Testing in marketing is crucial. Business leaders hear that all the time. But what does it really mean, and how can it drive your marketing strategy?
How does it drive real, tangible results for your marketing team and your brand? What type of testing is best for your situation? And where do you start?
In this post, we’ll explore five common marketing problems and how data analytics and testing can provide effective solutions.
1. Optimizing In-Platform Variables and Incrementality
The Problem
You’re running ads on various digital media platforms like Google, Meta, or TikTok. But how do you know if your target market or your creative assets are truly effective? For example, is the ad copy resonating with your target audience? Or is a particular demographic or psychographic responding better than others?
The Solution: A/B Testing and Conversion Lift Studies
A/B testing involves creating two similar versions of an ad, version A and version B. Make sure the versions have one key difference, and show them to two similar audiences. You might change the headline in one version to see which message has a higher click through rate. Then review the data to see which performs better.
Conversion lift studies compare the behavior of a group who saw your ad against a control group that didn’t. While A/B testing thrives on simplicity, conversion lift studies assess the broader impact of campaigns. They’re valuable when direct comparisons are less clear cut. For example, you might show a group a promotional ad, and see how website traffic or leads change.
The Impact
This approach leads to micro performance improvements and in-platform lift. You’re fine-tuning campaigns to optimize engagement and conversion rates. These marketing testing tools ensure you’re getting the best results from your ad spend.
Risks
Different methodologies can yield varied results, and these tests often don’t directly reflect broader business metrics like sales or revenue. They measure inputs (clicks, impressions) rather than final outcomes (sales, revenue). So while they are useful for improving specific elements, they might not give a complete picture of overall impact.
2. Navigating Multiple Digital Channels and Attribution
The Problem
Your digital marketing strategy utilizes multiple channels, such as display ads, social media, native ads, and email marketing. Attributing success to the right ones within a campaign is challenging. How do you know which marketing channel is driving the most conversions?
The Solution: An Ad Server
An ad server can provide a comprehensive analysis of digital overlap and pathways. An ad server is a technology platform that serves, tracks, and manages online ads. It shows how different channels interact and contribute by providing detailed reporting and data analysis on user interactions across touch points.
The Impact
With an ad server, you gain insights into how potential customers engage with your marketing across different channels. This helps you understand the customer journey and make informed decisions about where to allocate your budget.
Risks
Ad servers can be costly, typically taking 5-10% of your media spend. They might not work well with platforms like Facebook due to API restrictions, which limit how data can be shared and used. Ad servers also exclude traditional media evaluation, so it fails to tell the entire story.
3. Assessing New Digital Channels or Tactics
The Problem
You want to introduce a new digital channel or tactic, like influencer marketing or advertising on YouTube. But how effective will it be for your brand? How can you be sure this new strategy will deliver results?
The Solution: Causal Impact Analysis
Causal impact analysis is highly effective in assessing the impact of new strategies. It creates a model that compares observed results (what really happens) with a constructed control scenario. It essentially creates a ‘what if’ scenario to see what would have happened without the new tactic.
The Impact
Causal impact analysis provides accurate and actionable insights for forecasting and helps establish the effectiveness of new tactics. It allows you to understand if the new channel or strategy is contributing positively to your goals and by how much. For example, if you start a new Instagram campaign, causal impact analysis can show you how many sales are attributable to that campaign.
Risks
Causal impact analysis doesn’t account for multi-touch attribution, like a user seeing an ad on TV and then clicking on a digital ad later. Additionally, setting up a true control scenario is extremely complex and requires careful planning and an experienced data scientist.
4. Determining the Right Budget for Optimal Return
The Problem
How do you figure out the right budget to maximize your return on investment (ROI)? It can be tough to know how much to spend to get the best results without overspending. You want to make sure every dollar spent is working efficiently.
The Solution: Geo-Lift Studies
Geo-lift studies can help. Geo-lift is a testing method that compares the performance of campaigns in different geographic areas to isolate the impact of your marketing efforts. By analyzing performance across different regions, you can see which areas respond best to your campaigns.
The Impact
You get detailed insights into the return on ad spend (ROAS) for individual channels, with regular real time updates. This method is particularly useful for understanding the effectiveness of programmatic and social media channels.
Risks
Geo-lift studies can be costly and require extensive data unique to specific zip codes. They also need a well-scoped initial budget and audience to be effective. Additionally, they do not typically include traditional evaluation methods, making them less comprehensive for certain analyses.
5. Understanding and Optimizing Your Media Mix
The Problem
There are a lot of pieces working together within your media mix. How do you understand the current effectiveness of your marketing activities and find the optimal combination of channels to maximize results?
The Solution: Media Mix Modeling
Media mix modeling uses statistical analysis to measure the impact of various marketing tactics and determine the optimal mix. Even better, Scale Marketing’s proprietary media mix modeling tool, ATOM, customizes this approach to your specific goals and data.
The Impact
Media Mix Modeling provides a comprehensive, data-driven analysis that is not subject to personal biases. It uses industry best practices and is tailored to meet your specific needs, leading to more effective and efficient media spending. It helps you understand how different channels work together and where to allocate your budget for the best overall return.
Risks
Implementing media mix modeling provides valuable insights, but it can be time-consuming and costly. It demands a significant investment in terms of both time and resources to set up and maintain. It also requires a history of data to be truly effective.
Conclusion
The importance of data analytics in marketing cannot be overstated. And these data and testing solutions are just a few of many. By leveraging these tools, you can address common marketing challenges and drive results.
Depending on your internal resources, you can also partner with an agency to integrate data analytics in your digital marketing. A full-service marketing agency will be able to execute testing and data solutions seamlessly into your media plan. They can also optimize quickly, which results in more effective spending and measurable growth within your business.
Get in touch to learn more about how Scale Marketing uses insights to drive growth and business results for companies like yours.
