Tying the Dots to Prove Accountability
In today’s data-rich marketing landscape, proving your work’s value has become essential. Choosing the right data to evaluate is pivotal to demonstrating true accountability.
The Importance of Choosing the Right Data
The proliferation and advancement of digital tools and platforms in the past decade have provided an abundance of data to draw from. Data that’s relatively cheap and provides immediate response feedback on how a campaign is doing, making it irresistible for marketers pressured to prove their contributions. But just because today’s digital media has measurement embedded in its makeup, doesn’t mean it should become the basis of all evaluation.
Hierarchy of Objectives for Effective Evaluation
Digital metrics are only one piece of the puzzle. Alone, they aren’t enough to prove attribution to the effects that matter such as sales, profit, or when it comes to public sector campaigns, behaviour change. To properly demonstrate accountability it is key to measure data that helps trace back these effects directly to the marketing activity that preceded it. In their seminal report, Marketing in the Era of Accountability, Binet and Field (2007) advise marketers to identify the hierarchy of objectives that will serve to evaluate the success of their communications, starting with business objectives, followed by behavioural objectives, and finally intermediate objectives.
Implementing a Multi-Layered Approach
The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) describe intermediate measures as those concerned with audience response targets like attitudes and awareness. They’re often regarded as ‘leading indicators’ in that they are widely believed to precede behavioural changes. Behavioural measures look at what people did differently as a result of the activity, such as direct response data (web traffic, phone calls, showroom visits, etc) and buying behaviour (penetration, frequency, etc). Finally, business measures focus on identifying the ultimate effect the campaign had on the client’s business, such as sales, market share and profit.
This multi-layered approach recognises that certain metrics are often prerequisites for others. By monitoring KPIs across these three interlinked objective types, marketers can draw connections between the direct effect an activity had on shifting audience mindsets, how that translated to influencing behaviours, and the ultimate business impact achieved as a result. It provides a more accurate picture of whether a campaign goes on to have the desired effect by enabling them to join the dots.
In conclusion, only by selecting the right type of data to evaluate can marketers effectively prove accountability. Successful evaluation relies on measuring data that provides proof of impact by drawing a direct link between softer campaign effects and harder behavioural and business results.
Using Evaluation Tools at Golley Slater
To do this at Golley Slater, we often make use of evaluation tools like the GCS Evaluation Framework for both public sector and even commercial campaigns. Aids like these help us ensure we’re capturing the right mix of metrics from the start, allowing us to attribute success directly to our activity at the end of each campaign. The GCS framework in particular guides us to capture a balanced scorecard of metrics from attitudes and intentions all the way down to actual behaviour change and ultimate societal and commercial impact, providing a blueprint that enables us to trace effects back to our activity.
Steps to Prove Accountability
Next time you set out to demonstrate accountability for your work, make sure you:
- Look beyond just easily available digital metrics
- Identify the full, hierarchical set of objectives: business, behavioural, intermediate
- Implement measurements for data points that directly tie back to each level
- Connect shifts in audience mindset to quantifiable behavioural and business outcomes
Choosing the right data to evaluate can also help you improve your campaign’s performance along the way. Our next Effectiveness Insider edition explores how data can drive your decision-making to make your work more impactful.
References
Binet, L. & Field, P., (2007). Marketing in an Era of Accountability. World Advertising Research Center.