Factoring the impact of customers who have been driven online as a result of offline advertising is obvious.  Analysing the multiple online channels that a customer may have visited prior to purchase is rarely done.

Offline and Online integration

Not all online sales are a result of online advertising.  There, we said it!

Whilst many brands have experienced rapid growth in the proportion of sales coming through the online channel, offline media will have driven a proportion of these sales. The question is: what effect is offline media having?

With both online and offline media there are often many different media (or channels) which can contributeto a sale e.g. person sees a billboard, followed by a press advertisement and then receives a direct mailing.  Although they may purchase following the direct mail you need to factor in the contribution of other media.

We think it’s important that we work with your offline media managers to measure the impact of offline activity online.

Multiple exposure across online channels

Online a typical journey might be:

  1. Person sees a banner ad promoting ‘Huggies waterproof nappies’.

  2. They type ‘waterproof nappies’ into Google where they see paid search ads for Huggies and Pampers waterproof nappies.

  3. They perform a specific product search on ‘Huggies waterproof nappies’, and purchase. 

It is highly likely in the above example that the only reason they converted on the Huggies brand was because of the prior exposure to the banner ad.  It is for this reason that the resulting revenue needs to be apportioned to the banner and paid search campaigns.

Multiple exposure within online channels

An advantage of online media is that customer journeys are traceable.  For example, suppose you sell Manuka Honey and one of your products is Arataki Manuka Honey. In your paid search campaign you will likely bid on the terms ‘Manuka Honey’ and ‘Arataki Manuka Honey’.  Now suppose your target cost per sale (CPA) is $10 and the campaigns are currently running at:

  • ‘Manuka Honey’ $12
  • ‘Arataki Manuka Honey’ $8

Looking at the terms individually you might decide to turn off ‘Manuka Honey’ as it is not performing.  However, what you will likely find is some people who purchased as a result of your ‘Arataki Manuka Honey’ advertisement previously searched on the more generic term ‘Manuka Honey’ and were exposed to your advertisement. Therefore part of the revenue generated from ‘Arataki Manuka Honey’ campaign needs to be apportioned to ‘Manuka Honey’campaign.

The above example highlights the inter-relationships within a single channel. You need to run the same analysis across your other channels. For example, if a banner ad contributes to a sale which came from paid search you need to apportion the revenue accordingly.

How can we help?

Using sophisticated software we can track the customer journey across and within online channels.  This software can track and apportion revenues to give you an accurate view of overall performance as well as specific campaign performance.

For more information on our measuring customer journeys, call or email us: 09 889 8020 or online@steer.co.nz

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