints are mutually re-inforcing.
While some channels such as social media and SEO are well known and used in most organisations we find that some techniques such as remarketing, personalisation and influencer outreach are used less widely or not fully optimized. To get the most from digital marketing surely requires optimisation to test learn and refine across all the touchpoints considering how they work together.
Here is one example of the power of integration showing how combining Facebook ads with email achieves uplift:
We think it's most effective to use an integrated approach of structured testing and experiments to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of digital marketing across all four steps of the Smart Insights RACE (Reach, Interact, Convert, Engage).
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