Having had a number of conversations this year with brand owners and retailers regarding their (shrinking) budgets for 2010, the common theme to these discussions is 'how do we get more out of our current budgets', yet 'show greater customer acquisition and retention?'

 

My response to these sorts of questions is to give them the following equation and to wait for the eyebrows to rise up:

 

SPEND + MEASUREMENT + ANALYSIS = EFFICIENCY = INCREASED BUDGET

 

Needless to say the initial responses that I have received were mainly raised eyebrows until some of them stopped and thought about it, specifically the 'efficiency' word. So let me explain and expand a bit further.

 

Cleary the first word 'SPEND' requires limited qualification as this is the relatively easy part for most brand and advertising managers. The second word 'MEASURMENT' is where the intelligence gathering begins: Selecting advertising channels that can be measured, adding digital features that give traditional media measurability and generally selecting options that allow for measurement and reporting on an interactive and dynamic basis with your present and future customers. It must be measured as a rule and you must get data that you trust. If you get data that is unreliable and untested, go back and perform steps 1 and 2 again until you are happy that your IT/CRM guys or suppliers have got good data.

 

Let's assume that you have been able to do the first two components of the equation fairly well and that you are happy with your tracking data and target results from the first iteration of ad-spend. Now what? For me, the 'ANALYSIS' part is the active ingredient in this equation as it is the most important part of the process in increasing your marketing budget.

 

'If you can't measure it, you can't improve it' goes the old saying. So using data that you have achieved by adding mobile to your above-and-below-theline campaigns, including tracking mobile numbers across all areas of your business (inbound call centres data, SMS, call-back's and any other area where you have legal access to mobile data), you should be able to track individuals against their mobile number, which then becomes the customer identifier. This identifier can then be mapped against other data you have for that person on an account or user basis. The key here is using data intelligently and effectively to track how your organisation engages with the mobile consumer of today.

 

To achieve the goal of budget 'EFFICIENCY' and therefore increased budgets to spend intelligently on the next iteration is an ongoing process and one that requires multiple iterations to get a greater understanding. Reliable data aggregation, timeous reporting, detailed analysis and segmentation is all part of the continuous circle that unfortunately a lot of advertising budgets do not follow. We all want bigger budgets, but yet we do not perform the measurement role and analysis roles sufficiently to justify more from the finance department.

 

So my hope for 2010's advertising spend is that we finally learn to add the measurement to every advertising rand that goes out the door ? and then take this data, analyse it and begin iterating the process again and again. In so doing, you can build in that efficiency and build in that increase spend that you wanted.

 

Let's do it better in 2010 and not waste our precious marketing budgets.

Have a great year! Woza 2010! Woza!