Simple Metrics and Complex People- Better Understanding Digital Marketing ROI

People are complex, which makes measuring their behaviour hard. That’s why marketing metrics typically take a reductionist approach.

For example, in my early days in PR one client had us spend hours measuring the size of every piece of press coverage they received in square inches, then apply multipliers based on how positive it was towards them and give the piece a score. The output of this exercise was that we could be judged on our performance, but I doubt it bore any real relation to the impact the press coverage had on buyers.

Last Click Analysis’ is another good example. This is a simplified method for measuring return on investment (ROI) for online marketing campaigns. It tells you where a customer came from on the occasion they actually converted. Unfortunately the buying process for most goods and services is a little more complex than: “Oh, that’s a nice advert. I think I’ll buy that.”

In reality we are subject to a whole range of influences on our buying behaviour. While the ability to capture some of those will likely remain well out of our reach (whims, word of mouth in the real world rather than the virtual), we can do a lot better than Last Click Analysis.

Because CANDDi looks at the complete prospect and customer lifecycle we can tell you not just the last influence that drove them to buy, but every influence that ever brought them to your website - whether it be a proactive campaign, natural search, or any other online source.

Based on this data we have developed a simple scoring system that should give you a better reflection of the influence of your various online marketing channels. It’s not by any means a complete analysis of the buying process of your customer. But it should give you a better idea of how you should be spending your online marketing budget.