by Daniele Masiello | Sep 6, 2022 | Career Development, Jobs
Pursuing and building a career is one of the main aims we set ourselves at University. Starting a course and living off rent for the sake of knowledge is commendable, but very rare. Let’s keep this real and say people must ‘work to eat’ and this is not a post for rich heirs and heiresses, ok?
Sorry rich kids no offence: we’re not in Chelsea nor in the upper-east-side, we’re building Silicon Tuscany, trying to reimagine a “Digital Renaissance” and be the firestarter for a technology ecosystem in a place mostly known for hills, olive oil, and wine.
In our everything-but-humble opinion, the ‘work to eat’ culture is rather ancient and outdated tho. There are many reasons to follow the way up the ladder: ambition, personal fulfilment, economic satisfaction… all good things, but life does not always hold our desires for us.
Sometimes we just need to face the music when situations and contexts make decisions on our behalf. So what can we do to help destiny unfold and grow a career? You were expecting a rhetorical question, right? You know, we always like to hide our next move and surprise you with the unexpected, BUT really – did you read the post’s title?
We’ve got 20 (yes, twenty) tips for growing your career but since we’re evil and want you to come back, we’re going to share just half of them. More will come in the future!
1) 💔 Do not follow your passion
Wait, wait, wait. We said what we said, but we have a reason for it. Everybody, all the time, tells you to “follow your passion”. Even Confucio said “find a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life” – terrible advice given to young people. As the well-known prof. Galloway said once, “if someone tells you to follow your passion, it means they’re already rich”.
Your job is something you’re good at. And you’ve got to spend thousands of hours and apply the grit, perseverance, sacrifice and willingness to break through hard things to become great at it. All the rest will follow: being great in something will make you passionate about whatever it is. Leave your passions for the weekend!
2) ⛵️ Know your goal
We’re in the mood for quotes, you must have realised. Seneca said “There’s no wind in the right direction for the sailor that does not know the destination” – in other words, you need to know your goal – what do you want to achieve? Who do you want to be? What do you want to do when you grow up?
Setting an attainable goal is the first step you should take, and try to get there little by little.
3) 👷♀️ Reverse engineer the high road
Reverse engineering is a valuable thing, especially when it comes to your future. Visualise it in your mind, then reverse engineer how to get there. It’s quite tough to know what’s next in your career: it’s easier to decide where you want to land in 10 years’ time and unfold the steps to get there.
Again, try to set a reachable goal. Starting from today, becoming the next prime minister in 10 years is not impossible, but quite unlikely to happen. Keep it real, superhero!
4) 🔮 Find out the Yourself of the future
It’s very hard to know what you want to be when you grow up. Think long and hard about it by following these approaches:
🎨 Visualisation First
Land in the land of the abstract, become estranged from the surrounding environment and ask yourself: “Where do I see myself in 10 years?”. Nope, this is not one of the worn and hackneyed interview questions, even if it works similarly.
This time try and start with broader questions. Do you see a family? Do you see yourself working as an individual or in a team? Are you running your own business or are you part of another? In what industry? Are you living in a big city or in a small town? In which country? Now that you have the bigger picture, add details.
Do you see it?
🎫 Separation from reality
Well, future superstar, we’re not pushing you to daydream just for the fun of it. Everybody does, it’s true, but we’re adding a bit to leverage this common practice.
Imagine you won 100M dollars at the lottery: what would you do? Yes, we know, skip the first 3-4 points: who wouldn’t take off some whim and fulfil some materialistic, fun desires? It’s totally ok to spoil yourself, but most likely your answers afterwards will shed some light on who you really are – hence, what really matters to you.
🍫 Find the chocolate
Let’s assume you love Tiramisù (come on, who does not?), Brownies and Death By Chocolate.
We heard you say ‘you’ve not reinvented the wheel’, it’s just an example, mastermind!
Okay let’s focus here for a minute, is there any common denominator? Sure there is: chocolate! Easy.
Now, when it comes to your future, there probably are many options in front of you that might be of your interest: focus on what the options you love have in common, and find your cup of tea. Well, we mean, the chocolate. Find the chocolate.
5) 💪🏻 Double down on your strengths
And also ignore your weaknesses. Do we really need to explain that?
6) 🤔 Let self-awareness be your superpower
Knowing yourself is a key success factor for your happiness. Carefully listen to yourself and try to consider your future value.
Where you want to go
Assess your personal goals and values to set the boundaries for your career planning. You will need to think hard about the relative importance of money, location, time management, ambition, and so on and set non-negotiable goals for your career.
What you need to get there
Assess the skills you need to succeed in your career. A good way might be to look to role models and try to incorporate those skills into yourself without changing who you are – easy to say, far more difficult to put into practice, true. Who said it was easy?
What makes you special
You better know what you can do better than anyone else – or at least, than your direct competitors. Yourself is your focus: there’s always something you’re particularly good at. What is that? Find it and master the heck out of it.
What’s your energy balance
We don’t want to burn the candle at both ends, do we? Best is to know what gives you energy and what takes energy from you, and balance these forces in an effective and efficient way. You’re not a robot, remember?
7) 👯 Stop comparing yourself to others
Guess who’s the only one responsible for your career growth? Yourself.
On the other hand, each second you invest looking at others’ careers is a distraction of your time and energy from what really matters: your career.
We’re all different from one another: each of us is a special human being with specific strengths and weaknesses who should not be compared to others. Why don’t you try comparing your current self against your older self, instead? It might be a useful way to check your improvements.
8) 💨 Time will tell, give it time
Impatience is a pitfall and ruins everything. You better be micro-impatient taking that extra training today, right now; and be macro-patient, like drafting a 10 years plan to become CMO at that such-and-such company.
9) 👎 Understand that every job sucks (at some point)
We can delude ourselves with fairytales and tell ourselves that we’re surrounded by wonderful, marvellous, hassle-free jobs, open to us all.
Like life in general, work is tough. We don’t mean to scare you and we do agree it shouldn’t be, but this is often the case. Challenges and obstacles are out there and we’ll have to face them at some point. Just like life, the unpleasant and hard part of the job will come sooner or later. Accepting it and being ready to handle it is the best way to make it out alive.
10) Pick human beings, not jobs
The team you will work with should be the key element that drives your final decision in getting a job. One interesting thing is that it’s proved that we are the average of the 6 people we are closer to.
So, especially as a spring chicken at the fresh start of your career, you might want to work with remarkable people – since they will shape your future career growth. We know it’s not that easy to have a clear picture in advance, yet still there’s a lot you can do to know who you will be working with and your manager (of course).
We said 10 tips, did we?
Yes, we did. Literally, here down below this draft in the making, there’s already a list of 10 more, but as said before… you’ve got to stay tuned to get them all.
You can’t imagine how good it feels to hold the power!
by Daniele Masiello | Aug 10, 2022 | Career Development, Jobs, Performance Marketing
Let’s start from the conclusion and get this straight: a career in performance marketing might be the best choice for your future. Kind of weird and unusual to reveal the finale at the beginning of the story, right?
Well, we are who we are: nerdy, techy data scientists, developers, mathematicians, PPC specialists and the like; with a thing for weirdness, and performance marketing done damn well (of course). Besides, we love to surprise you guys, or else… where’s the fun in it?
Brilliant, now – with the end of the story blown – let’s start afresh. Bet you didn’t expect that!
The main concern with running a career in performance marketing
Cool, let’s lay our cards on the table: we called it the “main” concern with having a career in performance marketing despite that we can’t find any other; but, if we claimed there’s only one concern, you would say we’re banging our bloody drum.
Whatever, quite often people are afraid to start a career in performance marketing because they tend to think it’s something too narrow or too specific, which therefore draws a too small path for the future. This is probably the main reason people fear starting a career in performance marketing.
Reasonable, but sorry: we don’t agree with that. Allow us to show you why.
Digital ad spending is taking over the world
If being in the centre of the activities that actually matter in the marketing scenario isn’t a key reason to start a career in performance marketing, then we don’t know what is. A little too forward, we know; but we’re not just marketing machines. We have emotions and dreams!
One of the main points why a career in performance marketing is great is really because digital ad spending is taking over the world. ⅔ of the overall, global marketing budget is digital and that number is bound to increase.
Put it this way, for every dollar spent on marketing, 66 cents are allocated to online advertising. And if we take into account that 70% of online advertising is actually represented by Google and Facebook, it means that Google and Facebook represent almost half of the entire spend – namely 46%. Given that when we think about performance marketing we often think of Google and Facebook, we can state that the Performance Marketing industry is the absolute core of Marketing.
We are good with logical, scientific, data-driven inferences, are we? To tell the truth…
The digital world is a role model
Now let’s think about the remainder of the marketing industry. It looks more and more like the online marketing one. A lot of traditional media has become more similar to the logic of digital media: offline platforms look more and more like digital platforms (think about smart TVs, digital outdoors…) and the fundamentals are actually the same: same languages, same KPIs, even the way brands are buying traditional and digital media is going in the same direction.
Performance marketing is the core of the core
Not only is the digital marketing industry getting bigger and bigger as time goes by, and the rate of change is ever-increasing (wait, wouldn’t that be enough?); but, if you put everything we just said together, being in the performance marketing industry means working on the core of the entire global scenario.
It means working at the centre of activities that actually matter in the world, and mastering this means mastering the only thing that counts. Okay, we jumped the gun just a little bit and got carried away with the magnificence of performance marketing, but what can we say?
The digital gap
Have you ever heard of it? Sure you have.
When you start a career in performance marketing, you’ll be among few skilled professionals, and that gives you a big advantage.
Over the past three years, employers have been urging governments to address the lack of digital skills because it’s very hard to find digital talent, meaning you can’t easily scout experienced professionals skilled across the core elements of performance marketing activities.
This may have to do with education systems, traditional university orientation, and resistance to change; but, regardless of what drove us to this point, the great news is there’s plenty of demand for digital talent. The shortage in digital talent affects the ability of large, global organisations – specifically, their ability to compete. Moreover, such organisations only think the skills gap will increase in the future.
And guess what happens when in a professional field there’s more demand than supply for highly-desirable skilled professionals? No, really, guess: we’re not saying that. We’ll just say it’s probably a good indicator for a brilliant future.
Circles that matter and big shows
First things first: not everybody wants to be a C-level professional. Maybe people are looking for different kinds of progress – build their own companies, lead a team, be a manager – each to their own, fair enough.
Whatever it is, let’s say the majority want to unlock the next level in their career. For those who are a bit in-between – say, those who have from 3 to 5 years of experience hence not really junior, yet still not senior enough to lead a large team – what’s the trick to unlock the next level? This time we’ll tell you the answer. You don’t know how much we like to be unpredictable…
The best way to unlock a new path in your career is to start relationships with those who are more senior than you and already have a role of responsibility. We know we are the average people we are closer to and we tend to have characteristics of people in our network. So, if we start hanging out with the people we want to learn from… chances are we get inspired and fueled with the tricks of the trade.
So let’s cut to the chase: what’s that got to do with performance marketing? Given that performance marketing’s the pillar for companies’ growth, it’s not unusual to find young performance marketing professionals exposed to c-level environments in large international companies. Being really good in performance marketing means getting the keys to the right meetings, having conversations with c-level executives, managers, budget holders, people that have been managing teams and allocating resources for many years.
Performance marketing is a vast land of opportunities, but technicalities lead
When we talk about performance marketing, we’re defining a huge spectrum of different disciplines, like paid search, paid social, SEO, email marketing, etc. Performance marketing is not only about how much money is spent on a campaign but also how effective that campaign is and how many conversions are generated by it.
Be that as it may, within the bucket of performance marketing, analytical skills are Ariadne’s thread and the most desired ones. Data scientists, full stack developers, data engineers, data architects etc. top the list.
The reality is: the more tech you go and the more you grasp analytical and technical skills, the more you’ll flourish. Whilst branding and strategic marketing are very charming and beautiful, they are also really hard to skill. Learning the analytical side and understanding the technical aspects of the core of the industry will pave the way for brilliant success.
Biggest challenges within a performance marketing career
Many will say the biggest challenge of starting a career in performance marketing is the constantly changing environment. Scenarios change every 6 months and the rate of change is increasing – so you’ll need to think fast, be flexible, and have a strong problem-solving attitude. Being up for constantly challenging yourself and getting out of your comfort zone are crucial.
Also, often you will have to manage several campaigns at once and multitask, but at the same time you’ll become adaptable and really good at finding solutions for all kinds of issues. It’s quite challenging at the beginning, but with experience it becomes easier and more rewarding.
We’d rather say the biggest challenge now is automation. Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence are taking over the world, our job included. It’s likely and predictable that the first jobs to be taken over by automation won’t be hairdressers, waiters – yet jobs like ours: staring at the monitor throughout the day, clicking things and making decisions.
We didn’t just scare you off, did we?
The final key
So did we write this long dissertation on why to start a career in performance marketing just to say we’ll be overcome by machines? We said we’re weird, but not to such an extent!
In an ever more automated world, incremental technical skills are most important. Machines don’t allocate budgets, find alternative, genial solutions to compete at an international level; neither do machines come up with integrated market penetration strategies – to do all these things, you have to be on top of the situation.
And, if you don’t know the core, if you don’t know what’s underneath, it will be really hard to be top-notch. So, master the core of the core!
by Daniele Masiello | Aug 1, 2022 | Creatives
Some people are always gonna say a good product just markets itself, and if so, there would be no need for performance marketing agencies like us. Apart from the fact that this would be a scenario we can’t imagine because we have many mouths to feed and are panicking at the thought, all the advantages and measurable results we provide our clients with every day would be a lie.
Well, what about if we stop imagining unreal scenarios and just claim performance marketing is something that no company can do without? This is particularly true when we talk about ad creatives, increasingly a big driver for performance. You know how we run things, right? We can’t stand metaphysical discourses but rather go deep and tactical and get a sense of how impactful good against bad creatives can be.
A little bit of definitions
First things to clear up are:
- What to expect from good or bad creatives
- How to define a good or a bad creative
When it comes to defining good and bad creatives, we should look at the performance. ROAS it’s the ultimate KPI we optimise creatives for, but we’re also looking at IPM, CPI, CTR, CR, CTI, so you get the picture: creatives can make or break your campaign.
We know that good-performing creatives help you grab the attention of your audience immediately. Your buyer persona is browsing Facebook, Instagram, TikTok – whatever, and you have only one second to grab their attention right away. So the main question is: what to address when we’re optimising or building creatives? There is a long list of actions and things to take into account, keeping in mind that the solution must merge art with science and aim at creating efficiency. This is a job for a performance marketing professional.
A process to success
You know how we do, we’re lazy folks who like to get things done achieving maximum results with minimal effort. This “least pain-most gain” mantra always led us to craft amazing automation tools, marvellous scripts, outstanding software and – in this case – a proper process to follow when coming up with new creative concepts and variants.
We called this baby Creatives Testingland and is an approach to developing new creatives – how to improve them and make them even better. The framework includes, along with the analysis of key factors and how & what elements are needed, all the steps that need to be taken in order to arrive at new concepts, test variants and create a winning idea.
This happens by analysing your competitors’ products, identifying the product you want to analyse, coming up with creative concepts, testing strategy development, statistical evaluation and microdata analysis (gathering clues from socials, websites, forums, SERP etc.).
You might be questioning yourself “why is this framework unique?” It’s not, we’re not only lazy, we’re also honest. But we know it’s outstanding since it’s done after a perfect knowledge of the entire process – as in our style, sorry for flexing! We have mapped the process that should be followed to come up with new creative concepts and to test them (by using a multiple regression model).
So what does it look like?
Find creative concepts
- Competitive research
Competitive research and analysis are fundamental to learn from best practices in the industry (both in terms of branding and advertising) and become aware of any gap that might be fulfilled. In order to define the competitors, it’s crucial to understand the competitive landscape so as to have a clear idea of the benchmark and compare similar business models.
- Strategic & Objective Analysis
Brands and products landscapes can be extremely wide and confusing. One brand might serve and offer many categories and products at a time, so it’s better to pick one objective for the analysis and properly master all the touchpoints involved. Focus on one not-too-broad vertical and study the entire concept category from as many specific angles as possible.
- Microdata Analysis
The world of the web is full of traces left by users: their questions and doubts, the comments they leave on forums, communities and blogs, and -of course- all the information available on social media. By reading what and how users write, their emotions and feelings, their concerns about the product’s pain points, etc. it’s possible to anticipate their needs and craft more relevant ads.
Generate Concept Categories
Once a clear picture is available, it’s time to put all of that together in a bible where all values, concepts and specifications are included in a simple, understandable manner. This is crucial for effective communication between the scientific and artistic brains!
Best is to have different, several concept categories (USP, user/market pain point, product, seasonality, etc.) and generate multiple variants for each concept. By doing so, a range of valid and ready-to-rock creatives will be there to be tested out in the world.
Test strategy deployment
- Test multiple concepts
The time of truth is about to strike! This is the moment to run campaigns with broad audiences and wait until a statistically significant number of impressions is reached, so as to analyse performance and elect the winning adset through a relevant KPI. Congratulations on reaching the top step of the podium, Adset!
- Iterate on the winning concepts
We shouldn’t dismiss the saying “never change a winning team”. It’s something that’s been going on for ages, who are we to argue with that? Just a funny way to say: when the time is right, damn back the winning horse!
- Reporting & insights
This is the most boring part, where there are people getting all the data together, analysing the heck out of it and visualising it on perfectly mannered tables, charts and other stuff that makes people yawn at meetings. We might be joking or at least engaging in hyperbole (not sure), but this is indeed vital for the final step that identifies the perfect, conversions-machine creatives.
Statistical evaluation
Without bogging down into irrelevant, non-scientific details, this is the place where questions get answers. It needs the analysis of all the data gathered throughout the entire process, aiming at selecting suitable endpoints and hypotheses as well as appropriate statistical methods to test them.
Wow! This sounds so professional, true. A bit boring, also true, but it’s just the way it is. Luckily, we are a performance marketing agency in love with the scientific method, which means our nerdy tech brains can take into account millions of metrics and convert them into data-driven decisions. Like the award-winning creative that wins it all and drives the best possible results.
Task complete.
Simple as that?
Not really. Much more complicated. And as everything scientific and data-driven, needs a technical team to be calibrated. Imagine? We have it. So you might want to reach out 🙂
PS if you understood the Elliot Alderson fake world reference at the very beginning, you just won a free creatives assessment. Just prove it once you get in contact with us.
by Daniele Masiello | Jul 22, 2022 | SEO
EUREKA! We just gave life to a new, super-cool SEO script
We don’t use this Ancient Greek slogan lightly folks. We have recently found ourselves like a Columbus character, in the New World of Analytics. And even though we are best known as highly specialised performance marketing nerds, we like to be eclectic. So here we are today laying our claim to the title of Archimedes of SEO! Big claims we know, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously and we like to make a splash.
What’s the SEO deal?
Let’s get down to it. SEO (which stands for Search Engine Optimisation) aims to improve organic performance and traffic volume for anything findable online. Any SEO strategy worthy of its name should aim to increase; organic traffic, conversions (sales/leads) coming from organic searches and keyword rankings.
At Booster Box we have a really, very serious SEO value chain. Well, serious is a big word. Let’s say a super-competent-and-ground-breaking value chain that is crafted to skyrocket our clients’ SEO metrics. Have a look for yourself:
- Raise awareness
We care about raising our clients’ awareness of how search engines work and the impact of SEO
- Core services
We make sure the website is SEO proof and in line with the latest search engines quality guidelines
- Outreach
We pull the best off-site practices out of the box, putting that out in the world to see
Yes, very clever. We know. It’s our favourite adjective after nerdy. But a pretty value chain by itself will not cut the mustard when it comes to SEO. SEO is a highly profitable marketing channel that requires unique and valuable content to be successful.
To achieve this, you have to be technical – there’s no point in hiding this, sorry! Technical SEO is a crucial requirement and will increase the performance of any website content, simple as that! Without tech SEO in place, your content asset runs the risk of not being found. Beyond that, long-term success with organic search requires an effective combination of content creation & link acquisition, primarily through PR.
A company forewarned is a company forearmed. You’re welcome. So, if this knowledge has motivated you enough, all you have to do is get in touch with us and leave all this crap to the experts.
What’s Booster Box’s BIG SEO deal?
So far, we’ve told you the basics. But we never rest on our laurels. We see ourselves as an integral part of our clients’ business, and strive to be a proactive source of ideas, operating as if it were our own business baby.
And if we own it, we rock it. We are always trying to create innovative SEO solutions for our clients to help them reach their goals most efficiently.
Achieving this requires a lot of behind the scenes work that our SEO nerds take care of, for the success of our clients’ websites. Research is an important part of the process. We use different tools to gather information and data and create a strategy and approach based on this.
Wow, that sounds professional! It’s hard to believe we wrote it. But folks, while our tone is playful, we don’t play around when it comes to your business: we do performance marketing damn well. And SEO damn well. And Analytics damn well. And much more, but hey this is getting out of hand.
Back to SEO, what does our SEO process look like? We run keyword research and mapping, competition analysis, performance reporting and tech SEO reporting. All very important processes – true. But maybe a little boring to read about in the abstract, so let’s explain this quickly:
- Keyword research and mapping
A vital stage that reveals crucial information needed to obtain a high rank in search engines and drive qualified traffic to the website
- SEO brief
A document that aligns everyone involved in content writing so they can understand the purpose of the content and what to include. A little secret just for you: this blog you are reading right now has been carefully crafted and reviewed to drive valuable organic traffic to it
- Tech SEO
Wow, big effort to save you from yawning here. This is a process of optimising websites for technical stuff like crawling, indexing, coverage, and other boring things. Let’s stop there
- SEO performance report
We’re dataists. We just can’t help ourselves. We’re always collecting that meaningful data, and we know how to sort it and extract the important information to provide quality ROI. As a bonus, you should see how marvellous these reports are. And they also monitor progress!
To accomplish all this work, we use many tools: SEM Rush, Google Search Console, Analytics, Trends and Keyword Planner, among others. This treasure trove of tools combined with manual research enables us to gather the right data to create the best strategy and approach for a specific client.
Booster Box as the Archimedes of SEO
Now you know almost everything about our SEO process, and might say “I couldn’t care less” (rrrrude!) BUT we’re at the most amazing and interesting part where we explain why we claim to be the Archimedes of SEO!
Let’s start with one truth: manual methods do not always save time or produce results. Plus, “Automation” is one of our core values because we are lazy and our mantra is “if you do a task more than three times a week, automate it”.
Thanks to our laziness, we have automated most of the boring bits so we can focus on the fun part: driving impact. Life is already too short to spend hours and hours researching one keyword at a time, isn’t it?
This has been the case for many processes we have used in the past, especially when it comes to keyword creation. So, our super fun techy guys (fun & funny- they make us laugh, for real) put together a list of arguments for why we should automate part of the SEO process, and justify their laziness:
- Keyword research is a time-consuming process
- Manual methods can be inaccurate
- Manual methods are not always the most efficient way to gather data
- Manual methods can be difficult to scale
They were good arguments, so we decided to use the marketing automation power.
Automate the heck out of it
So a bunch of our favourite Booster Box brains got in a room together and surprise, surprise, came up with a solution that provides massive results and ensures a high-quality output!
Booster Box’s SEO SCRIPT
We have created a unique script that is a fantastic tool for SEO, easy to use and provides results. This method, with thanks to SEMRush (which is used as part of the process, but that’s a secret recipe- sorry) will help our clients achieve their goals when it comes to SEO, and all the related marketing strategies.
Our teams also created a how-to guide for running this script and its template autonomously, ensuring you can get the most out of our unique approach without even needing our guidance.
Heaven on earth, right?
We know what you’re expecting now- a beautiful button with a catchy call-to-action that will allow you to download this groundbreaking tool right now, no questions asked, yes?
If you answered;
- Yes: Sorry darling. Our SEO nerds didn’t give us permission to do this.
- No: wow, you really know how to manage your expectations ! Interesting.
But not to worry, if you want to get your hands on our super cool SEO script, just get in contact with us, the Archimedes of SEO.
Last but not least
By the way, if you found yourself reading this post in the voice of Eureka O’Hara, you just won a free SEO assessment… with sequins and feathers of course.
by Daniele Masiello | Jul 18, 2022 | Incrementality
What is multi-touch attribution and how it works
Multi-touch attribution is a model of measurement that takes into account several touchpoints on the journey that drives to a conversion, thus qualifying the contribution that each channel gives to the goal. The credit given to each touchpoint varies according to the type of multi-touch attribution model chosen to measure the impact of the digital campaign.
Based on company needs and goals, marketing teams determine which model suits best for any specific campaign, depending on the length of sales cycle, KPIs, type and goal of the campaign, and more.
There are many multi-touch attribution models and each one varies depending on the individual score assigned to the different channels. The most popular are:
Each touchpoint gets the same credit
The first and the last touchpoints get 40% of credit. All the other touchpoints split the last 20%
The closer to the conversion the touchpoint is, the more credit it gets
First touchpoint, middle touchpoint (when the prospect transforms into a lead) and last touchpoint (when the lead closes and becomes a customer) get 30% of credit each. All the other touchpoints split the last 10%
Regardless of the model chosen, marketing teams should always keep optimising and testing campaigns to ensure they’re deploying the best tactic.
Getting over multi-touch attribution (MTA)
Understanding the role that each touchpoint plays in a conversion is crucial for budgeting, allowing devotion of funds to the most effective touchpoints while diverting funds away from ineffective channels.
Multi-touch attribution (MTA) models have been proven ineffective for two reasons:
- the platforms are sealed off from each other in terms of attribution;
- The models are not good at tracking the real-life, messy-middle, customer journey and thus provide unreliable feedback.
MTA gives a distorted picture
MTAs can sometimes be a bait-and-switch. Often, insiders rely on data and information generated by MTAs that are seldom telling the truth. Shortcomings include inaccurate analysis and incorrectly weighted channels, leading to a distorted picture which causes ineffective budgeting as a consequence.
MTA has a single-minded approach
MTAs only focus on digital channels and have a blind spot when it comes to thinking about ‘external’ factors (seasonality, offline activities, etc.). These limitations should be kept in mind when deriving marketing insights from MTAs and they should only be partially trusted.
Marketing Mix Modelling: what is and why it is more effective
Marketing Mix Modelling gives marketers the unfair advantage of breaking down data so as to determine the real contribution of each channel to a conversion, making it possible to measure past performance and chart a path for future, reliable success.
It consists in a statistical analysis to estimate the impact of digital marketing channels together with offline activities on sales or any other specific conversion. Marketing Mix Models forecast what is likely to happen if deploying a specific set of tactics and, given a goal, are the key to boost the achievement of best results by re-allocating the budget on most valuable channels.
At Booster Box we crafted a Marketing Mix Modeling tester that creates a basic version of a Marketing Mix Model, starting from imputed data. The tool is only a preliminary sample to take a sneak peek into a Marketing Mix Model, how it works and how it looks.
The cookieless wasteland
The advertising world must face the change that the cookie apocalypse is bringing. As of now, almost half of open web users’ actions are untraceable on Firefox and Safari. This number is bound to increase with the upcoming loss of third-party cookies.
The looming threat of a cookieless world
New data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) together with autonomous decisions by platform companies like Apple and Google, to place greater restrictions on third-party cookies, are going to cause major disruption which could bring ineffective advertising and negative impacts on revenue to the unprepared.
A slippery cookieless slope
Even as recently as early 2022, organisations could draw on a wealth of data which provided a true 360-view of the buyer personas. However, the situation today is very different and will get worse: businesses are losing ground on the progress they’ve made in terms of targeting consumers, and are not even nearly ready for this shift.
Cookieless scenario is subverting the status quo (?)
Things have changed abruptly and the certainty of access to consumers’ data is fading away. Marketing experts need to face this head on: if there are players losing marketing attributable revenue, there must be others picking up the pieces. Here’s a hard fact: since many lost the ability to target and track users, advertisers shifted spending to Apple Search Ads to help maintain results. Upshot: Apple Search Ads skyrocketed and app downloads attributed to advertising tripled in just one year. Take note.
Faced with this situation, it is essential to safeguard the performance of marketing campaigns and limit any disruption to tracking and revenue. Unveiling the real path to conversion through Marketing Mix Modelling (a.k.a MMM) is a viable, ready-to-use solution in a landscape of new privacy norms.
Understanding incremental value: Incrementality
Ad budgets don’t grow on trees or fall from the sky. Therefore, investing in ads where customers would have converted anyway, and/or investing in non-converting campaigns is a huge mistake and waste of resources.
Marketing teams who are keen to allocate capital efficiently are always at the frontline in the battle to understand incremental value, cross-channel impacts and marginal returns.They make data-driven ad spend decisions accordingly.
Incrementality is smartest
The best part of the plan is nothing can stop it. Incrementality attribution does not require cookies and does not rely on MTA paths.
In simple terms, it withholds ad exposure to a statistically significant segment of the target audience (“control group”) whilst showing the ad to the broader audience (“test group”). The difference in results between the groups is the incremental contribution.
Every budget has its place with incrementality
Incrementality makes it possible to flawlessly distinguish organic traffic from paid campaigns. This paves the way for scaling the most effective channels and avoiding paying for conversions that would likely have occurred free of charge.
Some questions incrementality will answer:
- What will be the outcome if we pause channel X tomorrow?
- What is likely to happen if we double the budget for channel Y?
- Which ad contributes the most to reach my goals?
Incrementality has the marketing spend bigger picture
In analytics, one of the toughest nuts to crack is taking into account all marketing activities, including external factors, offline channels and any other business. Spoiler, it’s really hard.
To make things more difficult, some solutions can be correct today and wrong tomorrow. It’s possible that a channel that is delivering a huge incremental lift today will have to be shut next year. It takes several technical experts and continuous monitoring to keep the ship under control and the trip smooth through the marketing storm.
So is measuring properly a pipe dream?
The answer is no.
We said in many ways that a marketing team’s main ambition is to be able to forecast the likely outcomes when deploying a specific set of tactics, thus reducing any deadweight loss by reallocating inefficient spend to the most effective touchpoints.
Surprise: this can be achieved. With a lot of science, data analysis and modelling – three areas Booster Box excels in.
