Marketers struggle to measure multichannel ROI

New market research reveals brand marketers lack confidence in measuring ROI and are wasting digital spend

A recently published market research study has revealed marketers’ current perceptions on marketing agility and marketing attribution within the digital sector.

The research study, which was conducted by Finder Media on behalf of tag management system, marketing data and marketing attribution provider TagMan, surveyed over 200 senior digital marketing and e-commerce professionals across an array of travel, retail, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and financial sectors.

The survey found that 41% of marketers believe reporting accurate return on investment (ROI) of all marketing activity is the biggest challenge currently facing their business. Indeed, nearly half (49%) of marketers are not sure how they currently reward marketing partners such as technology vendors, email service providers and publishers, across different channels; while 55% of respondents still measure the success of display campaigns by clickthrough rates.

Multichannel and management issues

A further 35% of marketers said it was also a huge challenge to understand how different channels are working together, while 34% said the operational management of marketing systems is a big issue within their business.

Another key finding was that many marketers are still struggling to use 'big data' analytics and social media within campaigns. Over half (59%) of respondents said they believe big data could have a real impact on business revenue and profits. Yet, despite this, 36% admitted they still do not understand the big data trend and 31% cited ‘data overload’ as their biggest business challenge. When it came to social media, 43% are not confident that their social media investments are driving ROI, with a further 32% of respondents unsure of the value of social media.

Jon Baron, chief executive of TagMan, said that being able to understand what ROI marketing spend is generating should be at the heart of a digital marketer’s focus, giving them the ability to interpret, value and respond to the data available to them.

"One of the more unexpected results that the survey returned was that digital marketers still considered email as the most useful form of digital advertising," he said. "Insights generated from a tag management system’s holistic view may provide digital marketers with a greater perspective and highlight other more lucrative channels.”

Recognising varied shopping journeys

TagMan customers weighed in on the study with their first-hand views on marketing agility and the challenges they are overcoming.

Peter Sensier, Waitrose online marketing manager, commented: “Our goal is fairly straightforward. We want to better understand the required mix of budget, targeting and messaging for each channel as part of one customer journey. With that knowledge we believe we can better plan our activity across bought, earned and owned channels. That said, we recognise that there are many different variations of the customer journey, so this is not so much an exercise of identifying the one exact path for all customers but rather identifying patterns in the channel mix that have the greatest positive effect on sales performance.”

Ron Brien, TagMan senior vice president of global marketing, added: “By examining both marketer perceptions and quantifiable data, we hope to help marketers fight through biases and sub-optimal investments to understand the true impact of channels like Facebook, mobile, display advertising, affiliate, email and PPC [pay per click] so they can capture the minds of consumers, and convert prospects to customers.”

The full study, Marketing Agility: Win the Fight against Wasted Digital Spend, is available to download after registration here.