Don’t count on numbers to tell the real story

We’re obsessed with numbers, measuring and metrics and there’s never been more data available to fill a marketing report; web traffic, click through rates, share of voice, engagement, followers, open rates, search rankings, conversations and so on. None of these metrics are wrong but somewhere along the line we’ve started assessing the performance of individual marketing channels. PR working to provide the value of PR, SEO to justify SEO and paid ads measured against paid ads. It’s understandable but it’s also one of the biggest reasons businesses underestimate the value of integrated marketing.

Customers aren’t buying (most of the time) from one single channel; they’re buying from a business. Think about the last thing you bought, the chances are you didn’t see an advert and immediate click to purchase. You probably came across the business numerous times. Seeing them on social, checking out the website, looking at reviews and maybe even messaging a link to a friend to ask advice before making the purchase. Now, which interaction convinced you to buy? The honest answer is that it was probably all of them and that’s how integrated marketing is meant to work.

PR is there to build credibility; content sits answering questions; search helps people find you; paid advertising captures demand; social media is your heartbeat; and your website gives people confidence. Each and every discipline has a role to play; they’re your marketing momentum.

Trying to decide which one (based on data) to attribute the credit to is like making a cake and then figuring out which ingredient made it taste the best. If you take away an ingredient, the cake isn’t as good. The same is true when it comes to marketing which is why measuring integrated marketing ROI starts before any campaign launches by agreeing what success actually looks like.

Are you trying to increase market share? Generate high-quality enquiries? Recruit better people? Improve customer retention? Launch in a new market or sector? Once that’s known, the metrics can begin to make sense because they are supporting an objective rather than being the objective themselves.

Website traffic will tell you whether more people are discovering the business, search visibility shows whether you’re becoming easier to find, media coverage demonstrates whether you’re building authority, lead quality reveals whether your efforts are attracting the right audience, conversion rates show whether the proposition is compelling enough and revenue will tell you whether all those things are actually delivering commercial value. But, on their own, not one of them shows the whole story; it’s together when they show whether the marketing activity is moving the business forward.

There’s one more reason why integrated matters more than ever and it’s that buying journeys have become difficult to track. A prospect could discover your business through an AI summary, recommendation from friend, podcast, WhatsApp conversation, social post, event or countless other interactions that might never make their way on to your marketing dashboard. Tracking has become more sophisticated, but it’s still only measuring part of the picture.

That’s why we’d encourage firms to stop asking which channel generated the result and look at whether the campaign achieved its purpose. Has awareness grown? Have enquiries improved? Is revenue (and importantly profitability) increased? All of these show whether your marketing is doing what it should be. And we come back to the fact that customers experience your business as one brand and that’s where we can assess the most meaningful ROI.