As indicated in my last post, we analyzed four “conversations” between our client and their customers across several offline and online channels, notably: display ads; television; radio; and organic PR. We applied a multichannel “lens” by looking at these channels via pay-per-click (PPC) conversions. The purpose of our project was to further prove that no individual channel is a silo’d activity. Simply put, every marketing campaign – especially online – maintains a direct and significant correlation to another.
In this installment, I’ll cover the first of these cross-channel conversations: PPC & Display.
Conversation 1: PPC and Display Trending
Looking at multiple data points across both the client’s PPC and Display campaigns, we were able to develop a strong understanding of performance of their overall online marketing program in context of their “macro” environment, e.g. seasonal consumer demand, consumer spending habits, etc. Using other marketing activities as mutual benchmarks (in addition to a wealth of data provided by the client’s marketing team), we were able to paint a clearer and more actionable forecast, allowing them to develop more accurate projections.
Most importantly, we discovered that as month-on-month conversions dropped for PPC, conversions also dropped for Display – and vice versa. In this case, the drops were directly proportional (negative 16%) for two months of testing.
We developed a proprietary forecasting tool (more on this in a follow-up post) which incorporated multiple marketing channels. This also helped our client nail down their overall marketing performance, which in turn then helped them create dashboards for the executive team. The client now uses this information on a regular basis to influence their marketing budgeting and sales force staffing decisions. This has allowed them to know how consumers would behave in a given multichannel environment and plan accordingly – saving significant amount of marketing dollars and resources.